The Virtual Signal: Why Pain Is a Call for Attention and a Path to Strength

I have spoken before about pain as a call for attention.

But attention of what?

Attention of the organism. The prefrontal cortex registers pain and decides to take certain actions.

Imagine touching an object that is gradually warming up. I am not talking about the reflex action, but about something that gets progressively hotter. Your body keeps sensing the temperature rise and alerting you that you need to move your hand. If you touch something very hot and your hand jerks back reflexively, that is a spinal reflex. Even before you register the pain, the action has already happened. But the damage may already be done.

After the reflex, the body keeps sending messages to that part, say the fingertip, providing its location and saying: This is where you need to pay attention. Do not use this fingertip. The body disables it by conveying the urgency that this part needs to be cared for. The greater the urgency, the higher the pain.

If it is a mild burn, you can probably continue using that finger without much difficulty. But if it is a bad burn, with blisters, broken skin, or leaking fluids, the body will disable that part completely. There will be swelling, restricted movement, and definitely more pain.

What Is Pain, Then?

Pain is therefore a call for attention. It tells you that an area needs to be worked on and cared for. Pain alerts you when there is a problem. It keeps you from using a body part because there is inflammation or because repair is underway.

The body handicaps that part, making it immovable so you do not aggravate the injury. If you do move it despite the warning, the pain intensifies and stops you. A bad fracture or muscle tear causes pain that prevents you from injuring the tissue further. So, fundamentally, pain is a signal that communicates with your conscious self, and the urgency of that call for attention is directly proportional to the pain you experience.

Does Pain Play an Important Role in Our Lives?

When we look at it closely, pain is a kind of biofeedback. And the surprising part about pain is that it does not actually exist as a physical signal in the way other signals do. Pain is meant to convey to the organism what needs to be avoided.

From the human perspective, pain exists to get your attention, the attention of the prefrontal cortex, the attention of the person living their life. That is why when you are knocked out, unconscious, or given a sedative, and you do not exist as yourself because you are in a state of stupor, pain also does not exist. If you do not exist, pain does not exist. Pain is something specifically made for you. By "made for you," I mean it is biofeedback that you register.

What Exactly Is This Pain Signal?

How does the pain signal travel from the fingertip all the way to "you"? Do you understand the pain signal from the fingertip, or does the brain conjure it up?

The beauty of the pain signal is that it is a projection. It gives you coordinates and the exact location. The fingertip itself has no pain. The fingertip has sensors and neurons that convey signals back to the brain, but the brain computes them. The brain decides that this is pain, then gives you coordinates. It tells you the location where those neurons sent the message from. As you move your hand, the projection moves too.

Sometimes this projection mechanism can go wrong, and you feel pain in areas where there should be no pain. A person whose hand has just been amputated can have phantom pain. How can there be pain in an arm that no longer exists? Because the brain is not aware of the sudden loss. Its body map still contains the hand, so it continues to project pain and sensations that feel strange. How can you scratch your palm when the hand is no longer there?

This demonstrates very clearly that pain is virtual. Pain is a signal that is sent. It is there to get your attention.

Can We Override Pain? Should We?

Now, having said that pain is virtual, created, and does not physically exist, can we override it? And should we?

The answer is yes, you can override pain at times. There are cases where, in a crisis, a person stuck in a life-and-death situation has cut off their own hand to escape a vice-like grip when trapped under a stone. They have been able to do this slowly and patiently, cutting through bone, breaking it, freeing their hand. They succeeded because they overrode the pain. The mechanism that transmits and projects pain stops functioning because now it is about survival.

So yes, you can override pain in extreme situations and dire conditions.

But for day-to-day life, does it make sense to override pain? Overriding pain by taking painkillers or using something that blunts the sensation is generally not a good idea, because then you are not paying attention. Pain is a call for attention, and if you ignore it, problems can develop.

How Can This Call for Attention Benefit Us?

Let us say you are walking barefoot and your foot skin is quite tender, hurting you. Once you realize that this hurting is because for a couple of months you have only worn shoes, never been on the farm, never walked on this terrain, you understand that your skin needs to develop.

