Does pain really exist?

The obvious answer to this question, from very recent experience, is YES IT DOES!

But does it really, or is it all in the mind?

Scientific studies undertaken in Montreal, Canada have identified that ZEN meditation helps lower sensitivity to pain by thickening a part of the brain that regulates emotion and painful sensations, according to a study they have published recently.

University of Montreal researchers compared the grey matter thickness of 17 Zen meditators and 18 non-meditators and found evidence that practising the centuries-old discipline can reinforce a central part of the brain called the anterior cingulate. "Through training, Zen meditators appear to thicken certain areas of their cortex and this appears to underlie their lower sensitivity to pain," lead author Joshua Grant said in a statement.

So science would indicate that pain is the neurological response to certain stimuli and that those responses can be "controlled" by varying means, to the extent that the "sensation" of pain can vary from one person to another.

Whether there are differences in the way in which our brains are "hard-wired" to cope with pain sensations, I am not sure.

For example, the degree of pain that I might feel if I suggested, (not that I have, honest!) in the presence of a woman who has had a child, that "...training for Trailwalker UK was a bit like giving birth...painful at the time, but soon forgotten and replaced by joy...", would not only depend on how hard she actually hit me, but on how my brain coped with that pain!

Almost as painful would be my reaction/feeling to her suggestion (not that she did, honest!) that if I really wanted to experience pain then I should try to imagine squeezing a melon out of my "male appendage"!

So, if some people, who for the sake of this argument we shall call "women" are better able to cope with pain, and others, for example "Buddhists", are, through extensive meditative training, able to reduce the "sensation of pain", then it appears that between now and July, I have only two options available. The first is biologically not possible in the time available, and the second involves more time and will power than I possess.

Therefore, pain does exist, but how much pain you can "take" varies from person to person. It is possible to "learn" to reduce the sensation of pain, but to eradicate that sensation altogether is not totally good either.

(e.g. Feeling the pain, when your arm is on fire, and reacting quickly in response to that pain, by putting your arm in water to put the fire out, is a better long term strategy, than to be able to withstand the pain and lose the arm!)

As Confuscius once said "...He who toils with pain will eat with pleasure".

I'm not sure how relevant this saying is to us, but at least one of our team will certainly agree with it!"