Between Birth and Death

Diagrams and articles by D. Evan McCormick

Diagrams help illustrate steps. Taking complexity into simplicity. Healing maps that require effort, faith, and a courageous willingness to train the mind.

Here is an example…

Pain is a wave. A signal that keeps pinging. Rising into our awareness and then seemingly disappearing for a while. Then it comes up again and we decide to notice or try to ignore what the pain is saying. Pain talks to us as a wave of information. Coming and going through our awareness. A nervous system wanting to converse with our awareness.

​Life events:

As life goes on, pain will continue to move through our physical anatomy, energetic systems, emotional hormones, and thoughts. Pain can be found anywhere along our nervous system pathways. Pain is found in our digestive functions. In the reverberation of our heartbeat. In our chemicals making a fire of heat. Pain is found when we experience intense feelings. Emotions are extreme feelings signaling pain. Thoughts stimulate sensations of pain. Loops and spirals of pain going from thought to emotion to nerve endings. It is all happening in a body. In the events that make up our life story.

​N is Notice:

Noticing pain is a choice. It doesn’t matter what kind of pain – physical, energetic, emotional or mental – pain has a location in our body. Noticing is a pause our awareness takes to stop what we are doing and make pain a topic. The center of our attention. Then we choose to direct our attention to the pain in our body.

Where is the pain located? Direct attention to the specific area. Go to the anatomy of the body. General areas the pain is signaling.

What feelings are we noticing? Direct attention to qualities of sensations. Like, heavy, tight, sharp, prickly, hot, numb… feelings of sensations move. Notice any movement in the body. Like, up, down, left, right, forward or back.

Are there painful emotions? The body has areas these intense feelings travel through. Direct our awareness to how the emotion is borrowing our body space.

What thoughts are causing pain? Notice the content of the thoughts. The meaning is trying to keep us in pain. Direct our attention to how the thought content is felt in our body.

Directing our attention is a practice of choosing. Our awareness can make a choice. Making a choice to pause what we are doing. Choosing to take a breath. Choosing to direct our attention to areas of the body. Choosing to feel. Choosing to struggle with intruding thoughts. Choosing to stay within our body space. Choosing to notice qualities of pain. Choosing to notice life. Choosing to stop autonomic responses that are habituated to pass over pain.

A is Allow:

A pain, once noticed, changes. It increases. This doesn’t last long. Give it twenty minutes. Allowing pain means staying present with how it feels. How it moves through our body. It will peak. It is a wave. Awareness needs training. The quality of allowing trains a strength of endurance. We check out a lot when making room for pain to move. Allowing isn’t passive. It is active. Returning over and over again to the simple.

Where in the body again?

What is under this pain?

What is around the pain?

What is this pain bringing up within my awareness?

What sensations are showing up?

What emotions?

What thoughts?

Allowing means giving pain a chance to offer insight. A glimpse into the unknown. When allowing pain, we have a conversation with ourselves.

We note qualities that arise. Keeping our attention on the topic we make the pain reveal what it is hiding. Sometimes difficult memories. Sometimes unpredictable thoughts. We allow these to move. Stay focused on the body. On each breath. The wave will increase then change. Pain has to change, it is a law of nature. Internally this is all happening.

Allowing also means giving our body movement. Pain needs us to move too. We can sit with pain - noticing and allowing, but that isn’t always enough.

We may need to get up. Talk to a friend. Walk around our home. Write it out. Have a meal. Sleep. Rest. It depends on the content pain reveals to our awareness. As we explore what choices help our pain, the nervous system begins to learn a wisdom. It learns there is pain and there are choices that keep us in pain. There are choices that encourage us to hold still and allow internal sensations to shift the pain signal. We start to figure out how to change its signal from crisis to wisdom by allowing internal discomfort.

