It is all a Preception Game - Pain
Pain and Altered States of Consciousness
In magick it is accepted that altering one’s consciousness is needed in order to work with the energy. How much altering is needed and what method is always left up to the practitioner. Some practitioners use pain as a means to alter their consciousness. This writing is a means to briefly study the body’s perception of pain and the consequences of long term pain as well as finally discuss some methods commonly used to alter one’s consciousness using pain.
This is by no means a comprehensive study or an endorsement of the use of pain to alter your conscious state. It is strongly encouraged for you to do your own research into the use of pain and safety measures before embarking on this endeavour.
Perception of Pain
As a psychological state, pain is perceived by the affected individual and it corresponds to a form of conscious awareness as a subjective conscious experience mediated in part by beliefs or emotions. Regardless of its 'physical' origins, pain, like all other perceptions, is a mental experience at different degrees of consciousness. The experience of pain requiring a stimulus, a feeling or emotion, and an effect or result, consists of an intermingling of chemical, biological, psychological, physiologic, socioeconomic, cultural, ethnic backgrounds, and emotional and cognitive factors. Not only the activation but also the connections are involved in conscious pain perception. Moreover, interconnectivity between the periaqueductal matter and orbitofrontal cortex is the key to cognitive-emotional responses associated with pain. Thus, the central pain control processes arising from interactions among the cognitive-evaluative, motivational-affective, and sensory-discriminative systems characterize the pain response, being also influenced by both noxious input and cognitive self-regulation. Neuroimaging studies (Davis et al., 2015) in healthy volunteers showed that pain cannot be localized in an isolated “pain center” in the brain, but it rather encompasses a neural circuitry. [1]
Pain Beliefs and Coping Measures
Pain perception, beliefs about pain, and coping mechanisms are important in predicting the outcome of treatment. Unrealistic or negative thoughts about an ongoing pain problem may contribute to increased pain and emotional distress, decreased functioning, and greater reliance on medication. Certain patients with chronic pain are prone to maladaptive beliefs about their condition that may not be compatible with the physical nature of their pain. Patients with adequate psychological functioning exhibit a greater tendency to ignore their pain, use coping self-statements, and remain active to divert their attention from their pain. [2]
Because efficacy expectations have been shown to influence the efforts patients make to manage their pain, measures of self-efficacy or perceived control are useful in assessing a patient's attitude. A number of self-report measures assess coping and pain attitudes. The most popular tests used to measure maladaptive beliefs include the Coping Strategies Questionnaire, the Pain Management Inventory, the Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, the Survey of Pain Attitudes, and the Inventory of Negative Thoughts in Response to Pain. Newer instruments currently being tested include the Pain Beliefs and Perceptions Inventory and the Chronic Pain Self-Efficacy Scale. Patients who catastrophize, who are passive in coping with pain, who demonstrate low self-efficacy regarding their ability to manage their pain, who describe themselves as disabled by their pain, and who report frequent negative thoughts about their pain are at greatest risk for poor treatment outcome. It is suspected that patients who have unrealistic beliefs and expectations about their condition are also poor candidates for pain treatment. [2]
Chronic Pain’s Effect
Chronic pain can lead to a chronic stress reaction that causes an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. This stress reaction can lead to harmful health effects, such as a reduced ability to fight off illnesses and diseases. It also can increase the risk for conditions such as heart disease. [3]
Many recent and emerging studies clearly document that persistent pain exerts profound impacts on the body’s endocrine, cardiovascular, immune, neurologic and musculo-skeletal systems. Any area of the anatomic body that experiences severe persistent pain will soon “decondition.” This area will cease normal, symmetric, coordinated movement, and the patient will simply self-splint, immobilize, and decondition the area. This leads to a number of complications including muscle atrophy, neuropathies, and in late stages, contractures. Muscle, nerve, and joint weakness, and deterioration result. It is not uncommon to see the patient with severe, uncontrolled pain progressively deteriorate due to muscle atrophy and contractures and go from cane to walker to wheelchair. An unappreciated complication of deconditioning and immobility is obesity. Excess weight may further overload a painful, deconditioned anatomical site. [4]
