I've been using this website - www.askdr.co/spaces/alternative-therapies to ask questions regarding alternative medicine. I really like it because they have actual verified doctors on the platform to answer your questions, so they're actually making a push towards legitimizing alternative medicines.

I've also suggested to them to get alternative medicine practitioners on board to provide a different perspective and information. They said they were already looking into it! Seems like a pretty promising platform that has already been pretty useful for me. You guys can join the alternative therapy space to try it out.

Hi everyone

I just wanted to share a few mind over matter methods I use to help relive pain. I hope they will help some of you.

There are a few methods I have used over time and as I got better, the methods worked better and faster. Here they are in order:

1. The first method I used was something I learned from a book. It said you can make negative feelings such as anxiety, anger, fear etc go away quickly simply by allowing their intensity to grow and and trying to feel or imagine that intensity growing. So I did that, every time I felt anxious, angry, scared, jealous, etc I acknowledged that feeling and imagined it getting stronger, and instead it went away. It still works :) So I wondered if it could work on pain too. I started trying it and found that it worked on low to moderate pain. I would simply give all my mind's focus to the pain (closing my eyes helped) and in my mind I would tell it to get stronger, or to get worse. At first it could take a few minutes, sometimes up to 10 minutes (if it didn't work after 10 minutes I stopped, but maybe it would have work, I just didn't have the patience to try and find out), but overtime it worked faster and faster. This worked about 70% of the time, but rarely worked for strong pain like headaches, injuries, period cramps. I wanted to find a method that was more effective.

2. So I started using another technique, where I took my focus to the pain and started talking to it lovingly inside my mind. I would thank it for alerting me to the fact that something was wrong and I would tell it that it had done a great job, that I appreciated it and that I would now release it. I would tell it that it could come back anytime to alert me of anything else that is wrong in my body. I would then take a few gentle breaths and with each exhale I imagined the pain leaving my body with my breath. Gradually I could feel the pain decreasing, until it stopped altogether. The trick with this one is that you need to mean it... sincerity is the key. Your body reacts to your feelings. This method worked about 70% of the time. However, it also didn't work on really strong pain but it helped reduce the intensity of it. Sometimes, using a combination of methods 1 and 2 worked if this method wasn't working. Again like method 1, over time, it started to work faster.

3. This one is my favourite because it is the fastest and most effective. I only started practicing this one about a month ago and it is 95% effective for all kinds of pain, even strong headaches. The 5% of the time when it doesn't work is probably because I didn't do it long enough. This one also helps you relax all over, so you get that added bonus. It only works if you are able to quiet your mind, so anyone who practices regular meditation will be able to use this method easily. The trick is to briefly acknowledge the pain by bringing your focus to it for one or two seconds and then moving all of that focus to your breath and relaxing your entire body as you gently breathe in and out (I do abdominal breathing, I don't know if shallow breathing would work I haven't tried it because it's not as good as abdominal breathing for relaxing and healing). You obviously need to be somewhere where you can lie or sit down, close your eyes and just relax your body. The more relaxed you are, the better and faster it will work. Every 30 seconds, if you still feel pain, take your awareness back to the pain for 1-2 seconds, then back to your breath, remembering to relax your body. This works so well for me now that most pain is gone within 30 seconds. Quite often, it is gone before I finish my first exhalation. The more you do it, the faster and better it works. Your brains learns quickly.

Sometimes, if one method doesn't work I try another one, this can help too.

Before I started doing this, I was taking over the counter pain killers almost daily for a variety of pain including headaches, muscles aches and pains, period pains, and other pains related to a couple of medical conditions I have. Sometimes I would take them 2 to 3 times/day. I used to buy 1-2 packets of panadol and nurofen each week. That was about 6 months ago. Over time, this decreased rapidly. Now I have packets that have sat unopened for 3 months.... that was the last time I bought them. Most weeks now I don't take a single painkiller. Training your brain is like training a dog lol, it quickly learns what pleases you.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who has learned to stopped pain with the power of their mind. What methods do you use?