awareness-based pain and trauma RECOVERY
A Living, Evolving Program in Development
- Awareness-Based Pain and Trauma Recovery is the core program that I am currently developing. It is an embodied approach to pain and trauma recovery that incorporates ideas from other successful pain and trauma recovery programs such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), iRest Yoga Nidra, Somatic Experiencing, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy. I have studied and personally applied these methods to support my own pain reduction and healing for many years.
- At this stage, my chronic pain levels are manageable and I feel free and recovered. But recovery depends on dedicated daily embodied practices. It takes focus and work to be pain free, healthy and fully functioning. I continue to work with methods I have interpreted and integrated into my life daily, refining them through practice, study, and direct experience. This program is not being built from theory alone, but from an ongoing, embodied process of healing.
- I warmly invite others to join me in this living exploration through the online Healing Chronic Pain Together MeetUp Group (https://www.meetup.com/healingchronicpaintogether/ ), the online Book Study (https://mindhealthembodiment.com/book-study ), or the online Chronic Pain Recovery Classes (https://mindhealthembodiment.com/chronic-pain-recovery ). Where we learn, practice, and reflect together while this work continues to unfold.
THE CORE APPROACH
- Within the Mind Health Embodiment™ method, "Awareness" is understood as the innate capacity to notice physical sensations, emotional responses, and internal reactions in a way that is nonreactive, integrated and whole, and part of ones healthy and natural being. Although the meaning of "Awareness" has deeper experiential and philosophical ramifications in this method of Pain and Trauma recovery which I explain in the essay below.
- Awareness is cultivated through gentle, accessible movement, breath-based nervous system regulation, guided sensory meditation, and reflective self-inquiry that heals the impact trauma has had on ones life.
- Awareness-Based Pain and Trauma Recovery supports individuals in recognizing pain as an experience occurring within a larger field of "Embodied Awareness". A common reaction is to reinforce pain as a threat that must be fought. The goal is to reduce fear-based reactivity and support healthier regulation of the autonomic nervous system.
HOW THIS APPROACH DIFFERS
- Students learn how to remain present with sensation in ways that restore a sense of inner stability, reduce threat perception, and rebuild trust in the body.
- It uses the body as the primary entry point for healing. This is In contrast to cognitive-only models. Movement, breath, and sensation are used as pathways for restoring safety and self-regulation.
- This program differs from traditional mindfulness-based pain programs by addressing identification with pain. Students discover that while pain sensations may arise, their sense of self and inner stability doesn't change
A SHARED JOURNEY NOT A FINISHED PRODUCT
- A major aspect of this method is PEER SUPPORT and PEER COMMUNITY where we heal together.
- You are welcome to join me if you are seeking a space that honors both scientific understanding and are open to learning alongside others in a supportive and evolving community.
WHAT IS THIS "AWARENESS" AND PAIN?
How Awareness Can Know Pain Without Being Pain
(A Nondual Embodied Explanation of Pain)
Why "AWARENESS" Needs Careful Explanation:
A phrase sometimes appears that can feel confusing or even invalidating when first encountered:
“Notice the part of you that is aware of the sensation. That awareness is not sore.”
For someone living with chronic or intense pain, this statement can provoke understandable resistance. If my body hurts, how could anything about me not hurt? It may sound as though pain is being minimized, dismissed, or reframed away. Without careful explanation, such language risks implying that pain is “just in the mind” or that suffering persists only because of a failure to perceive correctly. That is not what this statement means.
The purpose of this essay is to explain what awareness refers to in this context, how awareness can be present with physical pain without denying it, and why learning to differentiate awareness from sensation can reduce suffering even when pain remains. This is not a denial of pain. It is a clarification of how pain is known.
1. Pain Is Real . And Awareness Does Not Erase It
Pain is a sensory and neurological experience involving tissues, nerves, and brain processes. Pain can be severe, persistent, disabling, and life-altering. Nothing in the language of awareness negates this reality.
When pain-guided meditation invites someone to notice awareness, it is not asking them to imagine that pain is gone, to “rise above” the body, or to deny injury or illness. Nor is it suggesting that awareness is a magical cure.
Instead, it is pointing to a structural distinction that already exists in experience whether or not we notice it.
That distinction is between:
- The sensation of pain
- The knowing of that sensation
Pain is an experience. Awareness is what knows the experience. They occur together, but they are not identical.
2. What Is “Awareness,” Exactly? In this context, awareness does not mean positive thinking, distraction, dissociation, or transcendence. It does not mean being “spiritual,” calm, or detached.
Awareness is the simple capacity to know experience. It is the basic fact that sensations, emotions, thoughts, and perceptions appear to something.
- Pain appears in awareness
- Thoughts about pain appear in awareness
- Fear, frustration, grief, and resistance appear in awareness
Awareness itself is not a sensation. It has no temperature, texture, or location.
You cannot injure awareness. You cannot inflame it. You cannot scan it on an MRI as a sore tissue. Yet it is undeniably present, because without it, nothing could be known.
3. Why Awareness Is Not the Same as Sensation To understand this distinction, consider a simple example. If you are listening to music, the sound is not the same thing as the hearing. If you are seeing a color, the color is not the same thing as the seeing.
Likewise:
- Pain is a sensory event
- Awareness is the knowing of that event
They are intimately related, but not identical. Pain has qualities:
- Intensity
- Location
- Pressure
- Burning
- Throbbing
Awareness has none of these qualities. Awareness does not ache. Awareness does not pulse. Awareness does not have edges. This does not mean pain is unreal.
