I was violently sick with food poisoning on Jan. 1st. The challenge of that 12 hour experience has me thinking a lot about the benefits of relaxing into pain.
Throwing up is painful. Sitting in 34 degree water is painful. Even exercise, as much as I love a good runner’s high, can be damned difficult.
But as I was retching my lungs up and cracking jokes to my long-suffering girlfriend at 4am, I was also reflecting on the best way to get through pain – and it isn’t what you think.
As a kid, I jumped into a lot of snowbound lakes. I learned that the worst thing to do when swimming in freezing water is to tense up. Tension only makes freezing cold water hurt more, the suffering more unbearable. By contrast, when you relax and attempt to breathe through the pain, the difficult experience is… marginally less difficult.
The way through pain is to relax.
How to take a punch
I hope you never need to take a punch. The best way to take a punch is to avoid it!
But the second best way is to tense up only just before impact. And only then as much as necessary to counteract the force of the punch.
It can be devastating to get hit when you’re complete unprepared. But so, too, can tensing unnecessarily for an impact that may or may not ever come.
How to survive a car accident
There’s a weird phenomenon where really drunk drivers are more likely than the average to survive serious car accidents. They’re so drunk that they relax in the face of a wreck, and are therefore more flexible.
(Hopefully it goes without saying: never drink and drive.)
During a serious car accident a few years ago, I recall relaxing just after the impact. As my car spun out of control, I let go emotionally, even while I slammed on the brakes. I credit that relaxation with walking away from the pile-up unscathed.
The detrimental consequence of tension
If you live in a constant state of tension, you’re both less good at taking the hit, more likely to suffer when the impact occurs, and develop detrimental habits and physical patterning.
By contrast, when you learn to relax into discomfort, you remain more flexible. Counter-intuitively, you are more likely to get through the experience.
Sometimes, the best way through a difficult experience is by letting go.
How to relax
Relaxing into physical discomfort is counterintuitive. You have to get enough practice to get comfortable, which means experiencing some pain along the way.
I’ve never seen someone get into freezing cold water for the first time and not tense up. You have to try it a few times.
But letting go in the face of pain is the same kind of relaxation as when you take your first sip of coffee in the morning or fall asleep at night; it is a moment when you let your stress drain away.
This is also the kind of determined letting go where I take a deep breath before I run the hardest hill on my 6 mile loop through the Oakland hills. I look up at the hill, turn up the volume on 8 Mile, take a deep breath, and dig in.
We assume relaxing should feel restful, but the sensation of letting go of tension is the same whether you’re relaxing into sleep, into a chest freezer of ice cubes, or violet food poisoning.
Until next week,
Robin