Real Life vs. Virtual Life

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Healing Your Own Pain. Today’s podcast is called: Real Life vs Virtual Life. My name is Greg, I’m an expert level MFR therapist and owner of Glen Ellyn Myofascial Release, an in-person and on-line treatment center for pain relief, injury rehabilitation and physical and emotional healing.

If you google “virtual reality” one definition you’ll find is:  a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world, or “a simulation or imitation of real life” or “not reality in fact”, “having no physical reality.” Or as we like to say in MFR: living outside the body.

Real Life = In The Body                                                                    Virtual Life = Out-of-Body     
glenellynmfr.com                          

Transcript

Real Life vs Virtual Life

“Our bodies know they belong to Life, to Spirit. It’s our minds that make us homeless.”  

- John O’Donahue                                                                                                                                               

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Healing Your Own Pain. Today’s podcast is called: Real Life vs Virtual Life. My name is Greg, I’m an expert level MFR therapist and owner of Glen Ellyn Myofascial Release, an in-person and on-line treatment center for pain relief, injury rehabilitation and physical and emotional healing.

If you google “virtual reality” one definition you’ll find is:  a complete immersion experience that shuts out the physical world, or “a simulation or imitation of real life” or “not reality in fact”, “having no physical reality.” Or as we like to say in MFR: living outside the body.

Real Life = In The Body                                                                                                                                                              Virtual Life = Out-of-Body

So, in the new global reality, virtual living, including: work, education, medicine, social gatherings, family reunions, even dating has become more and more, an on-line or virtual experience, or un-real experience.

Some years ago, a common spiritual or meditative goal was to achieve an out-of-body experience. What I’ve come to know through my own practice and those of my patients is virtually everyone is already living an out-of-body life and are unaware of it. By the time most of us have reached adulthood we’ve had a number of physical, medical, or emotional traumas that caused us to leave the body as an unconscious self-protective reaction. We may feel numbness or tingling in some part of the body, or have soft tissue restrictions, tightness, disuse, over or underuse of muscles, and pain. We’ve become as disconnected from our bodies as we are from the earth.

In order to heal anything, we must first come back to the body. There is no healing outside the body. We must feel to heal. There are three steps to healing. First, re-connect with the body. Second feel and release the physical and the emotional restriction. Third, rehabilitate using only the correct posture or muscles that have been compensated for, or misused due to injury or poor habits.

Ok, so what does it actually mean, to reconnect, or come back to the body. What I mean is to actually drop your locus, or center of gravity from the head, from thinking into the body’s interior. Many body-centered meditations direct you to feel your feet on the floor, the chair you’re sitting on etc. and that’s a good start. Next is to feel beneath the skin, to the interior of your body. I like to imagine a miniature version of me is resting against the front of the spine, in the middle of the chest. From there let my awareness expand to feel the entire body’s interior. Here’s a test to check yourself. When living in the mind there’s a tendency to focus on a particular thought or feeling. Like reading where the eyes tightly focus on one thing and exclude everything else. When in the body it’s the opposite; thinking slows, our attention widens, it’s seeing with a soft focus, or wide-angle lens. Feeling the whole body, all at once from the inside. Thinking excludes all but one thing, awareness includes everything. When you’re concentrating on one thing you notice only what you’re looking for. When not concentrating (thinking) you’re open to everything. A kind of listening that receives what the body is experiencing right now. At first it may feel awkward. Even disorienting. But in a short while it becomes easier, begins to feel spacious, roomy. Begins to feel like home. 

If you’re experiencing pain or discomfort, see if you can center your awareness either right in the middle of it; or as though you’re holding it, your arms around it as though comforting a wounded child of yours. Because, you are. In doing this, most people notice they’ve been gripping the muscles around the pain, the restriction. When you relax and allow the discomfort to be, even invite it to get bigger if it needs to – often there is an intensity at first, and then the choice happens. This time will you let your acceptance, care, even love for this part of you be stronger than the fear of the pain, or of what this might be. When you’re able to stay present, to feel without resistance, something begins to change.   

In my own practice, at this point I suddenly notice some space around the pain. The decibel level goes down. Its no longer the elephant in the room blotting out everything else. It’s still here, but its sitting in a chair in the corner. Like the child I was ignoring it had to get loud to get my attention. Now it doesn’t need to yell anymore.

This is why the theme of all my podcasts is “Healing Your Own Pain”. Id say more than 50% of all pain is our resistance to it. Eckhart Tolle’s warns, “What we fight gets stronger. What we resist persists.” The secret to healing, like anything else is, to walk toward the thing you fear, toward your pain. As Jack Canfield says, “Everything you want is on the other side of your fear”. In MFR we know “there is no healing in your comfort zone.” It’s like a “fear sandwich”. On the outside is the fear of letting go (the pain may worsen). When you do let go, the pain (the locked-in inflammatory response) is finally felt. But it’s your surrender that frees it. When it subsides, you reach the treasure buried beneath it, the buried emotion you weren’t ready to feel, which is usually some form of fear. 

To sum up, “pain is simply the fear you haven’t felt yet”.  Let me repeat that: Pain is simply the fear you haven't felt yet. So, maybe try this out. Begin to look at pain as your body’s GPS system showing which way to go. I often ask, “What should I be doing? What direction? And the response is always, “Well, what are you afraid of?” Because when we can do that, then you’ll know. Instinctually, we all know. It’s the risk to trust yourself at last. It’s an act of surrender. At some point we must step out of our safe boat, not knowing if we’ll drown. Because, what we think is safe has become dangerous. In fact, it is killing us. True health, like life, is an act of courage

And if I can help you on your path, or you simply want to know more about how MFR can help you, please contact me on my website, by email, or phone. And as always, my friends, I wish you well on your healing journey.