By Christina Haverkort (08/2020- Last updated 02/2023)
Pain
Pain? Why the Pain? Blocked energy? Polarity reversal? Underlying inflammation? Neurological condition?
The brainstem is a critical area for nociception and pain processing, as well as relaying and coordinating signaling between the cerebrum, cerebellum, and spinal cord. It is composed of 3 distinct subregions—the medulla (most caudal), pons, and midbrain (most cranial). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6727990/
Pain Relief
Pain receptors from the brainstem spill out into the lower jaw. One way of reducing some types of chronic pain in the body is through massaging the nerve ending tissue in this area. The key is to close the circuit of polarity by keeping your wrists together. Second option for reducing pain is to get grounded. Grounding through the energy field, we all have an energy field, it is a very effective pain relief option because it engages the parasympathetic nervous system.
Pain triggers the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which is under the umbrella of the greater central nervous system. The sympathetic (fight, freeze, or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system (PNS). These main two systems are involved in how we can manage pain. Everything is a polarity, north-south, positive-negative, shifting the polarity from the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) to the parasympathetic is an effect tool to reducing pain. ILearn how to ground yourself through the energy field here.
The more, deeper relaxed states you can achieve through a meditation practice, lying down is best, or through energy healing work, the more your body can find balance. It’s about shifting the polarity in the central nervous system. All pain is different in nature, whatever system it is stemming from, neurological, muscular, nerve or inflammation. Past trauma, blocked energy, old injuries with blocked energy are a few of the many reasons for pain continuing. In deep tissue pain, I have found deep in the tissue, pain receptors can become blocked because of tissue adhesion. Radiation from a cell phone carried on your body, can result in this type of pain.
*Acute pain often stems from soft tissue injuries; chronic pain is typically due to conditions like arthritis, fibromyalgia, or spinal issues. Neuropathic pain indicates damage to the nerves or other parts of the nervous system and is often described as shooting, stabbing, or burning, or pins and needles. Nociceptive pain is a type of pain caused by damage to body tissue. Radicular pain is a specific type of pain that occurs when the spinal nerve becomes compressed or somehow inflamed. It radiates from the back and hip into one or both legs via the spine, and spinal nerve root (* www.beaumont.org).
Can the Nervous System be Conditioned?
The endocrine system and CNS, together play a role in pain receptivity and response in my research. Although this is a multidimensional topic and pain is incredibly complex, I believe that pain levels can vary due to the condition of one’s nervous system. For example, if your job and stresses in your life are high of the scale of stress, that stress, can affect your endocrine system then pushing a load onto your nervous system. Some people may hold pain longer in the body than others, depending on the level of stress in their daily life. The question is, can we condition our nervous system to lower the frequency and duration of pain? Or re-calibrate the way we respond to pain? I believe it’s possible, with a practice of tuning into our body often. Grounding, and staying grounded, where energy is more focused in the body rather than in the mind or brain. The connection to the Earth, this powerful element, and practice of grounding deeply, calms the nervous system. Our response to stress is altered by the conditioning and practice of grounding.
The Pain Body
Eckhart Tolle speaks about the ‘pain body’. He states that the pain body is “an old emotional pain living inside of you. It may have accumulated from past traumatic experiences, and sticks around because these painful experiences were not fully-faced and accepted the moment they arose.”
Such cases are extremely common; multitudes of people endure the burden of the unhealed pain body. Energy healing is a powerfully beneficial tool that can clear away stale emotional energy attached to old injuries or traumas. In my years as a practitioner I have borne witness to how the body stores pain in the energy system. I’ve also seen the great benefits of going into the body’s field of energy- to interact with it, and discern what that pain is about and why it lingers. These answers flow into awareness as verbal messages, imagery, or scenes of memories to those I have the privilege to work with.
In an energetic sense, the ‘pain body’ is more of an emotional protection, like an energetic wall, or heart wall, forming an etheric ‘suit of armor’. This is a protective storage layer where unresolved emotional energy is still in the field, awaiting resolution. What I have noticed is the pain body can be so powerful the pain is felt throughout the body and packaged as a layer of protection, held up in the energy field. Many people don’t realize they have it until it is found. This could be the reason why emotional healing takes a much longer time, until the pain body field is worked through the multiple layers and healed over a series of sessions.
Fibromyalgia
*The dictionary’s definition of fibromyalgia is a chronic disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, and tenderness in localized areas (*Dictionary).
Could the origin of fibromyalgia pain caused by trauma to the nervous system? Or significant repetitive trauma during childhood? Or an underlying inflammatory condition? In my experience of working with fibromyalgia, my clients had previous emotional/sexual childhood trauma, toxic overload trauma to the body by means of breathing in mold or ingesting poison or acquired liver toxicity. Perhaps the body musculoskeletal system is out of balance due to poor posture, bunions, hip misalignment, past surgeries, fractures that were misaligned because it was casted improperly, the list continues. A thorough assessment of the skeleton and muscular system and trauma history should be taken into consideration upon accepting this diagnosis. The pain body comes up again, due to the shock to the nervous system. Past trauma and abuse develop a thick unwitting ‘Pain Body’. The pain body my not be perceivable however, when someone is ready to resolve the constructs of past trauma, or overhauling the body with a cleanse and food restrictions in additional helpful alternative is energy based therapies. As the basis of all manifestations is energy.
It is the nature of the body to continuously store memories of physical, mental, or emotional trauma, but it is not always sensed consciously – it’s different for everyone. Energy of any situation is absorbed into anyone’s field of energy, this is why energy healing is a effective treatment for emotional trauma. Given that the body readily stores memory, via the Vagus Nerve pathways. during a stressful time or following a new trauma, old injuries are often emotionally triggered to flare up again. When the stress passes, symptoms reduce or go away, but can re-occur when stress heightens; thus establishing a pattern of another level of pain body, until the energy is cleared.
Shingles Pain
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is a viral infection that typically causes a painful skin rash, often with blisters. It typically affects older adults or people with weak immune systems. A typical herpes zoster rash appears on one side of the face or body and can last two to four weeks. However, the pain of shingles can last for months.
This type of pain is agonizing, the mechanics of pain is a flare of the sympathetic nervous system that over activates both the neurological system and overall affects the nervous system. The brainstem being the pain processing center, that information shows up in the energy field, finding some level of relief can be found by massaging the pain receptors that spill out to the lower jaw. This is an accessible area we can use to help ourselves.
Polarity plays a large role in pain, as explained above, shifting the polarity from sympathetic to parasympathetic is the first step to resolving or beginning to understand the volume of the issue, they second step is why the pain in that particular area? In an energy healing session, the reason for the pain comes through the field, in images, memories, thoughts, or past trauma without emotions attached. A client came to see me having suffered unrelenting months of pain from a case of shingles. Even after the blisters cleared up he was left with lingering, excruciating nerve pain. Even though his shingles pain was not the original focus of his healing treatment, it was inevitably part of the healing he received. As his polarity shifted from the SNS to the PNS, the pain was processed through the energy field.