- So can you really use the power of your mind
to both manage and even minimize pain?
Yes, you can. And I want to help you understand
how your nervous system conveys the feelings of pain
to your mind, and I'm going to show you techniques
that can change, amazingly, how you deal with pain.
So the first thing people confuse about pain
is that they believe it is coming from
a single, fixable source.
In truth, our pain is really coming from our mind.
So the neuroscientist, Ramachandran,
went as far as to say, "Pain can be an opinion.
"We feel it because of how our brain interprets input
"transmitted to it from our senses."
And when we know this, that means we can exert
some control over it.
So, for instance, we all know that people who are drunk
or very high don't experience pain.
They can say, "I broke my leg or I broke my wrist,
"but I didn't notice because I was drunk.
"I didn't notice the pain because I was high,"
and that's actually incredibly common.
People who are in a state of frenzy or high passion
also don't always experience or notice pain,
because that state alters how the pain receptors
in your mind interpret pain signals.
That's how painkillers work a lot of the time,
they alter the pain receptors in your mind.
And guess what?
You can do that, actually, without painkillers,
if you want to and if you know how to.
You can actually do this quite naturally
simply by changing the words and images you are creating.
The way you feel about everything is down to the pictures
you make in your head and the words you say to yourself,
and when you say things like, "I've got chronic pain,
"I'm in agony, my headache is killing me,
"I've got a crippling migraine,
"I feel like my stomach is on fire,
"I'm in so much pain; it's agony, it's killing me,
"I'm dying of pain," you have a very different reaction
to when you say, "Well, I have got a mild,
"niggling, little headache.
"I've got a slight stomachache, but I'll be fine
"in 20 minutes.
"Yeah, I have got a little sensation in my gut
"or my stomach or my foot, but I'm dealing with it
"really, really well," because then you will change
how you feel about it.
And I've had surgery and been through lots of experiences,
and I never say "pain."
Like the nurse will come in and go, "Are you in pain?"
I go, "No, I'm in a little bit of discomfort, not pain,"
Because every time I said "pain,"
they'd try to give me more drugs and
and more drugs. I'm like, "I'm not in pain,
"I'm in very mild discomfort."
And I found that if I could get myself in one position,
like a little mouse in a nest, and keep still,
I actually would feel no pain at all, because I didn't want
to take morphine, I wanted to get out of that hospital
as fast as I could.
And I thought, "No, I don't need pain,
"because I don't need a painkiller if I'm not in pain.
"I'm in discomfort."
And getting in a position and sleeping a lot
was perfect for me.
It doesn't have to be the way for you,
but it's just an example of how you have the power
to choose to use different words about a symptom.
For instance, when I was giving birth,
I would never say "labor," "labor pains,"
because that's a negative word.
Labor is hard.
I said "rushes" and "signals" and "symptoms."
When someone said, "Have you got postnatal depression?"
I'm like, "No, I've got postnatal euphoria.
"I'm so in love with this little baby I was told
"I would never have."
So sometimes the words we use, "postnatal depression,"
"agony," "surgery," "invasive," "excruciating,"
you've got to be really mindful to change those words
to "niggling," "mild," "slight," "hardly noticeable,"
because the words you use actually dictate how you feel.
It's like a biofeedback.
Not only are you sending signals to your body
by the words you're using, "This is chronic,"
you're also interrupting the signals coming back to you
from your body.
So the mind is sending signals to the body,
and the mind is interrupting signals coming back
from the body.
And the more you can use very mild language,
"This is slight, this is mild, this is temporary,
"this is a blip, this will be gone in a couple of minutes.
"Oh, I can hardly notice it."
And never say, "My headache, my stomachache, my migraines,"
because when you call something "mine," you own it,
and your body is less willing to let it go
because "my" is an ownership word.
Never say, "Oh, my headache. I've got one of
"my crippling migraines.
"I'm having one of my anxiety attacks."
It's "the." "The headache is very slight,
"and I can already feel it going."
That may sound too good to be true,
but that's what a placebo is,
a placebo means that the placebo effect,
what you think a drug is, what you believe a drug is,
and what it will do for you will have more of an effect
on your body than the compounds of the drug itself.
And then there's the nocebo effect too.
And the placebo, I call it "the physician who lives in you,"
and we all see that when we say to children,
"I can kiss that better, Mommy will make it better,
"Mommy's rubbing the pain away.
"Oh, that's just a little niggle,
"that's just a little, slight something,
"and it's already going away."
And also, you can put your focus onto different body parts,
we've all heard that.
I remember many years ago, I did have, at the time,
a headache, and I had to go and get my daughter from school
and I just had to go and get her.
And for that moment, when I was driving the car, I forgot.
It's like having a cold when you think, "Well, I've got to get up,
"I've got to put some food in the oven,
"I just need to put the wash on,
"and then I'll go back to bed."
