The Truth About Pain

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Do you want to know the truth about pain? Then read on, my friend.

Simply put it is  just a signal perceived by the brain that something is wrong. The brain senses the pain signal and tells you that something is off balance, out of the neutral, out of the order. Next the mind starts producing rather unpleasant thoughts accompanied by rather unpleasant emotions. The usual response to pain in the body goes like this. The muscles tense up, the breath becomes shallow, shoulders ride up to the ears, the ribcage lowers down to the pelvis, the hips and calves tense up. Sound familiar?

Feeling all of this nonsense happening in your body brings on more unpleasant emotions and thoughts. You tense up more, clench your jaw, tighten your fists and the buttocks. Now you are creating compression on your joints and organs. The brain screams louder and you get caught up in the cycle of negative signals going between the body and the brain.

Now imagine if you were going on vacation tomorrow. You are boarding the plane and arriving at a beach paradise. Palm trees, sunshine, the waves crashing, the breeze in your hair… Or maybe you head up to the mountains. Snowy peaks, sunshine, snow covered trees, the quiet…
For a moment the mind gets taken away by the beauty of nature and you get a flood of pleasant emotions, thoughts of happiness and relaxation. The body responds by relaxing the shoulders and the hips, now you want to take a deep breath, and slowly a smile appears on your face. And what happens to the pain? You forgot about it! For a split second, you forgot about it! Yes you did! Or maybe it was longer than a second or maybe it just went away? On its own?

How could this happen? Well, my friends this is the beauty of mind body connection. You take your mind off of something and it no longer exists in the awareness. Out of sight, out of mind.

I have two little kids, you know what is the best way to get them to quiet down after a scraped knee? Switch their attention to something else. All of a sudden the tears dry, the smile is back and they are chasing after Josie (the dog) again. The knee is still scraped though, the problem is still there… but it gets better after about a day or two. It heals on its own because of our wonderful built in healing potential. You are wired to be resilient and to get better.

Now I know, some of you had knee pain or back pain for years and it is not going away on its own. However, every day when I ask my patients what took them so long to get help, they respond with “oh it would just come and go, get better and then get worse.” Yes! It gets better when you are happier and it gets worse when times are hard. This is the mind body connection at work.

Unfortunately it doesn’t go away completely, right? That’s because the muscles have become habitually shortened, so they are creating compression on the joints and joints hurt or deteriorate with time. When you are in pain, you start moving differently. Your body does a magnificent job compensating for lack of mobility. The problematic area becomes extra sensitive because of lack of movement and old swelling. The area of the brain that senses the signal from the original injury becomes bigger. This is called the sensitization. Now add an emotional component to this mess and you got yourself a big problem.

Luckily, there is a way out of this. There are many different bodywork techniques that can be done to release the tight muscles. Here at Healing In Motion we do a variety of different techniques. It may be massage, dry needling, work with nervous system (Neurovascular Integration), etc.  We place a lot of emphasis on work done by hand, because honestly, you need it. Humans need to be touched. The studies on babies show that babies who are not touched don’t gain as much weight. Touch is healing, it’s love, it’s comforting and it feels awesome!

Next there is the integration piece. This is when we teach you to move. All the tension which was binding your muscles is going to come back if we just do the manual work. The wires of the brain to muscles need to be reconnected. We do this through really cool Pilates and Somatics exercises. The goal is to get you to experience the joy of simple movement. The joy of breathing, the joy of walking, the joy of feeling alive in your body. When the tension is released, and you are moving correctly you feel like a kid again – FREE! You can do a quick jog instead of walking because it’s fun, or you can choose to jump up and down in place because you are excited. My kids do it all the time. When and why did we lose this ability to be joyful?

Yes, it can be done! And you got absolutely nothing to lose just by learning more about it. Do you want to explore this further? Click HERE to talk on the phone.  Or maybe you want to take it a step further and  talk in person, click HERE to register for a Sample Session.

Anyhow, life is too short to spend it grumpy and in pain. So let’s talk if you are ready to make a change.

Now go out and enjoy that Colorado sunshine. We are so lucky to have 60 degree day today!

Talk soon,

Elena