Two weeks ago, I started introducing the topic of pain to the eN-Vidyalaya children (age from 4 to 14 y.o), a programme which I volunteer every Sunday as a part of my mission work. In the first lesson, we did an experiment by getting the kids to touch a hot water bag filled with hot water. Basically they were asked to focus on the pain and made it go away. The children initially felt the intense pain from the heat of hot water and withdrew from it immediately. When they were told to bring awareness to their fingers in contact with hot water bag without removing their fingers, they were able to feel the heat at first, then slowly they realised that the pain actually went from intense to rather unnoticeable or enjoyable. From this simple yet powerful exercise, the children learned that their mind could actually change the perception of any physical pain just by bringing in awareness.
Pain is such an interesting topic because it is a subject that everyone can relate to in life regardless of age. Do you know that the most frightening thing in the world is PAIN? People don’t fear death as much as they fear the pain and agony at the time of death. We may be afraid of poverty, relationship problems or diseases, but if we look deeply the root cause of all these fears, it is the pain that happens while going through these experiences. All these fears are because of the fear of pain.