Based on emerging research data, it appears that uncontrolled persistent pain may affect about every endocrine system in the body. It has long been observed that acute pain is often accompanied by hypertension and tachycardia, and it is now clear that persistent pain may actually trigger indolent hypertension and tachycardia.Excess catecholamine and glucocorticoid production is certainly contributory to these complications, but there may also be a stimulatory neurologic etiology caused by uncontrolled pain. Insulin and lipid metabolism may be altered, and recent studies with spinal cord injuries and systemic lupus erythematosis suggest that persistent pain may accelerate the atherogenic process.Cardiovascular death is a common occurrence among persistent pain patients likely due to a multitude of factors. The impact of persistent pain on the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal-axis is profound and paramount to understanding the complications of persistent pain. Severe pain is a potent stressor — perhaps the most potent — that stimulates this system. [4]
Persistent pain generates excess electrical activity in peripheral nerves, spinal cord, and brain. This “hot wire” effect appears to cause degeneration of nerve tissue — particularly in the dorsal horn of the spinal column.24 A recent controlled study shows that low back pain patients may develop cerebral atrophy.25 It follows that dementia and other organic brain syndromes may result. The problems of insomnia, depression, suicide, attention deficit, memory loss, and cognitive deficiencies are extremely common in persistent pain patients.4-6,26 The precise biologic mechanisms by which persistent pain causes these complications is not totally clear, but they likely occur due to multiple adverse biologic affects including neuroanatomical degeneration, hormonal abnormalities, and neurochemical depletions at synaptic junctions. [4]
Chronic pain’s physical effects include: [3]
Tense muscles
Limited ability to move about
Lack of energy, and
Changes in appetite
Chronic pain’s emotional effects include: [3]
Depression
Anger
Anxiety, and
Fear of re-injury
These fears may slow down a person’s ability to return to his or her everyday or leisure activities.
Flogging
To understand how flogging alters one’s consciousness one must understand how the body and brain deal with pain as well as the psychological aspects of submission and dominance etc. “One of the key players is dopamine, which is present in the body during pain AND pleasure. Many agree this might be one of the reasons we can combine pain and pleasure in a single situation.” Some other chemicals that the body releases are: endorphin, serotonin, melatonin, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. [6]
All these things help re-balance our bodies when we feel physical or emotional stress. Think of it like exercise – we run and work our muscles to the point it can hurt but the body rewards us with that post-lifting “high”. [6]
Flogging, or the use of a whip to punish or inflict pain had been used for centuries as a means to enforce discipline on the body. The belief that disciplining the body would result in discipline of the mind. In some countries and military organizations flogging is still used in this manner. Flogging poses some long term dangers that those who partake in it either for pleasure, altering consciousness or discipline should be aware of. The following is an excerpt from a publicly published article about a flogging gone horribly wrong.
“Dermatologist Erasmus Wilson was called by Wakley to perform a third autopsy on the body of White. Wilson, by analysing the cutaneous layer and the organs underneath, argued, in times prior to the discovery of the effects of bacteria in the bloodstream, that there was a connection between the external lacerations caused by the lashes and the internal state of the organs. According to Wilson, the injuries resulting from flogging were confined to the skin but the flogging was followed by inflammation of the internal organs and pulpy softening of muscles. The jury’s verdict, given on 4 August 1846, was that Frederick John White died from the mortal effects of the flogging that he had received at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow.” [5]
Piercing
Extreme rituals (body-piercing, fire-walking, etc.) are anecdotally associated with altered states of consciousness—subjective alterations of ordinary mental functioning —but empirical evidence of altered states using both direct and indirect measures during extreme rituals in naturalistic settings is limited. Participants in the “Dance of Souls”, a 3.5-hour event during which participants received temporary piercings with hooks or weights attached to the piercings and danced to music provided by drummers, responded to measures of two altered states of consciousness. Participants also completed measures of positive and negative affect, salivary cortisol (a hormone associated with stress), self-reported stress, sexual arousal, and intimacy. Both pierced participants (pierced dancers) and non-pierced participants (piercers, piercing assistants, observers, drummers, and event leaders) showed evidence of altered states aligned with transient hypofrontality and flow. Both pierced and non-pierced participants also reported decreases in negative affect and psychological stress and increases in intimacy from before to after the ritual. Pierced and non-pierced participants showed different physiological reactions, however, with pierced participants showing increases in cortisol and non-pierced participants showing decreases from before to during the ritual. [7]
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