I believe that the pain body, the phenomenon — initially recognized by spiritualist Eckhart Tolle — that triggers an onset of negative emotional responses, can be effectively managed and also, eventually, diminished. Here are a few methods that I recommend for managing the pain body.
Awareness and observation.
People typically become engulfed in emotional responses rather than maintaining space from these responses and observing them. There is, in fact, a natural space between us and our emotional responses, and also our thinking. This can be validated by the reality that we can observe our emotions and thinking (we can observe our bodies in the same way). Observation cannot happen unless some distance exists between us and the object of observation.
When emotions and thinking come up, we tend to personalize these experiences and fall into them, so to speak. If, however, we maintained the space that naturally exists between us and emotions and thinking — if we consciously observed emotion and thinking but otherwise allowed them to be — emotion and thinking would ultimately lose their charge.
They would be like so many clouds in the sky: moving in and then moving out, with no significant impact to speak of. Get more information about awareness and observation as a response to suffering Here.
The Work.
The Work is a self-help method developed by Byron Katie. The Work is, essentially, a cost-benefit analysis for believing our thinking. This is accomplished through written introspection, by writing out thought and then applying four questions: Is the thinking true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true? How do you react when you believe the thought? Who would you be without the thought?
After applying the four questions a turnaround is used. A turnaround is an opposite response to the original thought that is just as true, at least potentially, if not more true than the original thought.
The Work is a simple, clever, and also effective method for dealing with negative emotional responses, whether the responses are triggered by a pain body experience or not. A fundamental difference between awareness and observation and The Work is level of interaction: awareness and observation allows emotional responses and thought to come and go as they please, where The Work involves analysis.
Energy Therapy.
Energy therapy, along the lines of EFT or Emotional Freedom Techniques, involves stimulating, through touch, meridian points on the upper body. Meridian points are believed to correspond to energy flow throughout the body. This is the same principle that’s been used by Chinese acupuncture for thousands of years.
Like The Work, and awareness and observation too for that matter, energy therapy is not solely a response to pain body activity. All of these methods are effective for all suffering, no matter the origin, and for life improvement in general.
