Many students write me with questions about yoga. Here's a forum where I can share my thoughts on anonymous personal issues, so that everyone can learn a little bit…
ACCEPTING PAIN
Recently I received the following response from a student during a private session, "Well, it's not intense pain"... this got me thinking on how subjective pain really is.
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| Shri K. Pattabhi Jois |
Face it, we yogis can be masochists.
How often is the image of a yogi, twisted, bound and
contorted with a pleasant look of ease on the face what we see in reference to the
yoga practice? It is this sense of
ease in relation to pain I’d like to further explore. The scope of physical and emotional pain is vast, however here
I will simply share my personal experience of pain and how my relationship to
it has changed.
What is Pain?
The word itself comes from the Latin “poena,” meaning a
fine, a penalty. Webster’s defines pain as localized physical suffering
associated with bodily disorder (such as a disease or injury). However, the widely accepted definition
from the International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an
unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential
tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage." [1]
The Pain Scale
Each person has varied levels and thresholds for tolerating
pain, which is commonly measured on a scale of 1 -10. But when communicating with students in class, I’ll present
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