typology of pain and suffering in terms of when to try meditation (experimental):

(experimental)

upstream psychological pain
upstream autonomic imbalance pain
upstream metabolic problem pain
upstream nutrient deficiency pain
upstream caloric deficiency pain
upstream visceral damage or unhappiness pain
upstream musculoskeletal and joint pain
upstream nerve ennervation pain
upstream nerve pain

right tool for right job, wrong tool can make worse. some things look like other things but at root are the other thing. meditation can't directly fix some things that might initially seem like they can directly be fixed by meditation. (instead time, nutrition, medicine, physical intervention, etc. is needed.)

the "error mode" is sort of creatively-but-superstitiously doubling down on an unfortunately "pushy" (layering) meditative action that is believed/hoped to fix something that then sort of systemically "piles up against" or "wraps around" the thing that can't actually fixed with meditation, taking slack out of the system, leading to muscle tension eventually, and ultimately needing to be fixed/untwirled eventually to make further progress.

that said, there is a "phenomenological interaction boundary" between the thing that can't be directly/immediately fixed and "everything else," and the rest of the system can be "untwirled" with respect to the not-directly-fixable thing. and new illnesses and nerve injuries can make new focal points suitable for local and global untwirling/commensuration with respect to the new thing, though sometimes it's better to wait to see what happens for days, weeks, or months because if the new thing heals completely then the system will want to rebalance back to the way it was before (feels on the inside like usual-ish "things that can be done / things that could happen / potentiality," possibly with significant "bubble-up delay" and has objective correlates [1]). could also split the difference. also, generally, these explicit decisions matter less and less the more spontaneity in the system there is.

[1] neuroscience and meditation, odds and ends [2022-02-09] "[...] It might be a little surprising how reversible these changes can be. [...]"