It means pain is known.
4. Why This Distinction Matters for Suffering
Much of the suffering associated with chronic pain does not come from sensation alone, but from identification with sensation.
Over time, pain often becomes fused with identity:
- I am in pain
- My body is broken
- This pain is who I am now
- There is no place inside me untouched by this
When pain and awareness are unconsciously merged, it can feel as though the entire self is injured. Pain-guided meditation gently introduces a different possibility: Pain is happening. And something is aware of it.
That awareness has not been damaged in the same way the body has.
This realization does not remove pain, but it often softens fear, reduces panic, and creates internal space.
5. “Awareness Is Not Sore” Does Not Mean “You Shouldn’t Hurt”
When the meditation says: “That awareness is not sore” It is not making a prescription. It is making an observation.
It is not saying:
- “You shouldn’t feel pain”
- “Pain doesn’t matter”
- “You should feel better than you do”
It is simply pointing out that the capacity to notice pain is not itself in pain.
This matters because many pain conditions are intensified by:
- Fear of sensation
- Hypervigilance
- Catastrophic interpretation
- Nervous system threat responses
When awareness recognizes itself as larger than the sensation, the nervous system often begins to settle not because pain is denied, but because the body no longer feels as though it is trapped inside the pain.
6. Awareness Is Not Removed From Pain . It Is Distinct From It
It is important to clarify a common misunderstanding:Awareness is not removed from physical pain. Awareness is intimately present with pain. The distinction is not spatial separation, but ontological difference. Pain arises within awareness.
Awareness does not arise within pain. This means that even when pain is intense, awareness remains open, receptive, and uninjured. This is not dissociation.
It is presence without collapse.
7. Why This Is an Embodied Practice and ot a Mental Trick. Awareness-based pain work is often misunderstood as abstract or philosophical. In reality, it is profoundly embodied.
When awareness rests with sensation:
- Without tightening
- Without resisting
- Without narrating catastrophe
The body often responds with:
- Reduced protective tension
- Decreased sympathetic arousal
- Increased parasympathetic regulation
The body begins to experience pain within safety, rather than as an existential threat. This does not require belief in nondual philosophy. It requires direct experience.
8. Awareness Does Not Make You Passive. Another fear is that recognizing awareness will lead to passivity: If I’m just awareness, will I stop seeking treatment? Will I stop advocating for myself? In practice, the opposite is often true.
When pain is no longer fused with identity:
- Decision-making becomes clearer
- Agency increases
- Choices are less fear-driven
- Boundaries become easier to assert
Awareness does not replace medical care. It supports wiser engagement with it.
9. Awareness as a Stable Ground During Unstable Sensation
Pain fluctuates.
Symptoms change.
Bodies heal or sometimes don’t.
Awareness remains constant.
This constancy can become a psychological anchor, offering a sense of inner stability even when physical conditions are uncertain. Not because awareness is “better” than the body, but because it is not subject to the same vulnerabilities.
Conclusion: Awareness Is Not a Concept . It Is What Is Reading This Awareness is not something you have to create. It is what is already present. It is what notices pain, fear, hope, resistance, and relief. It is what remains when sensations shift.
When a guided meditation says:
“Notice the awareness that knows the pain. That awareness is not sore.”
It is offering neither denial nor escape. It is offering context.
Pain is real.
And awareness is real.
Learning to distinguish them does not make pain disappear, but it can make life within pain more humane, spacious, and livable. And sometimes, that distinction is the beginning of healing.
methods and practices for Pain and trauma recovery
What is Guided Sensory Attention?
What is Reflective Self-Inquiry for Pain Recovery?
What is Reflective Self-Inquiry for Pain Recovery?
- Guided sensory attention is a gentle practice of learning how to notice physical sensations without bracing against them, analyzing them, or trying to make them go away.
- In chronic pain, the nervous system often becomes trained to scan the body for danger. Sensations are quickly labeled as threatening. This increases fear, muscle tension, and protective responses that can intensify pain over time.
- Guided sensory attention slowly retrains this pattern.
- Individuals are invited to notice sensations exactly as they are in the present moment. They then distinguish between sensation and fear-based interpretation while observing qualities such as temperature, pressure, movement, or intensity without judgment, staying connected to breath, posture, and external support while sensing the body.
- The goal is not exposure or endurance, but safety and choice. Attention is guided in ways that allow the nervous system to remain regulated rather than overwhelmed.
- Over time, this practice can reduce threat responses, soften habitual guarding, and restore a sense of trust in the body’s signals.
What is Reflective Self-Inquiry for Pain Recovery?
What is Reflective Self-Inquiry for Pain Recovery?
What is Reflective Self-Inquiry for Pain Recovery?
- Reflective Self-Inquiry is the practice of gently questioning the relationship to pain rather than trying to control the pain itself.
- Chronic pain often becomes fused with identity:
- “I am broken.”
- “My body is unsafe.”
- “This pain is who I am now.”
- Reflective self-inquiry helps loosen this fusion. Instead of asking, “How do I get rid of this pain?" Self- Inquiry invites questions such as:
- What am I believing about this sensation right now?
- What happens when I notice the sensation without telling a story about it?
- Is there awareness here that can observe the sensation without being harmed by it?
- What parts of me are intact even when pain is present?
- This Self- inquiry is not intellectual analysis. It is guided, embodied, and paced to support nervous system safety.
- Through Self- inquiry, participants begin to experience pain as something that is happening, rather than something that defines them.