161: How to Handle Physical Pain without Medications

Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan. And one of the things that I love about my containers is that the women I attract always have audacious questions to ask me. So it's my intention for the musings that I share on these topics to grow the permission field of what's possible and also to offer relatable reframes that can jailbreak you from your victim stories. So you might notice that I'm a bit more familiar and free when I'm answering these questions in our private spaces. So take a listen and enjoy. Maybe you're doing a lot right. You're working out, you're eating decently, and still your body feels puffy, your hair feels thinner, and your skin feels creepy. You were taught to call that aging, but I am choosing not to. I don't believe that beauty is vanity. I believe it's a hobby. It's a skill. It's something that you can practice and learn at any age. So I'm hosting a free beauty backroom event for midlife women who are ready to glow up and feel leaner, stronger, and more radiant than they have perhaps in their entire life. I will be sharing exactly what I've done over the past couple of months to do just that. So if 2026 is your rebrand year, come play with me, kellybrokenmd.com forward slash BB. And today's audacious ask is, what do you do when you're feeling a physical symptom like pain or discomfort that you would normally treat with an over-the-counter medication or antibiotic that could potentially resolve the issue but now you working on healing yourself A colleague actually just asked me this question who is totally on the page And she was like you know what do you do for like pain And because I have been, you know, largely disembodied, if you will, for much of my life, I haven't had much experience with chronic pain or, you know, back issues or headache issues or whatever, that's not been my thing. However, in this past year, I have had several experiences, including, you know, ones I've spoken about here, like when I injured three times my ribs, for example. And there's a video that summarizes like what I'm talking about, which is a somatic experiencing modality that I practice with my coach also, Whitney. And it's called pendulation. and while I practice this so that I can learn how to feel and hold feelings and that's really what it's designed for and I'll explain what it is in a minute I have found that for physical pain like for example I remember there were a couple of nights where I didn't sleep because I couldn't get into a position in my body where I was not in like acute pain in my rib I couldn't breathe normally, and I just couldn't sleep. So I had the whole night, you know, to explore how to relate to this sensation. And I have found that pendulation for me is very effective for physical pain Because we imagine that physical pain is like a constant persistent unending you know stream of torture energy However that not the case Typically there there it almost the nature of the way we experience energies that there is like there are these, these sort of micro undulations, right? And if you actually turn towards, it's the same as in the emotional dimension. If instead of resisting fighting, I hate this, how does this go away? Make this go away. How long is this going to take? you just play with little containers of turning towards it with curiosity it's the same story over and over and over again this is how you tame the monster okay you'll find it's like way more interesting in terms of the sensation sort of characterization than you might have formerly assumed so with pendulation essentially you would put you'd find the pain point in your body and you would put all of your attention that you could possibly muster on this place. Let's say, you know, it's your knee. And you would just do that to start out for like what feels like 10 seconds. There are many, you know, different, whatever containers you could create, but let's say 10 seconds. And then you find a place on your body that does not have any of that sensation. For whatever reason, for me, it's almost always like the top of my thigh that's very neutral and then you put all of your attention you pendulate right you put all of your attention on that place for another 10 seconds then you go back and you can do like three rounds And I don know like as you know I was sort of born skeptic I was very surprised to learn how much this offered me when I was in like actual physical pain. And yeah. And otherwise, you know, listen. I mean, there's like myriad natural, you know, sort of like pain reducing pain support for whatever reason that doesn't appeal to me. I don't know why that is. It's just natively like I, I don't know about like CBD patches and like whatever. I don't know. I know my colleague, Amanda Vollmer has written a book on DMSO. And I remember exploring that at the time. There are many, many amazing modalities. And I, I don't know, I guess it's because I'm just I, I'm invested in learning how to feel what's actually going on inside of me. And I'm sure there could be a ceiling on that. We're just talking about injuries and when I've experienced fevers or whatever and body aches and pains. And I guess childbirth, right? I had a couple of babies. I'm interested in the dimensionality of the sensation. And I know that there's way more to it than just like, this is bad. Feel bad, go away. So maybe it's just a curiosity about that. I'll see you next time.