Is Chronic pain getting you down?

Is Chronic pain getting you down?  Did you know that the brain has a “pain memory” and this plays a huge factor in chronic pain since it’s there long after the injury has healed? Chronic pain is a medical term and almost implies that you have to put up with it and that you will never be rid of it but just have to manage it.  Acute pain, however, is pain that is instant and isn’t long lasting for example when we cut ourselves – the pain is acute but quickly goes away as the healing process gets underway.

Language is quite important when thinking of our nervous system.  What if we think of chronic pain more as a persistent pain then the message received by our nervous system and our perception of the pain will be different.

Our emotions and psychological state can also be impacted leaving us feeling low but they equally impact how we perceive this persistent pain to the point that we tense up and become afraid to move in case we make it worse.  This tensing up also makes movement more arduous.  Our breathing will become more laboured, shallow and dysregulated as we continue to feel fear.  Did you know that our eyes also have a role to play?  For example, if we’re experiencing long-standing pain in our right hand our eyes are more likely to be directed towards that hand bringing more focus of the pain to our brain which sends us inwardly into an ongoing protective cycle.  Thinking of directing our eyes to our left hand or a different part of ourselves can help to reduce this focus and allows us to pay attention to how we organise ourselves posturally and how we move so we can become aware of our habits. Paying attention to our breathing and feeling our entire ribcage move through the action of the breath helps to reduce anxiety caused by pain, so reducing the chronic pain experienced.

Small movements like those you experience in our Feldenkrais and Intuitive Pilates lessons help to give you a new focus by orientating your awareness to your habits, not just in how you move but also how you think and perceive movement so that you can take away tools which you can put into practice in your daily life to help you find relief from this persistent long-standing pain.

Breathing Lesson:

Lay on the floor, legs outstretched or bent with feet standing, and sense where you feel movement when you breathe.

Place your hands on the area(s) where you feel movement.

Most people feel the movement in their abdomen – is this were you felt the movement?

Now place your fingers on your upper chest, just below your breastbones and depress lightly downwards and see if you can feel movement here.  Try to direct your breath here as if you are trying to push your fingers away.  Once you can feel breath there, rest for a moment.

Now bring your fingertips to your sternum (the breastbone).  Do you feel movement here?  Depress lightly and notice if you can feel yourself pushing your fingers away with your breath.  Do this a few times.  Rest.

Then bring your hands to the side of your ribcage and see if you can feel your ribs moving outwards and upwards.  Press lightly with your hands and see if you can encourage your breath to these areas.  Rest.

Now sense if you can feel your entire ribcage moving and notice how your abdomen will also move as the diaphragm is drawn downwards by the movement of your ribcage.  See if you can maintain your breathing in this way without having to take large breaths so that you normalise your breathing.

If your entire ribcage is moving your diaphragm will also be free to move and this is ideal and optimal breathing.

If you’d like to know more about breathing please do join my classes or visit my On Demand site where there are breathing Awareness Through Movement® lessons to help you improve the whole action of breathing which will free up your diaphragm, relieve stress and anxiety, as well as help reduce pain.