Love all of these mind opening thoughts and questions. I work with a very cool Dr who feels every emotion we have, such as depression, anger, guilt,etc works two ways....one way ,physically on the body and secondly as a motivator for us to use as we chose. Which way do we chose though? How do we channel these emotions into physical pain or do we allow these emotions to cause us pain?

Is pain a weakness or strength? I am learning from him to listen to my inner calm self and try to temper out the pain/fire of the CRPS in my right ankle... BTW, I also tore up both ankles during life and as life gets rough, I am now paying for those ankle injures. Right ankle being the worst,it got the surgery first...left ankle is still waiting. My wickedly cool Dr feels with more of a mind -body connection and finding that inner stillness in my monkey brain( his words...I have a jumping monkey brain that goes 100 miles a min) I can have a uneventful left ankle surgery...I can cause this to happen. Period.
I'm also learning Qi-gong, a little about Buddhism, and I am already a nature pagan, so I look at your post with a very open creative mind.

Thanks!

Terri