​L is Listen:

Allowing pain does something. There is a spontaneous moment when it changes. Maybe over days. Weeks. Months. We have been allowing it to reveal information. We have been sitting, laying down or walking through our day directing our attention to areas of our body. We have allowed our thoughts to come and go. Rather than stay in a thought, we tell the thought, “Thank you and what is next?” another thought arises. “Thank you and what is next?”

We are listening. Thoughts and feelings don’t matter when we are allowing. Many of them are random. Or they are part of the loops feeding pain. Crazy thoughts. Negative thoughts. Then, our body relaxes for a moment and a thought pops up. This time though, it has a centeredness. It feels like a reminder we haven’t heard in a long time. A way to perceive the pain that is helpful. This is spontaneous. A message of clarity.

A message of clarity is why we listen to pain. It is a way to get through three lies pain often carries.

1. Lies about what we thought.

2. Lies about misunderstood feelings.

3. Lies that hide what we know to be true.

Then a message arrives.

1. This is what I mean. Now I have choices.

2. This is what I have been feeling. Now I can trust myself.

3. This is what I know is true. I am beginning to understand my pain.

The messages we receive during listening regulates the nervous system. The lies keep coming and we allow them to move. Giving little energy to each lie. Redirecting our attention to how pain is moving through our body. Finding out how to help our pain. How to trust our ability to heal pain. How to find out more about ourselves.

Pain happens when we are experiencing ignorance too. Not knowing isn’t a lie. It is simply being uniformed. So, when pain shows up, give it attention. Oftentimes, ignorance that causes pain requires informed conversation. When we expose our pain to people wiser than ourselves, not knowing regulates.

Pain is an ally. It comes from inside our body. It seeks information to complete a picture of wholeness. Asking for advice and getting specific help is listening. This gives our nervous system the information it needs.

Listening needs energy. As we go down the wave, pain begins to dissipate and is replaced with understanding. We can now feel pain, choose to notice it, allow it to intensify and change. Listening produces an understanding that informs our awareness. We experience life differently. When listening to pain we learn that our nervous system needs energy to go through the wave with awareness. This changes our routine with our body. We understand that through rest, proper food, meaningful connections and strengthening exercises our awareness receives necessary energy to include pain when it arises.

​E is Executing

In N-A-L we learn the power of choice. We keep choosing to notice the pain. Allow it an intensity and soon it dissipates. We listen to the spontaneous messages producing an understanding about our pain.

Then we must do something. Internally we are changing. So must our external settings. We find that executing the messages our pain taught us turns pain into action of health.

Executing action of health has phases.

1. We communicate. Share what we are learning about our pain. We offer an understanding about ourselves that pain has revealed. We trust that though we may still need help, we take responsibility with our choices to go through pain rather than block its messages. Communicating pain is a way of representing ourselves honestly. This gives us confidence in our ability to share what has been difficult and painful.

Communicating what pain has taught us, creates authentic connections.

2. We change our routine. Thoughtless movement turns into awareness informing movement. Intense feelings turn into awareness of internal boundaries. Negative thoughts turn into self-confidence. When our physical setting is stimulating pain, we change what is possible.

If the setting can’t change, our perception changes how we move in our environment. It is the power of perception and choice. We build up the quality of our awareness. This gives us energy to move differently.

3. We use silence as medicine. Using our body as an instrument for medicine requires our ability to go silent. Patiently noticing, allowing and listening. Silence gives us this internal room to regulate our stress and pain. Silence slows adrenaline. It wakes up numbness. Gives us a chance to heal what is overwhelmed. Detaching from meaning and memories stuck in discomfort.

4. We identify pain in the moment. As life events happen, we get caught up in reactions. Forgetting that perhaps, a pain is signaling. When practicing noticing, allowing and listening our nervous system gets trained to catch the pain in the moment.

It doesn’t matter when we pause and go through the pain wave with awareness. Our body can be forgiving. Then we can go to silence – making room for pain to process. Then we choose a different movement – strengthening the quality of our awareness. Then we communicate internally and with our environment what the pain is revealing.

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