2015-11-11
5 分钟So I've been wondering about this thing lately, and that is, if something exists only in your head, and then for a moment, you don't notice it anymore, does that mean that it's still there and you just stopped noticing?
Or does it no longer exist?
I know I'm getting a little bit esoteric on you, but it's actually a really practical question.
Let me tell you what I'm talking about.
The thing that comes up the most with this is the idea of pain.
If we stub a toe, if we break a bone, if something happens to us, we tend to think to ourselves, okay, or we feel, I'm in pain.
And then we look to the part of the body that's injured or sick and say, that's the source of pain, but in fact, it's not.
See, here's the truth about pain.
You can have any sort of stimulus, but the pain actually exists in your brain.
Pain is what happens when signals get translated in your brain to tell you that you're in pain.
So what happens then?
If the thing that's causing you pain still is there, but for a window of time, you're so focused away from it that you no longer feel it?
And I'll tell you why I'm asking this.
There have been a number of times in my life where this has happened, and I've gotten really curious.
So I'm somebody who, sadly, actually, pretty much for my whole life, I've gotten headaches and I've tried all sorts of things.
But there's also this really weird quirk that I've keyed in on over the years, and that is that I can have a crushing headache, but something can intervene.
Where for a window of time, from anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, I don't notice it.
So here's an example.
Years ago, when I was teaching yoga, I was on a regular schedule, which meant that I had people showing up to me at my studio.
And there could be a lot of people in a wall to wall classroom on an evening, and they were there because they needed something.