What you could do is walk a little bit, come back home, bear the pain, and slowly let the skin develop and become stronger. This is beneficial because over time, your skin becomes tougher, and you are able to handle walking barefoot.

Walking barefoot has its own advantages: better biomechanics, improved muscle-to-brain communication, enhanced terrain perception, acupressure benefits, increased foot strength, and better biomechanical adjustment.

Should We Avoid Pain Altogether?

Today, we have options. We avoid the pain that comes from doing work by hiring help. We avoid the pain of lifting heavy things by having others do it for us. As a result, because we are avoiding pain, we stop getting the benefits that come after experiencing it.

Pain is a call for attention. When you are lifting heavy weights, your body keeps alerting you that you cannot lift it. It also conveys that there are micro muscle tears and you need to work on building muscle. The pain tells you: This is hurting; be careful. It conveys to the muscles and the rest of the body: You need to develop muscle. You need to become stronger. You need to adapt.

Once we stop getting these pain signals, once we stop experiencing pain, we stop calling the body's attention to the need for adaptation. Our adaptation stops.

How Much Pain Is Good?

This brings us to the question: how can we experience pain on a day-to-day basis? How much pain is good, and how much is bad?

The rule of thumb is to look at what happens in nature. If you were in nature and had to survive, what would you need to do? Maybe climbing a tree is important. Maybe walking barefoot is important. Maybe getting a few scratches while foraging is important.

Things that do not kill you, a few scratches in a week, are no big deal. Getting hurt a couple of times in a week is manageable, but it starts to develop your resilience. As you experience more and more pain, you become better at handling it. Pain does not become something alien to you. You are not affected so much that a small prick hurts you for hours. Your body becomes familiar with pain, and that familiarity makes it easier to handle.

That is why, on a day-to-day basis, handling a little pain helps.

The Deeper Principle: Hormesis

There is a deeper principle at work here, one that scientists call hormesis. Pain operates on a hormetic dose-response curve.

· Too little of a stressor, and the organism remains fragile, untested, and unprepared.

· Too much, and the system is overwhelmed and breaks down.

· But a small, controlled dose, what I call microdosing pain, triggers an adaptive response that makes the organism stronger at every level: muscular, neurological, and psychological.

This is not simply about toughening up. It is about finding the precise sweet spot where the signal is strong enough to trigger adaptation but not so strong that it becomes destructive noise.

That is the art of living with pain. Not avoiding it, not seeking it out for its own sake, but using it as a calibrated tool for growth.

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Pain and the Cellular Powerhouses

Pain also has other benefits in the background, and they go right down to the cellular level.

When you are doing breathing exercises or when you go underwater and hold your breath for a long time, it is difficult, an inconvenience. I am not talking about pain just as that sharp sensation when something pricks your foot. There are multiple kinds of pain, and all of that is basically discomfort.

The pain of going underwater and holding your breath for a very long time, when you feel that tightening of the chest, when you feel it is so difficult, that is also a kind of pain. That pain is important because it triggers the adenosine receptors. These receptors, in turn, because energy is being consumed and adenosine is accumulating, can activate a set of different sequences.

When you come out and then breathe, it has actually improved your respiratory ability to take in more breath. Your lungs expand more. There is vasodilation. It causes fluctuations in your blood pressure, up and down, which also help the body adapt. It causes a lot of adaptive benefits.

There are four distinct adenosine receptors: A1, A2A, A2B, and A3. Each does a different kind of activity. By experiencing this pain, for example just going underwater and holding your breath, it helps your body in multiple ways. Each of the receptors works on a completely different mechanism. The A1 receptor, for instance, helps you adapt in a way that can slow the heart rate and protect tissues. The A2A receptor produces powerful vasodilation. The A2B receptor helps in vasoconstriction and also plays a role in inflammation. The A3 receptor helps in increasing ATP production, requesting more resources.

And here is where it gets truly fascinating. This kind of regular activation of all these adenosine receptors sends a signal that your mitochondria need to grow because you need more energy. It causes mitogenesis. More and more mitochondria grow. These tiny cellular powerhouses multiply in response to the discomfort signal.

