The Zen of Pain

why do we seek out pain? I mean, we've all seen images, We've all seen footage of various h ritualistic pain exercises going on around the globe, and a lot of us have probably asked why, why would they do that? Why are they doing that? Why is that person sticking that sharp thing through their body right now completely of their own free will? Why why are they engaging in self harm? What are they getting out of it? And uh,

it's a fascinating question. We start breaking it apart when you start, when you start looking at the studies that have examined the benefits of pain, that the weird crossover between pleasure and pain. Um, and so that is what we're attempting to tackle in this episode. Yeah, and I wanted to mention real quick, we are just exploring this topic. We are of course, not advocating that anyone undergo feats of of pain so that they can achieve some sort

of transcendence. This is just kind of looking at pain and pleasure and the social aspects of why people would engage in pain, what sort of benefits, why would they do it. It's an exploration of these different questions. Um. And the best way to get at it is to really look at some of the more historical rituals of pain. I say, for me, one of the earliest examples that

became aware of was Christian flagellation. Uh. And this is probably from like seeing the movie The Name of the Rose at a real early age, and there's a scene in there where the monk is punishing himself by by striking his back flashes and uh, you know, and and at the time I was too going to really understand all that was going on in that scenario, but it had an impact on me. Here's somebody that is has devoted their life to God and they are inflicting pain

upon themselves. Well. And of course to tie that even more, I grew up in in the Christian church, and so I always was confronted to the point of almost not seeing it, this image of someone suffering on the cross. But but more on that later. Yeah, and my first, I guess you would say introduction to mortification of the flesh for spiritual reasons was the hair shirt, which is, you know, a sort of a signature of some early Christian sex who are doing penance for what they perceived

as a sin. And the idea is that you have this shirt that looks maybe great on the outside, but on the inside it'sligned with course goat's hair, and it's meant to be this fleshly reminder of your transgression. And some people even would weave um twigs or thin wires, and so this idea that this constant irritation is a reminder that you you are not only expressing your faith in the transgression that that occurred, but also you're trying to train your soul into the right direction with this

fleshly reminder. There's a great a parody of of this kind of a thing. And of course the money Python and the Holy Grail, where you see the monks uh in a line filing through the village and then they're they're chanting something in Latin and then smacking themselves in the face with a board. Uh. And but they're they're

playing on the tradition of the flagelens who uh. In the fourteenth century, you know, amid this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, I mean, you had war raging, you had black death creeping from door to door, and all the while supposedly God's watching on high rather unmoved by all of this. So you end up speaking the language of pain.

I mean, that's that's what this is all about. It's it's about seeking penance for the sin of the world two con penance through through physical punishment of the self. And so they're walking around, they're punishing themselves and trying to sort of take the sins of the world upon them, saying, look, if essentially laying out the argument, alright, God, if I beat myself enough times, well you may be just lighten

the load on all of us. Yeah. And there's a kind of obedience factor at play there as well as this sort of like self rigor. Yeah. And of course all of this is taking place within a faith that has at its center a man suffering and dying on an instrument of torture. So the story of pain, the story of suffering, permeates the entire world view. Now you can also look at Islam for another example of mortification

of the flesh. Yes, the Islamic day of Ashura, this is a time when some Shia Muslims practice self flagellation on the day to commemorate the suffering of a mom Hussaying, the grandson of the prophet Moham, the suffering and death of the of your mom Hussein um and and so you know, this is another example of of of them engaging, re enacting, feeling the pain of of of an existing

story within their faith. Yeah. But I think it's interesting about that is that that this metaphorical thing at the same time they are bringing the physical body into it. But transcendence is certainly at play here, and devotion is at play. And then you have various firewalking rituals around the world. Indeed, Uh, there are a number of examples

that we mentioned in our episode on firewalking. So if you want a deeper dive into the science of firewalking, the trick trickery of firewalking, Uh, that's definitely a podcast you should listen to. But again, this. This takes place around the world everywhere, from from corporate retreats to the Christian firework work walking tradition in northern Greece, the festival of Anistonaria. This is when, uh, it's all about the eyea that sat Constantine protects them from being burned because

they they have this faith in them and devotion to him. Um. But it's it's essentially walking across hot coals. Yeah, and if you can do it without you know, crying out or without pain, then surely you must be the most devoted. But when in fact we know that we have really thick soles on our feet and handsually it's from from

