Almost from the start of that endless hour Richie’s usual ache in his right knee, now intensified by the no-moving vow, went from pulsating jolts to torture. But then, just as the pain reached the unbearable point, something changed: his awareness. Suddenly, what had been pain disappeared into a collection of sensations—tingling, burning, pressure—but his knee no longer hurt. The “pain” dissolved into waves of vibrations without a trace of emotional reactivity. Focusing on just the sensations meant completely reappraising the nature of hurting: instead of fixating on the pain, the very notion
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