____________________________________________
Today's Daily Dose of Hope is sponsored by 1440, the free daily newsletter for the insatiably curious. In about five minutes each morning, it gives you a fact-driven rundown of the day's news from 100+ sources, without the clickbait. If you believe, as I do, that hope grows best on a foundation of clear eyes and good information, give it a try.
____________________________________________
A couple of days ago I woke up with the worst lower back pain of my life. My first thought wasn’t hope. It was, “Make this stop.”
I did what I always do to treat this type of pain: arnica on the sore spot; two aspirin-type pain relievers on top of that. I hoped for total relief and got none. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t think about anything else.
My mind split into two tracks: find a doctor now as well as someone who understands healing, also now. I was already scheduled to see a medical practitioner that day but the wrong kind for a back. I sat with a heating pad, got nothing from it, and started sending emails, texts, and making calls. By the time I had to leave for my appointment I could barely walk. Sitting in the car was worse. Every bump was a reminder of how much I was hoping this would end.
Yet, I started to make progress, and that’s the part I want you to hear. My primary care doctor could see me the next day. That was the first small hope. An email led me to a back specialist, who could see me in a couple of months. That was hope, with a long wait attached. Then I struck gold: a practitioner who understands mind, body, and spirit agreed to see me that same afternoon. Hope showed up one phone call at a time.
While I waited, I tried to figure out where this came from. Then it hit me. I’d spent about ten hours a day, two days in a row, sitting and writing Daily Doses of Hope. No movement. It was just me and the keyboard, writing about hope while my back quietly lost it. What was I thinking? I walked about 7,000 steps, hoping to undo the damage. That didn’t ease anything, either.
Then my mind wandered somewhere else entirely. How lucky am I to live in a part of the world where all of these options exist? A doctor by tomorrow. A specialist in the medium term. And, a healer by dinner. How do we bring modalities like these to people everywhere? I’m digressing, I know, but I can’t help it. That’s the hope I carry for the world, and it’s bigger than my back. Every morning I look over the list of members of our hopeful community, now in 150 countries. I write with each of you in mind, even though we’ve never met. This pain made me think about all of you, and about the hope we share.
Back to my afternoon. The practitioner, who is also a member of this hopeful community, sketched a chart on a piece of paper. It showed how pain can change, and how our tolerance for it can change too. Then she talked about the mind, and how we deal with pain as those thresholds move. She was teaching me that hope is something you can practice, not just feel. Then she turned to the breath.
As she explained it, I remembered an audio recording the hospital gave me after my heart attack. It was called “Ease Pain,” and it taught me to breathe into the pain. Back then it gave me hope in a hospital bed. I’d forgotten I even had it.
She put me on a table under a warm blanket and told me to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth while she worked. I did and promptly fell asleep.
When I woke up, the pain was gone. Every bit of it. I lay there almost afraid to hope it would last. She gave me a framework for using my breath and gentle movement to stay out of pain. This morning I was still virtually pain free. Right now, as I write this with a heating pad on my back, I’m breathing the way she showed me, and I’m overcome by a rush of hope.
Nothing about this was high-tech. A skilled practitioner could do it anywhere in the world. That’s the hope I’m holding onto today, for myself and for anyone who needs it. If a breath can carry this much hope for one aching back, imagine what it could do for millions.
(Note: sudden, severe back pain deserves a real medical evaluation. Breath is a partner to good care, not a replacement for it. Hope works best alongside real help.)
Why does hope change pain?
Slow breathing calms the alarm system, and calm makes room for hope.
When we’re in pain, the body tightens and the nervous system goes on high alert, which tends to make pain louder. Slow, deep breathing pushes the other way, toward a calmer state. Researchers have run experiments specifically asking whether slow deep breathing reduces pain and what’s going on underneath when it does. Their work points to the body’s relaxation response as part of the answer. Breathing out slowly is one of the few controls we have over an automatic system. It’s always with us, which is a good reason for hope1,2.
Pain lives in the brain’s interpretation, and hope changes the interpretation.
Pain isn’t just a signal from your back. Your brain decides how much it matters. Neuroscientist Fadel Zeidan and colleagues have shown that mindfulness practices, which include focusing on the breath, engage brain regions involved in controlling attention and emotion, and can change how the brain evaluates a sensation. The same jolt of pain can feel less threatening when fear isn’t feeding it. Hope is the opposite of fear’s grip, and it’s exactly what my friend’s chart was getting at when she talked about tolerance thresholds moving3,4.
Feeling cared for is medicine, and being cared for is how hope travels.
A study in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (2020) found that social support can reduce pain and that handholding from a partner lowered pain ratings and pain-related physiological responses. The more in sync the two people were, the more the pain dropped. I had a warm blanket, a trusted healer, and a friend who was paying full attention to me. Being seen and held while hurting changes how much it hurts. Hope isn’t only something we hold inside. We pass it to each other5,6. (Touch and social support influence interpersonal synchrony and pain, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, 2020; see also Oxytocin enhances the pain-relieving effects of social support in romantic couples)
Finally, I must say that ten hours of sitting will humble you. Move every hour. Your back will thank you, and your hope will hold up better too.
Hope often begins with a single breath: in through the nose, out through the mouth, and the reminder that this moment is not the whole story. Breathe in hope. Breathe out fear.
Question
When you’re in pain, physical or otherwise, what’s the first thing you reach for? And who in your life is the person you’d call, the way I did, to help you find hope?
A Daily Dose of Hope — one short reflection each day about where hope lives in our world. Read in 50 states in the US and 155 countries of the 195 countries throughout the World.
Attributions
1Can Slow Deep Breathing Reduce Pain? An Experimental Study Exploring Mechanisms, The Journal of Pain
2Modulation of vagal tone and somatic pain sensitivity, PubMed
3 Mindfulness meditation-based pain relief: a mechanistic account, Zeidan & Vago, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2016
4 Mindfulness and pain catastrophizing in chronic low back pain, PubMed
5 Touch and social support influence interpersonal synchrony and pain, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, 2020
6 Oxytocin enhances the pain-relieving effects of social support in romantic couples, PubMed