heat pretty well. But you know, it's again, it gets complicated in all of these rituals because there's obviously they're gonna be varying degrees of actual pain, but an actual physical pain. But layered upon all of that is the storytelling and the experience and and some of the scientific principles that were going to discuss later on. Now. The next is this next example is from a vegetarian festival

in Thailand, which sounds just doesn't it sound lovely? Like I bet that there there's all sorts of like wonderful archies and old cheeses you can get and um, but the Tie are known for their arties cheese. Yeah, lots of tie to eye right now. But no, it does sound great because you're thinking of vegetarian tie. I love Vegetarian Tide and the kids. It's a little more complicated than that, however. Um. The Food Cat Vegetarian Festival is

is certainly colorful. It's held over a nine day period in October, and it celebrates the Chinese community's belief that absinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health and peace of mind. And amid this, you see firewalking, you see body piercing and other acts of self mortification that are all about the participants acting as ultimately as

as mediums for the gods. Yeah, they removed parts to their skin, performed blood letting, and pale their cheeks and limbs with anything from knives and skewers to antlers and umbrellas.

Didn't she say that even saw a lamp. Yes, I think I saw a lamp in one image, but that it's interesting that this is a festival where you see the bodily mortification and as well as simply altering your diet, again showing that there's a there's a broad spectrum UH that entails self punishment and self denial, that they're all ultimately kind of shades of the same thing, and again wrapped within ritual, wrapped within worldview and belief. And I know you want to get hit that big theme, but

I have to go back to something pretty pedestrian. The crowd gets in by throwing firecrackers at the people who are doing these actors of mortification of the flesh. I'm just saying to add a little little extra, well, a little vegas. Yeah, and it's it is important. This will come up as we get into some of the studies. But not only are the people suffering and we're at least engaging in physical pain in these UH rituals important,

but the people beholding it are important. And we'll talk about the the social construct behind this because it's pretty fascinating. Another festival that you might want to attend is the Hindu tithe for some festival. Yes, this is a festival celebrity mostly by the Hamil community. On the full moon of the Tamil month of Thai that's January February, and the festival commemorates the occasion when when Povarty gave murro Gun a special spear to defeat the demon Sporadamon so on.

On this day of the festival, devotes will shave their heads and they'll undertake a pilgrimage on a set road while engaging in various acts devotion. Notably, they're carrying out

different types of burdens or cavati UH and UH. In its simplest form, this can entail simply carrying a pot of milk, but it also can involve mortification of the flesh, piercing of the skin, tongue, or cheeks with skewers is one of the examples that you you will generally see in UH in any photos of this event, certainly the photos that tend to you know, make the way around the internet, and again people end up looking at these and they're saying,

who are these people? Why are they doing this thing that they do? Uh? And as we're unrolling, we see examples of this in there in all sorts of worldviews, all sorts of religious rituals around the world. Yeah, and less do you judge too quickly. Again, hang on, because we're going to talk about some other modern day things that we do that are on par with this um.

But one of the things that's brought up in this festival is that sometimes pierced worshippers are sometimes attached to ropes um with the hooks that are in their bodies, and then they're pulled by other devotes and they are suspended in the air from their flesh suspension. Yes, which figures pretty prominently in the oky Paw hook suspension ceremony. This is a Native American um ritual. Yeah, And this is generally takes place in a big and closed tent.

An individual would have been u would have multiple hooks put into their skin because you can't just have one because it justs It's kind of the bed of nail scenario, right. A bet of one nail means you're gonna have a nail sticking in your back. A bet of multiple nails means that your your weight is distributed evenly. It's an engineering solution basically. Of course, that's not not to say that there's there's a lack of pain in the hook

suspension ceremony. You have physical pain you have this lifting off the ground. There's almost ascension motif taking place. And then in the individual UH is in the throes of

this sensation. UM. A number of people out there are probably familiar with this or probably having some sort of you know, flag go off in their head because Richard Harris UH engaged in this in the film UM A Man called Horse, which is an old Western and UH And I remember catching part of it or seeing an ad for it on TBS when I was a kid, and I remember looking at and thinking, Oh, that's horrible.

