Natural Self-Healing

Natural Self-Healing

By Desmond Yeoh SC

Ceramic Products

All of us have natural healing abilities. The Yogis discovered long ago that we send life energy to the place which we pay attention to. This gives us a hint as to why there is pain in our body when we are ill. It is our body’s way of calling out for our attention so that we send natural healing energies to the area that needs them the most. We just need be aware of the pain without feeling aversion to it.

Ajahn Sumedho said[1], “In dealing with physical sensation we can distract ourselves by looking or listening or turning to something else to get away maybe from physical discomfort. That’s one way of dealing with it. Another way is the investigation of physical pain where we go right to the actual sensation of pain; looking into the pain itself; getting to know the difference between the sensation and the aversion that we mentally develop around a sensation. For example we have the pain in our legs. If we go to the actual sensation and concentrate our attention on it, we stop thinking about it. We’re with the sensation, but we’re not creating mental aversion to its seemingly unpleasant appearance”.

“Generally we are not that refined and aware. We tend to just be averse to physical pain and discomfort and try to suppress it, or we use will-power to endure it. When we go to the sensation itself, then there is body-consciousness. We’re not adding aversion on to the pain: ‘I can’t stand it! I don’t want it!’ These are emotional reactions to physical discomfort and pain of any sort”.

“This is to be investigated and observed. When we’re bringing attention to the sensations of the body, whether it’s pleasant, painful or neutral – more and more the body will relax. When we feel tension or stress, if we concentrate right on that spot with an attitude of just bare attention, without aversion to it, then the condition for pain can diminish”.

“What we can’t stand really, is the emotional reaction. Most pain we can bear; it’s when we think: `I can’t stand any more of this,’ that we give up and try to get away from it. If we’re caught in that emotional realm of: `I can’t bear it!’, then we can even be thinking that before there is any actual pain. ‘What if pain arises? I won’t be able to stand it’. We can already be suffering by the possibilities of experiencing pain we don’t yet have. Because of our ability to remember pain we’ve had before and couldn’t stand”.

We develop an impartial view of pain by saying “there is pain” instead of “I am in pain”. The pain is there whether we like it or not. Adding adverse comments to the pain is like shooting a second arrow into the very same spot which we were previously hit by an arrow. It greatly multiplies our suffering.

Pain is there to serve a purpose. It is our friend; telling us to pay attention to something that has gone wrong. We are only preventing it from doing its work by complaining and trying to distract ourselves from it. We must give pain our full and loving attention in order to allow our natural healing abilities to work for us and supplement the modern medication we are taking.

By giving full attention to our pain, we will eventually experience one insight: Nothing is permanent. The pain will eventually fade away; there is no need to try to run away from it. Trying to run over from pain will make it more painful than it actually is.