"Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this sore knee / headache / back pain?"

We tend to ask ourselves these questions when we are in physical pain. We usually think of pain as unrelated to us,as if there's nothing we can do about it except learn to live with it, and perhaps alleviate it with pain-killers.

Physical pain creates lots of mental stress: when we hurt, the pain and the suffering is all we think about. Pain fills our mind, and we stress out. And since we don't know what to do about the pain, more and more pain management clinics open.

I'm going to risk being regarded as a weirdo, and make the following suggestion:

Look at pain in a different way. Treat it as a messenger who is here to tell you something, to give you a message. See pain as a teacher, as your body's way of giving you information.

"Are you crazy?!"

Before you commit me to a mental hospital, let me tell you why I believe the above is true:

Physical pain is the result of emotional pain, and emotional pain is the result of a certain view we have of the world around us. Let me give you an example:

Two years ago, my foot suddenly started hurting so bad I couldn't put my weight on it. It was nighttime, and my kids had to help me get to bed. The following morning I woke up and wanted to go to the bathroom, but I still couldn't walk.

Since I know from my work as a kinesiologist that pain is merely a messenger with a message for me, I sat myself down and checked with myself what could have caused the pain.

I remembered that a few hours before my foot started hurting, I went to my Aikido lesson