What the what what these people ended up doing to this Richard Harris character in this film, I don't want to see that at the time, not realizing, not not knowing that this was actually, you know, voluntary ritual. That again, pain and pleasure are for more complex than we give them give them credit. Yeah, the mannd In tribe is one of the tribes known UM to practice this, and they would suspend young warrior an annual rite of passage

ceremony that was celebrating the creation of the earth. Now, another example that comes to mind, H and this is the one that relates back to Christianity. UH. In the Philippines, you see get Catholics in the Philippines every year engaging in re enactments of the Passion of the Christ. So we're talking actual self crucifixion. Well, I say self crucifixion. But to engage in cruisiveiicition, you generally need a little help. It's kind of a hard thing to do one handed.

But and in this we're seeing them actually physically with pain, reenact the pivotal scene of torture and death at the center of the Christian faith. And you know, we're not talking hundreds of people. Sometimes I've seen accounts where you're generally looking at maybe a dozen two dozen Um Filipino is engaging in this is a particular practice. But but then people were watching, and by watching, you're also taking

part in the ritual. Well, and this isn't you far away from from some of the feats of physical strength or endurance that someone in the gym Rose circus might undergo. Indeed, you see people lining up to see physical spectacle, spectacles of that that seemed to have suffering involved in them

all the time. And just within the the whole world of the Passion of the Christ, you see plenty of reenactments of that UH, throughout the Christian world that don't entail actual physical suffering, but they are a reenactment all of this event. And really, I mean when you when you get down to it, just a reenactment of it without the pain and just a physical image of it is on some level pretty intense, kind of disturbing. I mean, again, you see it enough times you tend to not see

it anymore, but there it is. Indeed, now, if you end up listening to this podcast on the website, I'll make sure that I have a gallery that goes up that includes some images from some of these festivals and a few that we didn't mention, because again, there are various rituals, various rights that place around the world that involve physical pain. But that does not mean that the religious world UH has a monopoly on this sort of thing.

You see an entire secular tradition of self inflicted or at least voluntary UM receiving of pain in the b D s M community, or giving pain which also yes, yes, the giving and the receiving very much. But it's important to note that we're within the b d S b D s N theme we're talking about, UH, a consensual arrangement. And within b D s M also you see an entire spectrum. You see you see just you know, individuals lightly spanking one another. You also see individuals engaging in suspension,

body modification, etcetera. And then also sometimes suspension is winds up as part of art, part of performance art. In our performance art episode we mentioned the performer Steel Arc, and of course he's engaged in various UM thought provoking but at times disturbing UM per performances that involve bodily modification on some level or another. And he's engaged in uh uh in suspension rituals if you will, several times in the past. Within b D s M. It's not

always about sex. As we'll talk about later, there's there's um sort of a transcendent component to this. Now to talk about probably the most consensual relationship you could have. UM one would be your morning workout in yourself right, presumably that's consensual, because what's the big thing, right? Feel

the burn? Right? Yeah, I mean it's we we have we whether we're you're going out in the morning and doing your morning run, if you're fitting in you know, time at the yoga studio, if you're you know, furiously doing push ups or pull ups in the afternoon. There's always this You're pushing yourself, and you're often pushing yourself into an area that is on some level uncomfortable, but then also rewarding also at the time, even kind of

physical rewarding, as opposed to just after the fact. Uh So, if nothing else, think to your own exercise routine when we're discussing all of this, because because you see shadows of a lot of it just in that. Yeah, I mean, pushing the envelope of of your abilities does put you sometimes into that pain area. But there's a certain kind of pleasure in that. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, we are going to talk

about the crossover with pain and pleasure. All Right, we're back. We're discussing pain does in a pain. We've already laid out a number of examples. Uh some of which are are probably exotic to you, and then some of which are right down home and in your living room. And in all this, I also keep thinking of, what's that awful song that had that line hurts so good, Make it hurt so good, John Sugar, that's so good? Come that's so good. That was the share version, the share

versions of one I'm thinking of. But that's that lyric is great because at first it seems the paradoxical, Right, hurt so good? How can it hurt so good? Hurt is bad. It's kind of like that line in Roadhouse where Patrick Swayzy says, pain don't hurt? How could pain not hurt? Paint hurt? Pain is hurt. Pain. This is what it's doing. What are you talking about, Soyzy? But wow a Roadhouse reference? Yeah, Roadhouse is a isn't its way a great film? I've seen it multiple times? Yeah?

