Buddhist resources on coping with pain

[danieLion]

Andrea Fella talks on dukkha:

I find Fella's talks on dukkha valuable because she has personal experience with chronic pain.

Streams:

The Four Noble Truths [1 of 1]
The Truth of Dukkha [1 of 2]

Dukkha as a Teacher

Using Suffering as a Guide
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Downloads

[danieLion]

more Andrea Fella
4NTs, 4NTs cont..., Understanding Suffering

[danieLion]

The Fella-thon continues...
Streams: The Second Noble Truth, The Second Noble Truth and Feeling...
Downloadables

[danieLion]

Read Nietzsche's preface to the second edition of his The Gay Science...i bet you won't regret it...it's not Buddhist but as someone with chronic pain i find it inspiring

and i'm working through Move Without Pain by Martha Peterson based on the Hannah Somatics Method and i think it might be helping...again, it's not Buddhist but the instructions involve a lot of body mindfulness

[danieLion]

lots of talk about pain in this talk by Gil Fronsdal
stream: Mindfulness of Body

(download)

[Hanzze]

Educating Compassion by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

"Gilana Sutta: Ill"

"Don't let there be any real sense in the mind that you're in the hospital or at home. Let the mind be in the emptiness, empty of all labels and meanings. You don't have to label yourself as being anywhere at all.
This is because the aggregates (khandha) are not where you are. They're empty of any indwelling person. They're empty of any "me" or "mine." When the mind is like this, it doesn't need anything at all. It doesn't have to be here or go there or anywhere at all. This is the absolute end of suffering and stress...
When the mind is empty in line with its nature, there's no sense of ownership in it; there are no labels for itself. No matter what thoughts occur to it, it sees them as insubstantial, as empty of self. There's simply a sensation that then passes away. A sensation that then passes away, and that's all"

from A Good Dose of Dhamma - For Meditators When They Are Ill

[danieLion]

The book Younger Next Year seems to be helping me more than anything else right now (although it could be the combination of it with somatic experiencing--thanks Dmytro!-- and/or acupuncture and/or massage and/or Reiki).

Chris Crowley is quite obnoxious to me, but it's worth reading through to get the nuggets, and the passages written by his doctor are full of useful information and way less annoying.

Website

[danieLion]

Holistic Awareness by Ajahn Sucitto (Qigong heavy)

[danieLion]

1) Get at least 160 minutes of aerobic exercise a week. More is better. Make sure you can easily monitor your heart rate to insure you stay in either the fat burning zone (60-70% your maximun heart rate [MHR]; MHR is 220 minus your age) or sugar (glucose) burning zone (70-85% you MHR).

2) Weight or resistance train at least 90 minutes a week. Make sure you do at least two reps or each kind where you go until it burns and then do TWO more.

When you're too inactive your body releases hormones that signal inflammation and decay, so you rot in pain (literally stew in you own juices). When you're active enough, your body releases hormones that trigger repair and growth, so you heal.

Caveat: WORK YOUR WAY UP TO THIS. If you can only do five minutes at a time, that's okay. But once you get there (above), try it for at least a month, preferably three. Like mediation, the benefitis require consistency over time.

Pain increases when the decay hormone levels are higher than the growth hormone levels.

More technically, during exercising the above ways your blood is flooded with decay hormones, but in order to "turn on" the repair and growth (pain-releiving!) hormones, you have to get your decay hormones at those high levels. And you can only get to those levels through aerobics and the burn of weight/resistance trainging.

3) Eat right (I know, this is very controversial, but try your best and avoid fad diets).