Pain, in this sense, is a direct signalling trigger for mitochondrial biogenesis. The breathlessness, the burning in your muscles, the struggle against a heavy weight, all of these sensations are the language your body uses to tell your cells that the current energy infrastructure is inadequate, that it is time to build more. You are quite literally upgrading your cellular machinery through the experience of controlled pain. You start to develop your stamina not in spite of the pain, but because of it.

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Pain, Respiratory Fitness, and Cardiovascular Adaptation

The same thing happens whether you are doing it underwater, jogging and becoming breathless, doing push-ups and becoming breathless, or doing pranayama. Pranayama is a wonderful way to activate these receptors through different discomfort sensors.

The same principle applies when you exercise and get to a point where it is starting to become painful. That is when your different receptors, mechanoreceptors, are stimulated and then they exert action in a way that starts to make you stronger.

The pain of breathlessness is a profound signal. It forces the respiratory system to expand its capacity. The intercostal muscles learn to work more efficiently. The diaphragm strengthens. The vasculature becomes more elastic, learning when to dilate and when to constrict. Blood pressure fluctuates, and in that fluctuation lies the secret to cardiovascular resilience.

A system that never experiences the pain of breathlessness is a system that has never been asked to adapt. It remains at its baseline, which over time becomes its ceiling.

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Pain Signalling Pathways and Brain Health

Pain on a day-to-day basis makes you stronger. Stronger in what way?

· It improves your sleep and waking cycle.

· It improves your circadian rhythms.

· It improves your cell reproduction.

· It improves your lymph flow and, as a result, provides good detoxification.

· It improves your muscular strength. As a result, your survival possibilities improve.

· It improves your posture because that is important as a part of your mechanical stability.

It does a lot of things.

But beyond all of this, pain does something remarkable for the brain itself. Pain, particularly the controlled discomfort of sustained physical or mental challenge, triggers the release of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, or BDNF. This protein is often called fertilizer for the brain. It supports the survival of existing neurons and actively encourages the growth of new ones. This is neurogenesis.

The discomfort itself, the struggle against a challenging task, seems to be an essential part of the signal that tells the brain it needs to become more robust. Pain is not just testing your neural networks. It is actively building them.

The Internal Pharmacy

Consider what happens to neurotransmitter balance under the influence of controlled pain. The body does not simply endure pain passively. It actively manages it with its own internal pharmacy.

Controlled pain exposure upregulates your production of endorphins and enkephalins, your body's natural painkillers. It makes your endogenous opioid receptors more sensitive and more responsive. This is the neurochemical basis for the runner's high or the profound sense of calm and well-being that follows a cold plunge or an intense session of breathwork.

A person who microdoses pain is literally training their internal pain-management system, making it more efficient and more powerful. The person who avoids all pain and reaches for external painkillers is doing the opposite. They are downregulating their own receptors, making their system more fragile, less capable, and more dependent on external intervention.

The brain's neurotransmitter balance, the delicate dance between dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and countless others, is tuned and rebalanced through the regular experience of discomfort and its subsequent resolution.

The Task Positive Network and the Default Mode Network

There is also a deeper neurological architecture being shaped here. The brain operates in two fundamental networks.

The Task Positive Network, or TPN, is active when you are focused on the external world, solving a problem, navigating uneven terrain, or responding to a physical challenge.

The Default Mode Network, or DMN, is active when you are at rest, ruminating, thinking about the past or the future, engaged in self-referential thought.

Pain, particularly acute and demanding pain, is a powerful activator of the TPN. It yanks the brain's attention out of the wandering, ruminating DMN and forcefully anchors it in the present moment. A system regularly anchored by such signals becomes more adept at existing in immediate, objective reality.

The TPN and DMN learn to activate and deactivate in a healthier rhythm. You become better at focused engagement when needed and better at true rest when the task is done. A life devoid of these anchoring pain signals allows the DMN to run unchecked, which is a neurological signature of anxiety, depression, and obsessive rumination.

Pain and Interoception

And consider the role of pain in interoception, the sense of the internal state of the body. Pain is the most powerful and unambiguous form of interoceptive signalling. This interoceptive data is the raw material the brain uses to construct a sense of the physical self.

Regular, varied interoceptive signals from benign pain and discomfort force the brain to constantly update and refine its map of the body. The insula, a key brain region for interoception, becomes more finely tuned. The result is a more accurate and resilient body schema, a crisper and more robust sense of self.

