{"id":8033,"date":"2004-01-28T16:47:14","date_gmt":"2004-01-28T16:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/ot_weirdness.html"},"modified":"2004-01-28T16:47:14","modified_gmt":"2004-01-28T16:47:14","slug":"ot_weirdness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/ot_weirdness.html","title":{"rendered":"OT Weirdness"},"content":{"rendered":"

(OT meaning “off-topic”, rather than “Old Testament,” btw)<\/p>\n

Here’s the thing.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, I had a headache when I was trying to go to sleep. It wasn’t a terrible headache – I’m not susceptible to migraines or anything – but it was enough to keep me awake.<\/p>\n

Then, I started thinking. You know, it’s only my head – and really just a little area in the front of my head – that hurts. Why is that I’m feeling that part of my body and not the 98% that isn’t hurting? <\/p>\n

So I decided to try to sense that 98% instead of the 2% that ached. I concentrated on my foot, which felt fine. (like you do when you’re doing guided meditation. Okay, stop now. Don’t bother.)<\/p>\n

It worked. When I was concentrating on “feeling” that foot, I didn’t feel the ache in my head. At all. When I let my concentration lapse, that pain came right to the forefront of my consciousness again. It was fascinating, like I’d found some sort of switch. <\/p>\n

Same thing happened last night, except last night, add a mild stomach ache (still from the remnants of the Kroger Incident). I did it again, except this time, I concentrated on my hand. It took a lot of concentration, but again, it worked. When I was able to fully mentally concentrate on my hand, that’s all I “felt.”<\/p>\n

I’ve tried it with ideas or concepts or images, but it didn’t seem to work the same way. Has anyone else every experienced this? Is there some sort of literature on this? I am I discovering something that everyone else already knows? Am I nuts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(OT meaning “off-topic”, rather than “Old Testament,” btw) Here’s the thing. A couple of weeks ago, I had a headache when I was trying to go to sleep. It wasn’t a terrible headache – I’m not susceptible to migraines or anything – but it was enough to keep me awake. Then, I started thinking. You…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOT Weirdness - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/ot_weirdness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"OT Weirdness - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(OT meaning “off-topic”, rather than “Old Testament,” btw) Here’s the thing. A couple of weeks ago, I had a headache when I was trying to go to sleep. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}