The "marble" is a tool the pain/stress management psychologist gave me. We worked in session with rolling it around in my hand and meditating and with his suggestions of calming and focusing, now when I roll it around in my hand, it allows my unconscious to begin to calm me. Actually, I can physically think about the marble and have the same effect, whether I have it in hand or not.

qi gong is a form of Tai Chi, which also puts the body into a calming rhythm with meditation and focus.

Remember, pain is subjective and by being so YOU can learn to control it to great extent. LOL when someone says "it's all in your head" well, in some ways they are right (though they don't mean it to be nice imo.) If the brain does not interpret the pain messages as pain, then you won't feel it. If you can thwart those messages through refocusing, you can change the subjective interpretation your mind normally makes.

It's bad enough to have the body experience pain, but to realize the pain is worse. What I mean is that, though we can interrupt the pain message so it's never interpreted as pain, the body is still experiencing some distress. It's bad enough to have that distress, but worse still to realize it as pain. (Have I totally confused everyone now?)

"Pain" is given to us so we know something is wrong in the body. If we already know what's wrong, there is no more reason for the "pain message" and thus ok to interrupt or cancel that message.

That you can learn to have "mind over matter" in no way diminishes the reality that you have something that is causing pain. Gaining control over your pain is a process that I have not yet fully mastered, but plan on! I wish all to join me on this path, that though I resisted and didn't understand it when I first began it, find it rewarding now.