A fuzzy, poorly defined sense of the physical self, which can come from a heavily cushioned and pain-free life, is often correlated with anxiety, depersonalization, and dissociation. A well-defined sense of self, built from frequent interoceptive signals, is more stable and more grounded in reality.

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Pain, Fascia, and Biomechanical Communication

There is another dimension to this internal sensing. Beneath the skin lies the fascial network, a body-wide web of connective tissue that envelops every muscle, bone, and organ. This network is incredibly richly innervated. It is a sensory organ in its own right.

The discomfort of stretching, of moving in novel ways on uneven ground, of feeling the pull in your ankles and shins as I described, is largely a fascial sensation. This pain or stiffness signals areas of restriction, dehydration, or poor gliding within the fascial layers.

By moving into that discomfort, by walking on that rough terrain and feeling the tug and the strain, you are essentially communicating with your fascial system. You are telling it to reorganize along new lines of force, to become more fluid, to release adhesions. You are remodeling your internal scaffolding in direct response to pain signals.

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Pain, Inflammation, and the Art of Immune Vigilance

In fact, pain also improves your immunity. If you are experiencing pain on a day-to-day basis, your immune system has to be very vigilant. One pain sensation could also signal a possibility of some microorganism or something alien getting inside your body. Your immune system is toned up.

The immune system is toned up not just because of the pain, but because of the benefits that pain gives. There is more nitric oxide in the bloodstream. There is more activation for the immune system to work. As a result, pain, that is the call for attention, once you are paying attention, things start to become better.

The Inflammasome Connection

There is a deeper mechanism at work here involving what is called the inflammasome, specifically the NLRP3 inflammasome. This is a key protein complex that triggers inflammation.

A low-grade, regular challenge, like the muscle damage from exercise, the tiny tears and micro-injuries, or the stress of temperature change, engages the inflammasome in a controlled and beneficial way. It sends a clean-up and rebuild signal throughout the body.

Without these regular signals, the system can become dysregulated. It can tip into a state of chronic, low-grade, sterile inflammation that underlies so many modern diseases: heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune conditions.

Pain here is the signal that initiates a healthy inflammatory cycle that begins with a challenge and ends in repair and strengthening. A lack of this signal means no repair cycle is initiated. The system stagnates into a state of unresolved, smouldering inflammation.

A small cut, a small infection, the immune system is working and getting toned up. Something like COVID would not take the immune system by surprise because the immune system has been working on a day-to-day basis.

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Pain, Awareness, and the Anchoring of the Self in Time

There is also a strange and profound relationship between pain and our perception of time. Intense pain warps time. Seconds can feel like hours. This is not a flaw. It is a feature.

Pain is not just a signal of "where." It is a powerful and absolute signal of "now." It hijacks attention completely. It yanks the brain out of the ruminating Default Mode Network, where you are lost in memories of the past and anxieties about the future, and forcefully anchors it in the raw, immediate present moment of the Task Positive Network.

Acute pain, in a strange and brutal way, is a form of forced mindfulness. This is a central part of its link to awareness of surroundings. A system regularly anchored by such signals becomes more adept at existing in the immediate, objective reality rather than being perpetually lost in a virtual, narrated one. Pain, in this sense, is a tool that teaches presence.

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The Shared Pathways of Physical and Social Pain

And then there is a truth that is easy to overlook but essential to understand. The brain areas that process the pain of a burn or a fracture, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, are the same ones that light up when we experience social rejection, exclusion, or grief.

Social pain is not a metaphor. It is a literal biological reality using the same projection and signalling system that tells you your hand is on a hot stove. The call for attention here is to repair a social bond.

A life that avoids the pain of difficult conversations, the risk of rejection, or the vulnerability of deep connection will leave those neural pathways under-tested and fragile. Microdosing emotional and social discomfort, leaning into a hard conversation, risking vulnerability, builds psychological resilience just as physical discomfort builds physical resilience. The pathways are shared. Training one strengthens the other.

