Pain, The Anatomy of

The ceiling was white. A fluorescent light glowed eerily. Rain pummeled the window and the terrace outside.

"AH! Ha ha ha ha... Oh my god!" I yelped giddily. I stared up at the ceiling and then into the eyes of a young Indian woman wielding a rectangular piece of paper.

"Pain." She nodded with a smile. I turned to look at the other woman.

"Hair very thick, much pain..." She agreed with a look that said she felt for me...maybe.

"OOOHHH!" I stared back to the fluorescent light. "Much pain." With each rip, I floated up to the light, up to the ceiling, and then back down again for the radiating pain of the next clump of hair to be ripped out without remorse.

Pain. Two women simultaneously ripping hair from your body is a good time to meditate on the subject. I was getting a bikini and full leg wax. With each rip, I explored what it meant to feel pain. It started with the knowledge that the pain was coming. Then the tension before the rip. Then you feel the hair being pulled from the roots with one quick (or slow, tedious) yank. The skin flies back. The sensation begins. The women slap the area. More hot wax overlaps and burns the last area they waxed. And then again. And again. And again.

No matter where the pain is happening, it manifests to a few different areas. A dull ache in the shoulders. A searing behind the ears. A pressure in the jaw, wedged under the tongue. I keep asking myself "does this really hurt?" And finally, "come on relax! No one has ever died from a bikini wax..."

According to Wikipedia:

"Pain is an unpleasant sensation. It is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”. Nociception (sometimes also called nociperception) is a measurable physiological event of a type usually associated with pain. Scientifically, pain (a subjective experience) is separate and distinct from nociception, the system which carries information about inflammation, damage or near-damage in tissue, to the spinal cord and brain. Nociception frequently occurs without pain being felt and can convey information without conscious awareness. Conversely, but less frequently, a sensation of pain can exist in the absence of nociception. Pain is part of the body's defense system: it triggers mental problem-solving strategies that seek to end the painful experience, and it promotes learning, making repetition of the painful situation less likely. The nociceptive system transmits signals that usually trigger the sensation of pain, it is a critical component of the body's ability to react to damaging stimuli and it is part of a rapid-warning relay instructing the central nervous system to initiate reactions for minimizing injury."

In A Long Way to the Floor, the author tells a story of how our "fight or flight" instinct comes into play during practice. Something brings us "pain" and then we begin to breathe fast, our bodies tense, and we squirm to get out of the pose as quickly as possible. But when we can relax, the pose is like a warm bath.

But what is pain? As I lied there, I could decide what to do with the sensation. Fight, or flight? I had to choose "neither". I had to find a way to step out of the instinct. I was paying these women to do this to me. I had to relax. I wouldn't die. But what is pain?

The ceiling was white. The florescent light was...fluorescent. The pain had a color. Down from bellow the navel, the pain had a long way to travel up my brain. Was the color I just felt purple with silver? Was it green with pale pink? My body and mind were lost in a boat in the ocean.

If this excruciating pain was something that I was willing to sit through, why did I panic in situations that didn't bring the same kind of pain? Like in back bends or hamstring stretches? My house mate and I talked about this for a while. She said pain is something that you are taught how to handle as a child. When something happens to you, you react to how your parents teach you to react. When you fall, you don't scream until a few seconds after the fact. As a child, you waited until your parents screamed, "OOOOhhhh!" and then you opened your mouth and yelled. Or, they smiled at you and said, "you're okay!" and you nodded and said, "I'm okay."

According to the Mayo Clinic's website,

"how you interpret pain messages and tolerate pain can be affected by your:
Emotional and psychological state
Memories of past pain experiences
Upbringing
Attitude
Expectations
Beliefs and values
Age
Sex
Social and cultural influences"

We're dealing with a lot of pain here as students in Mysore. There is the physical pain from asanas, sore muscles, injuries, or stomach problems. There is also the emotional pain from missing family, friends, or significant others. The pain of being lonely.

Pain isn't just one sensation. It has many different feels, from a dull pulse, to a cold sliding sensation. In practice, what pain should we stay with, what pain should we shy away from? In uthplutih, I was in so much "pain" that I was convinced I could not stay up more than 10 breaths. Now, I've realized that it is actually being really uncomfortable with working hard that kept me giving up.

Other times, the "pain" is debilitating. A while back, I went to drop back, and I could feel a small rock stuck in my back. All the muscles seized. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. But even this pain wasn't so much a "hurt" as it was paralyzing. But it was so paralyzing that I felt it intensely in everything I did for a month.

The job was three quarters done when I said, "okay, its good...Next time we finish." Did it hurt too much. No. But I think my brain had had enough of trying to relax into the pain. I had no more energy left with which to do it. One of the women leaves to get more strips. The other continues with the one she has left. As she waits for the wax to cool on my leg, she looks at me and says, "Today is festival. You are my puja!" We both laugh, and she rips the strip taking hundreds of hair from the outside of my calf with it.

They had finished the waxing. I lookeed down the runway to see to women threading the tiny stray hairs using thread between their fingers and teeth. "Madam, " they motioned down. "Is okay?"