I mean because they're not only bouncers, they're bouncer philosophers. Well, and that's kind of a good example of how your a magdala is also doing double duty. Right, it's a bouncer of your emotions and a philosophizer of your emotions. Because the thing that we know is that the amgdala processes both pain physically and emotionally, and also processes other

emotions like pleasure and fear and joy. So it would make sense that the perception of whether it's from like social rejection or whether it's from an injury to your flesh would be bound up in one another. Not to mention the other things that we feel in life. Indeed,

back in two thousand two is an example this. Harvard researchers UH conducted an experiment with a heated the hands of eight volunteers to the point of pain while they underwent brain scans, and the scan showed activity not only in brain regions typically associated with pain, but also in those devoted to enjoying pleasurable things like food, drugs, and sects.

So there we see that crossover, and this leads us next to a substance we're always talking about when it comes to human behavior and human desires and our reward system, and that is of course dopamine. Yeah, Because what we have is we've got this thing called the nucleus that commins and it's a neural network in the middle of the brain. It's the engine of the reward response, which

deals a lot in dopamine. And in a study led by John Levine at the University of San Francisco, it was determined that the reward way activates pain relief through the release of both opioids, which is a morphine like drug produced by the body and dopamine, which is that chemical messenger whose effects can be mimicked by amphetamine and cocaine.

That's why that's so hard to beat addiction. So the findings overturned this long held assumption that the release of dopamine and the nucleus cucumbens is associated only with positive experiences. Here we see examples of it being released in a pain context. Now, can bear in mind that we're talking about rituals in a lot of these cases as well, and rituals in and of themselves can be arousing, and his rituals become more arousing, they can trigger hormones and

stimulate the reward system of the brain. Uh. This, according to anthropologist dmitri Zygolattis, can cause sensations such as pain and fear to transform into pleasural experiences through a spike in the neurotransmitter dopamine, in an increase in neuropeptides called endorphins, which bind the brains opiate receptors and produce the same soothing euphoria felt by a marathon runner. Again, we come

back to exercise, we come around to the runners high. Yeah, that's a good way to contextualize this, Like why would dopamine be released when I'm experiencing pain right, well, because it because these sort of things are crossed over in one another in the brain, and because this is very much learned behavior, it doesn't matter what the thing is that makes the dopamine happen. You're going to go to

the thing. If it becomes routinized enough. It could be food, it could be pain, and that is why it could hurt so good. But another way that it could hurt so good is if it doesn't hurt as much as you expected it to hurt. This is pretty interesting, according to a two thousand thirteen study from the University of Oslo, of pain that hits less severely than expected, as in, you didn't spank me nearly as hard as I thought

you would. That can give us a rush of release or even something like pleasure, which is kind of interesting. And I was thinking about it in the context of Adel and that's thanks to knowl, our producer, because he had brought up that her song Somebody Like You is a real not in addition to it being a real tear jerker for people, that it has this thing that it's doing and it's creating a sort of I don't know if I would call it pain, but maybe metaphorical

pain in the brain. In other words, it has this highly dismant chord directly on that you lyric, So somebody like you and she messes with that with that you lyric. And the reason why this is problematic for the brain is because the brain likes a nice pattern and up until then, there's been this pattern that it can follow along with. But just that one little change and that

you lyric creates this f zone. This this this friction in the brain, and that's when you see the um the moment before dopamine is released in the brain because as soon as that friction gets resolved within then the next chord, which then follows back into a pattern, the brain is almost like, oh, that didn't feel as bad as I thought it was going to I was. And this is just in music and on the symbolic level.

So that's why I bring it up, because when we're talking about perceptions of discomfort in pain, we're meeting them in different scenarios in our life, even in songs. I think this is a great point bringing up the pattern recognition because, uh, from what I've I've read a lot of these B D s M situations and we're you know, we're talking about the lower end of the spectrum, not

hanging from hooks. But you know, it's not a situation where someone says, all right, spank me eight times, and then someone spanks them eight times as hard as they can. They're gonna be varying levels of pain, varying level of sensation,

you know, sometimes pleasurable and painful. They're going on there, and the brain inevitably of the person receiving these sensations, they're gonna inevitably try to identify the patterns and find the patterns in this, uh, this this chorus of pain and pleasure that they are receiving, which kind of gets us into this next section and which we talk about the community of pain because you know, obviously a person can do this, can engage in acts of pain unto themselves.

