You have a personal tolerance to pain.
You can differentiate between hurting a little and hurting a lot.
But, where does pain start?
You only react to pain when it hurts enough to get your attention.
All your life, you've raised your threshold of pain.
Have you done the right thing?

Your pain threshold is the level where pain starts for you.
What is the minimum it takes before you say it hurts?
What about an itch? A sting?
Is that pain for you?
Your minimal sensitivity to pain is your pain threshold.

How easily does pain bother you?
We've all seen gurus who can walk on broken glass and burning coals.
No matter how much pain you can endure without blinking, your pain threshold remains the point where you perceive the smallest disturbances.
You wouldn't want to be sensitive only to very hot water; you want to feel any heat as soon as it appears.
Your pain threshold may change depending on external and internal pressures, such as stress or being tired.

Are you a toughie or a softie?
● You're a toughie if pain seldom bothers you, and you take pride in not caring about your bruises.
● You're a softie if you're always in pain, and it stops you from doing some activities.
Nurses face a huge array of reactions from individuals who experience the same amount of pain, when they press the needle through the skin of hundreds of patients while injecting vaccines.

● If you rate your pain threshold between 5 and 10:
You're a toughie, and pain doesn't stop you.
However, you may be missing signals that your body is sending you.
● If you rate your pain threshold between 0 and 5:
You're a softie, and you perceive anything that annoys you.
However, you may be letting the pain overpower you by not be taking the steps to find out why it's hurting, and not eliminating the causes.

Pain is a defense mechanism that stops animals from destroying their bodies.
It shows you where the problem is and prompts you to treat the painful area immediately if you can.
It reminds you not repeat the actions that led to the pain's arrival.

A threshold is an intensity that must be exceeded for a reaction to occur.
In the case of pain;
● you acknowledge what is above the threshold and
● you ignore what is beneath it.

Your worst aches and pains started out as faint annoyances, but you disregarded their signals.
When you did acknowledge the presence of low-level pain, you didn't react properly.

Whether it be an itch, an irritation or acute pain, you're not supposed to react by taking pain killers.
You're supposed to immediately explore the location with your nail.
The aching spot is sometimes easy to find, but, most often, you'll have trouble detecting the exact position.
Once your nail is right above the most painful point, press it down into the skin as deeply as you can.
Every time you do this, you relieve and diminish the tension inside the aching fold crossing.

Pain is never welcome.
You try not to let it annoy you.
You go through your activities in spite of it.
You take pain killers to alleviate it.
Without noticing, you are raising your threshold of pain continuously.
Since you don't feel the irritation until the threshold is reached; raising it is a natural reaction.
As soon as you ignore an itch, sting, twitch, ... you raise your pain threshold.
As you age, your body aches more and more; so you have to compensate and you hike your threshold to keep on doing your activities.
You become insensitive.

You're in charge of your body.
You want to be immediately informed about the slightest abnormality or dysfunction.
If you disregard low level sensations, you may overlook vital signs that are important for your health.
You want to be awake to any sign or indication that your body gives you.
Having a high threshold makes you deaf to the calls of your system.

Low-level pain is a warning.
It must be considered and analyzed logically.
Actions to stop the pain's expansion must be taken immediately.
You want to be more sensitive and lower your threshold.
However, for people who already are in great pain, this idea isn't appealing.
They reason that, if they lower their threshold, the pain they feel now will get worse.
That's not the case.
Being attentive to low-level pain won't make the acute pain you feel any worse.

You want to lower your pain threshold to feel the pain you would normally remain insensitive to.
The idea is to take care of offending locations before they really hurt.
You want to know where you will ache tomorrow, so you can take action today.
There is no complex method, it's just a question of concentration.
Instead of avoiding thinking about your pain, you focus your attention on it.
You constantly ask yourself the question; "Where am I hurting now?".

Your brain can only really concentrate on one pain location at a time.
If there are several sources, it will switch its attention from one to the other, and give precedence to the most acute one.

• Free your mind from your daily problems and concentrate on any itch or pain signal your body produces.
• One location will stand out as being THE painful spot of the moment.
• Take note of the place and of the type of pain it generates.
• After a while, THE painful spot will move to another position.
• Take note of the place and of the type of pain it produces.
• ...

THE most painful spot will change place sometimes very fast and sometimes very slowly.
Now and then, the pain you feel from one location will be so great that it eclipses all the others.

With time, staying aware of your most painful spot will become a second nature.
Where are you aching now?

To be able to treat your aching spots, you have to know precisely where they are.
Pinpointing their exact location is your first step in understanding their cause.
You want to make a mental list of all the places on your body that become painful at some time.
Make a map of the painful points in a region and try to see if they form lines.

Only you can find out why those places hurt.
You want to create a database in your head where you note:
• How frequently a spot hurts,
• The length and intensity of the attacks,
• What other spots in the region hurt,
• What activities you were doing in the hours preceding a pain attack,
• ...

Grooming the skin of your painful locations, one by one, will completely remove any trace of pain.

The pain is in the skin - Video

Human grooming rediscovered - Video

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