And when we are doing things and being busy,
we can forget for a few moments, or for a long time,
that we are even in pain or, even better,
in mild discomfort.
So create different expectations in your mind too.
You know, I gave birth using hypnosis
and it was extraordinary.
And I can't say it didn't hurt and it was amazing
and I felt like I was on a ride to Disneyland,
but it was an experience.
I had a root canal also using hypnosis,
and it wasn't perfect.
I didn't lie there and think, "Oh, this is amazing."
The hardest part of using hypnosis for dental
is having to keep your mouth open for so long.
But I was so relaxed and so chilled
and I took my mind to a completely different place,
and I honestly didn't notice it at all.
So if you're using hypnosis to manage pain,
to minimize pain, there are many things you can do.
I have many clients who come in and say,
"I get agonizing headaches," and I teach them
to imagine a dial going from zero to 10.
"What level is it?"
"Seven."
"Well, let's turn it up to eight, and then nine, then 10."
They go, "Wow, you've made it worse."
"I know. But now, let's turn it down,
"because you're beginning to see the power you have
"to maximize or minimize pain,"
and then we use that dial and we turn it down,
and we turn it down more, and we turn it down more,
because thoughts have an effect.
If you don't think that's true,
then imagine when you think of something embarrassing
and you blush.
You think of something sad and your eyes fill up with tears.
You think of eating, your stomach rumbles.
You think of sex, and you become physically aroused.
Every thought has a physical effect
and, indeed, an emotional response.
When you think of pain and focus on pain,
here is a rule of your mind, whatever you focus on,
you get more of.
So when you focus on, say, you've got a burning pain,
and you decide to focus on being in an ice-cold bath
and imagine your skin is cool and comfortable,
that's where you go to.
When you focus on, "My stomach is in spasms,
"I'm feeling cramp, it's horrible," that's where you go.
And if you focus on something different,
you feel different.
Whatever you focus on, you get more of.
The words you speak and the thoughts you think
become a blueprint that your mind, body,
and psyche move towards.
And when you change your words, you change your blueprint.
And you get to minimize pain, to lower pain,
to even, in some cases, completely erase pain.
What you feel about the pain will make it worse.
For instance, imagine you are terrified of needles
and believe needles are painful,
and think about the pain and think about that needle
piercing your skin and going into your body
and stinging and hurting.
Then imagine someone else having angel's wings
tattooed right across their back
or having a sleeve tattooed on their whole arm.
Do you think thet focus on pain?
Of course not.
They focus on, "Wow, I'm going to have my whole arm inked,
"I'm going to have my whole chest inked,
"I'm having my legs inked."
So some people actually look forward to pain,
certainly people who are going
to inject themselves with drugs look forward to it.
Some people get excited, people who are sadists
or masochistic actually like pain.
That doesn't mean you have to,
but isn't that interesting? What you believe about pain
will influence how much pain you can tolerate.
And some people are proud of how much pain
they can tolerate, they'll say,
"I've got a very high pain threshold."
I have a very high pain threshold
because I've told myself I have over and over again,
I say, "I've got a super high pain threshold."
I don't even know if that's true,
but if I say it and choose to believe it, guess what?
I've made it the truth.
And I could say, "No, I've got sensitive skin
"and I'm so sensitive, and I've got sensitive teeth.
"And I hate injections, they really hurt, and I bruise."
Many, many years ago, I had an allergy to horses,
and my daughter used to ride.
And I noticed when she came in the house
or I picked her up from the stables,
I'd start to sneeze and my eyes would run,
and even washing her clothes was horrible.
I thought, "You know, this is not going to work,
"because I'm not going to stop her doing that.
"And even if I don't pick her up,
"it's the dander in the house."
And I met someone who said, "You can inject yourself
"in the stomach or the leg with this little thing
"that makes you immune to it," so I did that.
It's not fun, but it wasn't difficult.
And I had a little experiment.
Sometimes, I put that needle in my leg
and I'd sing a song, I'd think of something funny,
and I didn't even notice it going in.
And believe me, putting a needle in your own leg
is not great.
But other times, I'd think, "Well, let me play with this,
"let me feel tense and stressed and anxious,
"and then put it in."
And when I did that, it always hurt
and, amazingly, I'd get a massive bruise.
But if I sang and got myself into a good state,
didn't even notice it, because it wasn't the needle
going into my leg, it's what else was going on in my mind,
what was happening in me.
If I was happy, I wouldn't feel pain
but I also wouldn't bruise.
And if I was stressed and anxious,
I would feel pain and I would also bruise.
So it's our mind's perception of what pain is,
and I was brought up with a mother
who was a hypochondriac, always in pain,
and a father who didn't do pain,
never took a day off work in his life.
And they were both my teachers,
and I learned a lot from both of them.
That's why I want to help you minimize pain,
lessen pain, manage pain, and even better,
don't even use the word "pain."
"It's a signal, it's a symptom, it's a little something."