But we see so many different scenarios, not just in historical context, in which people will engage in this kind of ritual as a sort of bonding experience. And this we have to refer to an excellent article by anthropologist Dmitries like a Lattis we mentioned earlier, is an article Trial by Fire from Firewalking to the Ice Bucket Challenge, Ritual pain and suffering forge intense social bonds, and this

was published online in the excellent Eon magazine. UM. According to Zagats, cognitive dissonance theory holds that when we uh, when the cost or the effort spent in pursuing a goal is disproportionately higher than its reward. Uh, this this this dissonance that we feel this uh, this this gap between the cost and the and the and the product. Out of that, we end up with this like an area of mental stress. Right. We No one wants to

to pay more for a product than it's worth. No one wants to suffer for something that's ultimately not worth suffering. So what do you do? Your mind is reorganizes everything and ends up engaging in what they call effort justification. So it's it's like if someone says, hey, that roared you got you really had to go through hell to get it? Was it worth it? Of course it was worth it, because I I There's no way I did all of that for nothing. There's no way that that

badge is not worth all the effort I put into it. Yeah. A good example of this again brought to us by to meet j Zic Lattis is quote. In a classic psychology experiment conducted in nineteen fifty nine, the psychologist Elliott Aaronson of Stanford and Jensen Mills of the United States Army found that people who had to go through a highly embarrassing situation in order to join a discussion group

subsequently reported liking the group more. And a follow up study researchers used electric shocks and found that those who received severe shocks before entering the group valued their membership

more than those who received merely mild ones. Very interesting, and that that instantly brings to mind various rights of passage that exists out there, from physically painful rights of passages that involve bodily modification to even uh, you know, some of the examples of hazing out there in university settings. That's what I was just thinking. This is ritual abuse, this practice, and in fraternities have what they call hell week, right,

that's when you are indoctrinated into this group. And we're talking about sexual abuse. In some cases, we're talking about the forced consumption of mind altering drugs and alcohol and during feats of strength and pain like boiling hot water on the back right, um, drinking pitchers of water until

your brain swells. So here you see a very communal aspect, and in particularly through the lens of fraternity, you see how it becomes that much more important that you gain that membership because you put your body in mind on the line. You know. In there perhaps softer examples of this too when you see uh see, like corporate retreats, people go on go out on this retreat, they go through certain experiences that are probably not all that painful,

but it's the community aspect of it. It's the price that you're paying for it. Um does non trust falls? Um? You know. Also arguably boot camp in a military question, and you're going through what is bile accounts, uh, you know, a physically and emotionally demanding time, but that you're supposed to emerge from that at the other end as a

more cohesive group. Well, I think that's why those types of precise classes are so popular in a sense, because you do get that that kind of bonding and nobody is going at the end of the day say, well, they really kind of beat the heart of you. In that boot camp class that you took at the park was it really worth it. Do you feel better? Of course I feel better, because there's no way that I got up early to suffer like that for a month if I don't feel great now and look at these

guns now. Another item that it's like a lot of stub brings up is the idea of collective effervescence. And this comes to us from a French sociologist, Emil Durkheim, who argued in elementary forms of religious life, that's the popular publication that the collective performance of ritual generates a kind of electricity. So this is you know, this, this shock,

this this ecstatic state of shared excitement. Uh, that just kind of moves through a group of people that are engaged in a ritual or even in a I mean any kind of ritualistic endeavor. So this could be a bunch of people singing a them at the local church. This could be people engaging in a in the burning of an effigy at a at a burning man type event, or even engaging in icebreakers at that corporate retreat. Yeah, because at the end of the day, it's about cooperation.

And we've talked about how this is like one of the cornerstones of humanity that's allowed us to be so successful as a species. This idea that we're gonna we're gonna sign on this dotted line of the social contract and say, yes, we'll cooperate. When we get into a gym together, we will all stomp our feet together, and we will cheer for the team, and we will engage in this as a group, and we'll get together as

a group. Yeah, we're gonna align our emotional states and no matter what our differences are, we can agree on maybe at least one thing. That Jesus guy is pretty good, that that Muhammed guy is pretty good. Jesus is just all that. The idea being that within any kind of a community that is engaged in since ritualistic endeavor, you're gonna see emotional states align. You're gonna there's gonna be this core, this uh, the center of the wheel, that

that everyone is a tune too. Now you might be thinking, okay, fine, I get it. People get together, they do things, they sync up. But it seems a little like WHOI that the pain could be such a ritualized collective event that people would willingly submit themselves to this. And we have a little study that might underscore the fact that yes,

