Dealing with Pain – A Martial Artist’s Frequent Companion - VII

Many years ago, Dr. Henry Beecher, an anesthesiologist, investigated pain both during war and civilian life and found that how a person perceived an injury greatly affected the level of pain he seemed to experience more than the extent of the injury. During World War II, Beecher noted that only one out of every three of the wounded soldiers brought to his battlefield hospital for surgery complained of enough pain to receive morphine. But, when he returned to civilian practice, he found that four out of five who received surgery comparable to that given the soldiers claimed they were in severe pain. According to Beecher, some even pleaded for an injection of morphine. From this, Beecher concluded:

"There is no simple, direct relationship between the wound per se and the pain experienced. The pain is in very large part determined by other factors, and of great importance here is the significance of the wound. In the wounded soldier, the response to injury was relief, thankfulness at his escape alive from the battlefield, and even euphoria. To the civilian, his major surgery was a depressing, calamitous event.”

My personal reaction to an injury is generally to ignore it, at least initially. Through practice, I’ve acquired the ability to block out the pain signals with signals coming in from other, more pressing things, like my opponent or simply the task at hand.

The way the mind stores experiences in memory has an interesting side-effect. We store select experiences initially in what’s known as “short-term memory.” Through some process, we transfer these to long-term memory, so we can access them at a later date. But if you give no attention to an experience when it occurs, it doesn’t get stored in short-term memory and, as a result, is never placed in long-term memory. It’s not wiped from memory, it was never there.

Through the years, when I would shower after a hard workout or tournament match, my wife would often ask me how I got an injury or a large, sometimes huge, bruise. I would seldom be able to answer her. I honestly didn’t remember as I gave it no thought at the time. So its cause was never placed into my memory.

I’ll be getting into methods to help achieve this – drills to strengthen our minds. For now, try ignoring injuries or pain when they occur and focus completely on the task at hand – or perform the drill I talked about last time – and see if it helps. I always tell myself that pain doesn’t exist unless I allow it to. I usually don’t choose to allow it as it serves no useful purpose.

Thanks for reading my humble ramblings.