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The Danger of Excess and the Wisdom of Balance

It is no wonder when you look at kids of parents who pay a lot of attention. It might seem like the parents are irritating. For every small thing, they are telling the kid what needs to be done. But when you look at these kids when they grow up, they grow up so much better, finer lads, finer young people, especially when the parents know how to balance their attention. They give as much attention as is required, but not too much.

The same thing applies with the human body. If you are exerting too much, causing a lot of pain, a lot of wear and tear and going overboard, then that kind of pain does not benefit you.

This we see with workers who have to work for a living and who have no choice. They work so much, they hurt themselves so much that many times after they are done working, they have injured their body. Their muscles do not get time to heal. Their musculoskeletal system does not get time to heal. They have injuries, they have traumas. The brain looks at it as a negative experience.

This kind of excessive attention or excessive call for attention, pain, is also not a good idea. The hormetic curve tips over into damage. The signal becomes noise. The call for attention becomes a scream that cannot be answered.

The key thing is balance. But in today's world, because we are more on the side where we do not want to experience pain or discomfort, we have to see how we can experience pain and discomfort.

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The Practice of Microdosing Pain

How do I experience pain and discomfort?

I walk for a couple of hours without my shoes or slippers, if possible, but that is on a little rough ground, not very uneven ground. Then I walk for at least half an hour or so on a terrain which is very rough, where I have to walk quite slowly because my feet would get hurt otherwise. But that movement, that uneven terrain makes me move in different ways. It works on my ankles, it works on my shins, it works on my stability, my posture. It helps because I need to balance. My balancing system is working overtime because it has to make sure that I do not fall on such an uneven surface.

Even though I experience pain, occasional bruises, occasional cuts, it is fine.

Then I make sure that as I go foraging, as I go looking for plants and go through scrub, a few scratches are no big deal. That again helps me. If it bleeds, yes, the immune system is called to work, and every day if the immune system practices, it is very good at the art of war.

How Does This Benefit Me?

These are the things I do. How does this benefit me?

This benefits me because my pain threshold also increases. Something that is very painful for somebody else is not as painful for me. It becomes much easier. My endogenous opioid system is tuned and responsive. My interoceptive map is sharp. My TPN engages readily and my DMN knows when to rest. My mitochondria are dense and efficient. My fascia is fluid and responsive. My immune system is vigilant but not over-reactive.

A Personal Story

I remember the day I fell from fifteen feet. I was quite hurt, a couple of fractures, multiple bruises, but then I was able to handle the pain. I thought earlier that it would be very difficult, but even with the fracture and with those injuries, I was able to handle it without any painkiller.

It took me quite some time to heal. The shoulder was hurt, the rotator cuff was torn, the collarbone was fractured. Right from the shoulder all the way to the feet, there were multiple injuries. In spite of that, without a painkiller, I was able to handle it and the recovery was so complete.

It took time. It took almost one year to heal, but after a year, I was able to do most of the things which I could do earlier. After two years, I was even able to do handstand.

That shows us how pain helps you in multiple ways. A daily dose of pain makes you much stronger, much more resilient than you think you could be.

I remember a day when I used to dread seeing someone having a fracture, especially a collarbone fracture. I used to think, oh my god, that would be so painful. But the day I got the collarbone fracture, I was surprisingly ready. I was ready because of this microdosing of pain on a day-to-day basis.

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The Final Call

Pain is a call for attention. It is a signal that is projected, virtual, and yet absolutely real in its consequences.

· It calls for attention on the finger, telling the body to repair tissue.

· It calls for attention in the breath, telling the mitochondria to multiply and the vasculature to become elastic.

· It calls for attention in the muscles and fascia, telling the brain to release BDNF and build new neural networks.

· It calls for attention in the immune system, initiating clean cycles of inflammation and repair.

· It calls for attention in the mind, anchoring you in the present moment and sharpening the map of the self.

· It calls for attention in the heart, strengthening the same pathways that allow you to endure social and emotional challenge.

A person who heeds all these calls for attention, through daily microdoses of physical, respiratory, and psychological discomfort, is essentially telling every system in their body and mind to become more robust, more resilient, and more integrated.

A person who ignores these calls or numbs them into silence is keeping their organism in a state of comfortable, unchecked decay.

The choice is ours. The signal is always there, calling. The only question is whether we will pay attention.