target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_17d41b4e-999c-532d-8390-3ab0259363ed.jpg" alt="Il_9781936290451_0007_001"/> Getting enough sleep
MENTAL BALANCE
Mental balance meditations will challenge the assumptions you have about your pain and the thought processes surrounding your recovery. Your pain is neither the worst that ever existed nor is it insignificant. It is not a punishment; it is simply an occurrence in the course of your life that has various challenging ripple effects. Balanced thinking results in creating a realistic set of goals and focusing energy and effort into making progress toward achieving each one. This progress leads to diminishment of pain, decreased suffering, and increased function, empowering you to set new goals and work toward achieving them. On mental balance days, pain recovery is based not on blind faith, but on well-thought-out, realistic expectations, and on progressive success that is achieved by applying the tools you have learned in pain recovery. During these days you will continue to see how you change or do not change your thought patterns, and practice using the tools you acquire. Characteristics of mental balance are:
EMOTIONAL BALANCE
With emotional balance, you accept your emotions and know that it’s okay to feel what you are feeling. On days focused on emotional balance you will continue to remind yourself that you need not be focused on the opinions of others, but that you can focus on hearing and trusting in your own inner voice. You identify your feelings and recognize that they are a major part of you that should be honored. You accept who you are and what you feel in the present moment, and that acceptance allows you to continue making positive changes in your life. Accepting your feelings and being emotionally balanced keeps you from feeling recurring negative emotions. With a focus on emotional balance every few days, you will continue to feel your full emotional experience, knowing that all of your feelings are a part of you. When you are emotionally balanced you are continuing to work toward resolving old issues that you had once avoided, and you work to heal and release your connection to the past, allowing yourself to be free to live in the moment. You are able to feel emotions for each circumstance that shows up in your life without troublesome attachment to old feelings. Characteristics of emotional balance are:
SPIRITUAL BALANCE
Spiritual balance consists of being connected to your thoughts and feelings and the way you care for your body. When balanced, your spirituality enhances your life. You do positive things that make you feel good, and you help others. You are in harmony with the world and those in it. Whatever life brings, you are able to deal with it and know you are okay. You are able to find meaning and purpose even in situations that are painful. You live in and accept each day as it comes, changing yourself instead of trying to change others. Characteristics of spiritual balance include:
RELATIONSHIPS
Relationships have a category of their own in Meditations for Pain Recovery, because like everyone on earth, you have numerous types of relationships, such as:
All of these relationships affect and are affected by your experience of chronic pain. Your relationships are not only an outward manifestation and indication of your overall state of balance; they also have an effect on your state of balance, either negatively or positively.
As you read and think about the meditations in this book each day, it
