Pain Is Relative

Understand your mental makeup and manage pain

- Dr. Hansaji J. Yogendra

The proportion of body pain is something that occurs according to someone's personality. While some people start shouting as soon as they see the needle before the injection has even taken place, others seem unfazed by physical pain.

In my experience, I have seen that we create pain, imagine pain and become unhappy even before it is there. There is also thinking of worst case scenarios, 'What if this happened this way?'; 'What if that happened?' Just thinking on those lines can increase a person's pain and suffering when in reality, nothing much actually happens. So, it is clear that experience of pain is directly related to our state of mind; that is how we feel pain.

Let me illustrate this with an experiment that we carried out at The Yoga Institute a few years ago. We took X-rays of the knees and spine of about a hundred labourers who lifted heavy loads and carried them on their heads. The condition of their bones was very bad and the spinal discs were out of place in 2-3 areas. They also suffered from slip disc and muscle spasms.