people will do this. Yeah. And this one this was actually one that zaglots Uh conducted himself, carrying out at a during taipoos um Uh, which is we mentioned earlier. Of course uh. And of course it's directly related to cavati, those burdens that people take on themselves. This was the festival, not the vegetarian festivals, but the other one, he said. They He found that those who had participated in the extreme rituals, again the extreme Cavatis, gave twice as much

as those who had taken part in collective pair. He found that the same high levels of generosity among those who had themselves gone through the painful activities of the of the Cavati and those who had merely followed the procession without engaging in any of this bodily mortification. Just as expected, the painful ritual boosted pro social behavior in the participants. And then in terms of having that steak in the process right or stack in your body, maybe

there's something called the martyrdom effect. And uh. In two thousand and eleven, the psychologist Christopher olive Ola of the University of Warwick and Elder Shephear of Princeton demonstrated what

is known as this martyrdom effect. And what they had is they had a series of experiments in which they asked participants to raise money for various charities and found that people donated more when they expected to suffer more, for example, running five miles versus just attending a lovely picnic, or how about dumping a bucket of cold water on their head? Right, that sounds odd? What are you talking about?

Who would do that? Who would do that? Well? A lot of people apparently, because uh, the the ALS Association of course, raised million dollars millions to help fight the A L S. And I assume everyone is familiar with this at this point. But if you're not, if somehow you missed out on the social media explosion that was the ALS ice bucket challenge, was individuals dumping or having a bucket of chilling ice water or ice dumped on

their head. And then they challenge other people. And if you're honoring the whole idea of it, you're supposed to then go make a donation to the A L S. A L S Association, be it instead of taking dumping ice on your head or as part of dumping ice in your What's interesting about that is that I don't think anybody ever intended this, but every single one of those videos is a kind of data point in this pain pleasure um experiment right of humanity, and which you

do see people emerge on the other side giddy, giddy, and and evidently more likely to donate either if you. And that goes for people that are partaking in the ritual and presumably those who are who are actually just you know, on the other end of the computer watching some celebrity dumped dump ice on their head. And key to this, perhaps this is this idea that you are the participant, you are the hero and this story. So storytelling really factors into this. And when we get back,

we're going to delve into it. All right, we are back. And one of the reasons why I think that ice bucket challenge is really so successful is it is storytelling at its finest and quickest, and it's this cultural meme that has been passed around and it's the thing that everybody can gather around and say, yeah, I experience that. I didn't experience it with that person in Arkansas, but I you know, directly, but we we both had the same sort of thing, that ice cold moment and that

rush of pleasure and experiencing. So, for instance, you might never know exactly what it's like to be David Lynch, but David Lynch has experienced the ice bucket challenge. David Lynch knows what it's like ritually have that the ice raised above his head and then dumped upon him. And you can experience that too and be a part of the same story. David Lynch and Pamela Anderson have something

in common, is what I'm saying. It's pretty great. It's just amazing how much depth there is to something that at at at surface level, just seems like people doing a silly thing for a good cause. Now, in when I was looking this up right before we did the podcast, I was just going in to see what the latest stats were about how much money was raised for the cause.

I found some stories about the new ice bucket challenge or something that is that is brought up is possibly the new ice spukeet challenge, and that is the hashtag wake up call that is being uh that's being rolled out by UNI Stuff. Raised money for UNI Stuff, so

again for a good cause. But the idea here is that people, especially celebrities, end up sharing pictures of themselves when they first wake up in the morning, which on the surface here sounds very out of keeping with the with everything that makes the ice bucket challenge work right, because there's nothing painful about it. I guess the idea is that it could be humiliating or or or humanizing.

Maybe that it's knocking you down a peg, and so you're you're suffering at the very shallow end of the suffering pool, especially if you're Naomi Campbell and you have this picture of yourself just waking up, looks like a magazine, your hair just perfectly spread over the pillow, and this sort of morning do settled upon your your face. Um, it was disgusting. I was like I was, now, I feel like there's a morning Naomi Campbell phobia. It was terrible.

