Wednesday 31 December 2008

Coping With Back Pain:A View Beyond Words.

sunset over ocean

I promised to bring you some people who have inspired me and Karin is the first I would like to introduce you to. A little while ago I came across her blog and I would love to share it with you. It is an art journal by a wonderful person who knows the experience of back pain. I have her permission to quote her and post about her blog. The photo is by me the words here in quotes are all Karin. Visit her blog to view her art.

She described her work to me as her way of;

"muddling thorough and recreating my daily life with chronic pain -hopefully recreating it into something thoughtful and/or beautiful"

The journey of her backpain began after a fall. Less than a year ago she had a lumbar fusion after an unsuccessful partial discectomy from two years before. Now she has had to have the screws and rods taken out as her body is not accepting them.

In an e mail conversation we had she touchingly describes her self and why she writes her blog as follows;

"For me, pain is on the surface of who I am. It's the first thing I'm aware of in the morning, and the last thing before I go to sleep. Kind of like how a person looks is the first thing we often notice when we meet someone for the first time - or even when it's not for the first time, but when we just open the door.

You look into a person's eyes, or at their face and see them, their expression, hair style, clothes, body type, skin color, etc. The surface. I know what I look like - the first thing i do is feel myself, and it's pain.

For me if I constantly focus on the pain, or only focus on distracting myself from the pain, with things like television, or sleeping, or reading, I continue to stay in the surface of my life.
When I allow myself to fully experience the pain, relax into it and not resist it, it leads me down a variety of avenues. Sometimes deep sadness - feelings of loss over the things I can no longer do, so I follow the loss and the sadness, and that leads me further, and so on. Eventually images arrive. Sometimes it happens in an instant, sometimes it feels like torture!

The process of creating, for me, always ends with release. Transformation of negative feelings occurs and I feel lighter, and though there are times the pain screams while I am creating, there are always periods during the creative process that I am able to forget that I am in pain - that I rise above the pain, and see it as separate from myself. It is a form of meditation for me.

I am blessed in that art has always been this for me. From childhood, art has carried me through my darkest times. "

I hope that by posting this here you will visit her blog and maybe find something there by way of inspiration like I did.



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For useful information and suggestions there is a Free Back Pain Book Written by the Healthy back Institute-

7 Day Back Pain Cure
This free book (there is a small shipping/handling fee for physical book) will give you a good starting point for taking back control of your back pain covering reasons for pain, pain relief, possible treatments, action plans and many other things you will find useful.
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