We never win with all or nothing, win or lose or black or white thinking.

On the contrary being stuck in either/or thinking takes us out of our window of tolerance and pushes us into either high levels of arousal (fight flight) or low levels of arousal (freeze appease).

And this is a direct path to chronic pain, chronic illness, anxiety and depression.
The good news is we can learn how to live in an optimal state of arousal to support the body’s innate ability to heal itself.

Then we can recover from pain and illness naturally.

Learning how to hold paradox is one of the practices my clients use to train the brain to unlearn pain.

Holding paradox takes us beyond our usual concepts of right and wrong, joy and suffering and pain and pleasure.

This is where we can rest in an optimal zone of arousal where healing can happen on its own accord.

But it involves a reconciliation with, and a lively coexistence of the poles of opposites.

This means lovingly acknowledging what is - pain - while also becoming present to the parts of our lived expereince where no pain is present.

It means becoming large enough to contain and hold the opposite poles of experience.

Pain and no pain.

The thing is, with chronic pain, it's all too easy to be consumed by thoughts of pain.

And when we focus on pain, and pain alone, this feeds pain and makes it more chronic.

Part of the mind training that is necessary to heal chronic pain is to bring attention to not just the parts of the body in pain but also to the parts of the body that are not in pain.

And and both.

Pain and no pain.

But this takes consistent practice to strengthen the mind just as we would strengthen a muscle.

It’s a commitment.

If we are not training the brain the brain is training us.

And when the brain trains us its often a runaway train to more pain and illness.

So think of practicing paradox as a pattern interrupt.

The brain wants to focus on one pole or extreme - namely pain.

When we put paradox to practice we zoom out to become present to both poles.

Instead of focusing on pain and pain alone we also become present to parts of our experience that are not painful.

We learn how to be present to more than one truth simultaneously.

Pain and no pain.

And when we can be present to both pain and no pain at once it begins to short circuit the alarm signals in the brain that fuel pain.