I can't believe she did it. It will it will be interesting to watch it and see how this particular hashtag, this particular fundraising social media cause. Don't don't look at her. She looks like the sea hag in The Little Mermaid, the the original. Um, I'm making fun because of course she looked like a supermodel waking up, but yeah. I mean there's this idea that you know, she might be

humiliating herself and submitting herself to this collective ritual. And the ritual is important, and it is worth against stressing that in all these religious rituals and some of the secular ones, one is re enacting or engaging in a story of pain, and they're they're making the story true through pain. I mean, their pain becomes a testament to

its reality, you know. And thinking about this, I come back to two again, that central Christian image of Jesus on the cross, and I ran across something interesting recently, and I blogged about this on Stuff to Play your

mind icon So maybe some of you saw it. But if you look back to uh, the earlier tradition, the early artistic tradition of of of representing Jesus on the cross, you see stuff like uh Alberto Petos eight seven, christis triumphants, which shows you this, uh uh, this this Christ on the cross with this serene kind of doughty look in his eyes like this is this does not look like a man who is suffering. This looks like a man who is above pain. This looks like a God that

is above human suffering. Yeah, I guess, but this was actually the predominant style prior to the thirteenth century, after which it becomes increasingly proper to depict Christ is not only undergoing physical pain, but suffering physical pain like you and me. And you see one of the more just fantastic examples of this tradition in um the Christ of Matthias Gruenwald's Eisenham altarpiece. Uh And in this one, we see a God that is not only suffering, but appears

to be diseased. Uh and and I go into the details for that in the in the blog post include a link on this podcast episode. But you see a vision of Christ that is intensely suffering, diseased even uh and and But but in all of it is engaging in the kind of physical suffering that humans can relate to. Because you know, imagine yourself, you're in this uh you know, you're you're you're poor, You're in a medieval town. There's there's black death knocking on the door, there's there's warfare raging.

Which which image can you relate to? Which image can you connect with and engage in the story, And that, of course would be the Christ that is suffering, the Christ that actually feels pain like you feel pain. Well, and I would uh wagered about that. Every single story that's ever been written, there is an element of suffering, wasn't it? Because that is you cannot have a story without suffering. That is the human experience. Life is suffering.

And uh and nobody wants to see a movie read a book about an individual has all their dreams come true. That is not a story. That is just that's just a pipe dream. We want to see characters who are challenged, characters who suffer, characters. I mean, it's ultimately more about what people try to do than what they actually succeed in doing. Even yogaba gabba narratives have suffering in them. It's true. Somebody gets bit and you're not supposed to

do that. One who's always sad and is always suffering. Occasionally they cheer him up, but then he returns to doing this uh epitome of of childhood suffering. And maybe Gobol decides to take up ritualistic pain in order to try to to uh fill himself with a sense of

control over his destiny. That's right, I mean, there's this this whole idea of of control versus chaos, which reminds us of the episode that we did on flow state, particularly where, particularly if you're playing a game right, you're engaging in some sort of limited version of reality in which they're set rules and you can actually take full command end of the situation that it's it's challenging enough to engage you, but not to challenging, not so much

that you're frustrated. And so you can see cases where UH ritual allows us to partake in this and engage in a flow state. Well, and I would see this particularly in B D S M right, because in that sense, you're creating this sort of pushing your outer limits within something that's not going to necessarily break you. Yeah, indeed, I mean there are rules, there are limits, and it's about maybe edging towards those limits, but not surpassing them.

That's why it's you know, a a badious in dungeon is not an actual, you know, stereotypical medieval dungeon where people are tortured. It's a it's a consensual exploration of the senses, if you will. Rickshaw a rickshaw like a rick shaw cart. That was my safe word. Oh okay, I was just that's totally gonna get cut out right, No, I mean I kind of made me try to picture a rickshaw art environment within a BDS club. Like there's so many things that are a thing it would not surprise.

All Right, let's talk about how this might translate to altered states any because this is the motif, right, you have someone engaging in sort of ritualistic pain, especially within a religious scenario, and they are achieving some sort of enlightenment to some sort of transcendence or you know, at least they're they're they're they're they're bringing themselves to tears not out of pain, but out of relief, out of

out of forgiveness. Eve. Yeah, I mean if you're thinking about acts of self flagilation, right and you know, you see it, you understand the metaphor behind it, but what sort of why would there be a kind of transcendence here? And it turns out that, um, what's happening in the brain really translates to a meditative experience. Yeah, as as far as forgiveness through pain goes, there's a fantastic two

thousand eleven study. Uh, this was a conducted by psychological scientists brought question who just has a fabulous name, I want to say uh, from the University of Queensland, Australia, and he set out to explore this idea. Why why would striking yourself with a lash make you feel better about your your transgressions? So Bastion's team regruited young male and female test subjects under the guise of a mental

and physical acuity study. The researchers asked the test subjects to write a personal essay about a time in which they ostracize someone, and the aim here was to make this part of these participants in the study UH feel guilty or immoral. Meanwhile, the control group just wrote personal essays about you know whatever, some sort of routine memory

that wasn't going to make them feel guilty. The researchers then instructed both immoral volunteers and the controls to hold their hands in a bucket of ice water for as long as they could stand it. Others dipped their hand in a soothing bucket of warm water. So the question here that the study was posing would immoral test subjects punish themselves with longer dips in the water in the cold to rather uh? And would they feel better afterwards?

