Mental Discipline

Whether it’s through mental discipline, meditation, self-hypnosis or prayer, and regardless if your discomfort is one or ten on the pain scale, often you can find relief with the power of your own mind. Growing up under my father’s instruction, I learned the value and effectiveness of controlling my pain through mental discipline. As a result of his coaching, I practiced and later modified, several methods that help bring relief during a crisis and from my daily pains.

I’ll describe some of the methods I use. I hope these techniques can also help you in times of pain. Before I share them with you, I want you to remember these four things:

1)    Success or failure in using these techniques will often depend on whether or not you believe they will work. If you’re open-minded to the possibility of success, you may be surprised by how much you succeed.
2)    These techniques by no means are intended to replace proper medical attention and responsible use of pain medication. Rather, they are tools to help you better manage your pain.
3)    Don’t feel like you are doing something wrong if all of your pain isn’t fully removed when you use these techniques. Often these methods will simply help you survive those slow passing minutes by simply lessening your pain and making it more tolerable.
4)    Practice makes perfect. The more time you spend training yourself to use these tools, the more skilled you’ll become.