Pain is something that most people desire to avoid!  It has been said there are 2 types of people: you either tend to avoid pain or move toward pleasure.  Although, there are people who live by the “No Pain, No Gain” motto, so I’m not exactly sure where those folks fit in that mix.  No matter how you relate to pain (whether it’s physical or emotional) how we deal with it matters.  Pain is actually a poor indicator of where a problem is located; at the same time, it is a great indicator that there IS a problem.  Pain is rarely the first thing to show up when there is dysfunction in the body and rarely the first thing to leave.  The systems of our body are inter-connected more than we know. Structurally speaking, if pain shows up on one side of your body, there is a good chance that the opposite side is in dysfunction of some kind and the side on which you feel pain is just compensating.  Pain can also easily be coming from other areas!  Another important thing to consider with pain, especially chronic pain, is when you mask it…it doesn’t fix it, it merely creates dysfunction elsewhere in other systems of the body.  If the “check engine” light comes on in our car, it doesn’t do any good to cover it up. It’s a warning sign and further checking is necessary if you’re going to be able to fix the problem.  The point is this, we shouldn’t ignore pain but we also can’t make the mistake of thinking it’s the whole-story…