And the answer is yes on both counts. Those who were primed to feel shame again by those personal essays of ostracizing others um when they dip their their hands in the cold water, they held it for longer durations, and afterwards they described the dip as more painful and express reduced feelings of guilt afterwards. So Bastion's argument, and ultimately the argument of the study here, uh, is that is that this illustrates our culturally altered understanding of pain.

We've come to process it not only as negative environmental feedback, but also as justice and punishment. So on a psychological level, a little bit of a self inflicted pain rebalances the scales that we've managed to unbalance in our lives well. And I think that's interesting because that's where someone is able to achieve some sort of quiescence, right, some sort

of tranquility, even if it's just fleeting. And we've talked about this before or in context of meditation or yoga, is that there's this part of the brain called the default mode network, and it's the midline chatter that you hear in your head that's very involved with me me me, me, me me right, And in order to dim the lights on that, you've got to engage in something like meditation or something that takes you outside of yourself, which is where something like B D S sound comes into because

that involves something called the Dorso lateral network, which is very closely intertwined with this default mode network. Yeah, the this part of the brain is involved in distinguishing self from other h and it is also involved in the out of body experiences. A two thousand fourteen study from Northern Illinois University linked sado masochism to altered states of mind UH in keeping with those achieved through yoga or meditation.

The research has administered cognitive test to S and N participant following a switching scene, and based on the findings, they suspect that pain alters blood foe in the brain, particularly to that Doris lateral prefrontal cortex, which again plays

this essential role in our ability to distinguish self from others. So, in other words, intense pain in this control setting may result in a feeling of oneness with humanity or even the universe, which again brings to mind these these hook suspension uh ceremonies in which one is is elevated, which one that where one is rising up UM, you know,

with help from the hooks UM I was. I was looking around for for feedback from UM suspension participants on this, and I found a quote from Alan Faulkner, who's the founder of PSD, the first suspension group and often held up as the father of modern suspension. He said, if life had a dial to adjust the volume, suspension has a way of accessing this invisible knob and turning it down.

We which is which it first makes seem paradoxical, right, because you're thinking, what could be a more intense experience of life been hanging from a hook? Right? You think, oh, these people are just adrenaline junkies. They just want to just go in there and add hang from a hook. But here's this guy talking about how hanging from these hooks suspended above the ground was a way of turning everything down, of of of actually making the rest of

his life sort of fade into the background. Well, this calls back to the man and tribe that we were talking about that also practiced suspension, and the idea was that not only was it just the celebration and this UM this sort of ritual and looking at how Earth was created, um, but it was this way of those participants to not only test their metal, but clear their minds in order for visions to come to them for a sort of um, a kind of grace to settle

upon their brains. So there you have it, the zen of pain, or at least our exploration of this idea of pain and pleasure mixing together of of pain, uh in a controlled environment leading to uh to to some level of transcendence. UH. It's a it's a powerful topic. And again when you see shadows off throughout human culture, throughout religious traditions and secular traditions as well. And again we want to underline, UH, don't go out and hurt

yourself because you listen to this podcast. UM, you know we're not advocating uh self harm in any way, shape or form. But again, it's something we just see throughout human culture. Yeah, this is not a celebration of pain. This is just an exploration of the tropes that we continue to see in society. And it's a fascinating topic. And UH, we certainly do not want to scoot anything like say, chronic pain or self inflicted pain to the side here. Those are very important topics. And they deserve

uh their own time. But again, this is just looking at at pain in a different way. Indeed, and if you want to listen to a discussion that goes more into the subject of chronic pain, do check out our past episode at the Future of Pain. You'll find that in other past episodes of the podcast at stuff to blow your Mind dot com it's the mothers Stiffest where you'll find all of our podcast episodes are videos glog

post as well. And if you have any thoughts on this, if you have other examples that we missed of this sort of like ritual pain that that we sometimes submit ourselves to, please send us your thoughts via email and you can send them to blow the Mind how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com