And when you use different language
and different expectations, you have
a totally different reaction in your body.
A different reaction in your mind leads
to a completely different reaction in your body.
And, of course, I'm not saying that all pain is in the mind.
A toothache is a real pain, a headache is a real pain.
If you have a psychosomatic pain,
meaning that your mind is creating the pain
in order to avoid something, the pain is still real,
it's still incredibly painful.
If your doctor says, "Well, you have an allergy
"and the other person's got a phantom pain
"that's not even real," pain is always real.
People thing psychosomatic pain means you're imagining,
it doesn't mean that.
It means your mind is creating the pain.
Let's imagine you're a kid and your parents
are pushing you, pushing you, pushing you to be
a grade A student, pass your exams,
and suddenly, you develop terrible migraines.
And now, you're not going to pass your exams,
because you can't even study, you're in so much pain
and you can't take those exams.
What that means is, your brilliant, genius mind
created those migraines to get you out of an event,
there was no biological reason for them.
But they are just as painful as a pain that's got a symptom,
it's the stress or the after-thought,
or you've got some kind of reaction to something,
or you've been exposed to chemicals
and now you've got what's called a "chemical headache"
from being around paint, or something like that.
But in either way, the pain is the same.
Whether the pain is caused by something organic
or psychosomatic, it's all the same,
except when the pain is caused by something psychosomatic,
you can get rid of it.
And if you're having a painful reaction to, say, paint,
or let's say you have a reaction to pollen
and your eyes itch and your eyes water
and your throat feels all scratchy,
you can actually talk to your mind
and tell it to recognize pollen
as something natural and safe
and to choose not to react to it at all.
So even when something organic is causing pain,
you can still have that biofeedback dialogue
with your mind, interrupt certain signals, decide
they mean something else, and you can
feel completely different, not just sometimes
but all the time.
There's a Harvard study that said that,
"If you have been in pain for a while,
"your brain starts to rewire itself
"to perceive pain signals even when the signals
"are no longer being sent."
And you may know this as "phantom limb pain."
Someone lost their leg, but they still feel
the pain in the foot that they no longer have.
And that, again, is the brain has rewired itself
to perceive pain, even when the source of the pain
and the cause of the pain is no longer there.
I sometimes work with women who say,
"I can't have intercourse, it's so painful."
And that, actually, is often imagined pain
and it's come up for a reason.
In the same way, I work with children
who have all kinds of imagined pains,
but the pain is real, and it's the mind's perception of
what is going on in that person's life at that time.
Chronic pain can be particularly difficult
for those experiencing it, simply because it's, frustratingly,
not always linked to a particular site
or, indeed, injury.
I say to my clients a lot, "The source of your pain
"is not the source of your problem."
For instance, imagine you have headaches
but that's because your back is not aligned.
You might have a knee problem
because your hip is not aligned.
So it's important to understand
that when you have a pain in one area,
it doesn't even mean it's coming from that area.
And RTT®, Rapid Transformational Therapy®, really helps
people with rewiring their mind at a deep, subconscious level
to change the neural pathways,
to change pain receptors, to have your mind look at again
what pain is. And pay attention to your language,
watch your language, because your words
and thoughts and actions lead to how you're feeling
about anything and, indeed, everything.
So I always find, whenever my clients say,
"This headache is killing me,
"this is driving me mad," often, they'll say things like,
"I've got... This is getting on my nerves." And those people
have very sensitive skin.
Or people say, "That makes me sick,
"and I'm sick of this and sick of that,"
and they often have a nervous stomach.
Sometimes I'll have clients who will say things like,
"I can't stand it."
In fact, one woman wrote to me and said,
"You know, this is amazing. I've had problems in my feet
"all of my adult life. And I listened to you,
"and then I suddenly had an epiphany.
"I say every day, 'I can't stand it,
"'I can't stand it when my husband leaves
"'his underpants on the floor. I can't stand it
"'when my kid doesn't shut the fridge door.'"
She goes, "And I stopped... just stopped saying that word,
"and who would've believed it?
"My feet no longer cause me pain.
That may sound simplistic and too obvious,
and yet, remember the blueprint,
every word you speak is something your mind,
body, and psyche work to make real.
Someone else said, in fact, a doctor said to me,
"I use this phrase, 'This is doing my head in,
"'this is doing my head in,'
"and I developed neurologic problems."
And she goes, "And I knew straight away,
"I knew it's because I said that expression
"over and over again,
"'I can't stand it, I can't take it, I can't hear it,
"'I don't see that, I won't look at that.'"
Be very aware of your language
because thoughts become things.
Every thought has a physical reaction in the body,
even if you don't want it to.
And I'd love to help you use your mind
to minimize pain, lessen pain, manage pain.
I promise you, it's possible. I've done it myself
in so many different ways, and I've taught hundreds
and thousands of people to do the same,
and I'd love to help you.
So just click the link below to download
my free Healing Vortex, it's extraordinary.