Do you experience musculoskeletal pain that diminishes spontaneity, peace of mind, and joyful living?
This post will help you begin to understand the factors contributing to chronic pain and how a movement awareness based approach can bring you relief.
Pain Means Change
It is widely accepted that pain is our body’s way of communicating a request for change, asking us to do less of certain stressful behaviors and more of stimulating, comforting, and nourishing activities.
At The Wellness Station, we see clientele who have often had prior therapy that has been unsuccessful. The key missing piece, the piece to solving the mystery of chronic pain, it’s not so much WHAT we do activity wise, but HOW we do it!
Here is an opportunity to experience a Feldenkrais-inspired movement lesson that will improve neuromuscular coordination, decrease tissue stressors and improve bio mechanical efficiency and comfort.
Try This At Home
Please come to standing, and preferably have some object - real or imaginary - that you might be reaching up to. For example, the molasses on the top cabinet shelf.
Let’s assume you’re right handed. If otherwise, just transfer all the below instructions to the left.
Which ever arm you are reaching with for the object is to that side above you.
Please take a moment to pay attention to easy breathing.
Have both feet making full contact with the floor and reach up with the right arm for an object that is a couple of inches beyond a simple overhead reach. In other words, your heels stay on the floor and you have only moved primarily from the shoulder complex.
Now explore how you would get your hand 2 inches higher to access that object. Do you lift a heel, one or both? If only one, which one?
Any tipping of your head, change anything at all in your rib cage?
Lower your arm, and return to paying attention to relaxed breathing.
Now explore doing the same with the left arm, reaching for an object that is to the left of the midline.
Leave that and sit towards the front edge on a relatively firm chair.
Feel your feet making firm contact with the floor. Push with your right foot and feel your pelvis rolling to left; reverse that by pushing with the other foot, Your pelvis with now role to the right.
Repeat that a few times. it’s a little bit like being on a rocking boat, Your pelvis like a ball rolling left and right.
Pause; interlace your fingers and place them on top of your head so that your elbows are out to the side like wings.
Resume rocking your pelvis left and right and tip your arms and your head the opposite direction.
Your pelvis is like a ball going one direction and your head is another ball at the top of your spine going opposite. For example, as your pelvis roles to the left (you could slip a thin piece of paper under your right buttock), your arms are tipping with the right elbow going down and the left elbow going up. And then experience the reverse as your pelvis rolls to the right.
Rest for a few moments.
Resume your pelvis rolling left and right with the head and arms tipping the other way. Can you feel how your body is acting like an accordion, folding in on one side, expanding on the other?
Please come back to standing.
Return to reaching for that imaginary or real object and whichever arm you reach with raise the heel of the opposite foot pushing with the ball of the foot and keeping that knee straight. Explore that for a while.
Can you feel how on the side of the lifting heel, your rib cage and torso are folding in. On the opposite reaching side your torso is expanding towards that object.
For example, reaching with the right arm and pushing with the left foot, your left shoulder will drop and your right shoulder will go higher.
Repeat that a few times.
You may want to shift to the other arm reaching.
At some point go back to the original reaching and compare which reach feels easier and more accessible.
Let’s make this reach for that object that’s 2 inches beyond a simple reach, let’s make it even easier!
Initiate with the opposite foot pushing, sense that the arm reaching is a result of the opposite foot pushing and your body shaping like an accordion-expanding on that reaching side to send that shoulder and hand higher.
AND, The next time you reach for that object allow your head to tip away from where your hand is reaching reaching with the right, slightly rotate your head to the left.
Clients who have participated in this Feldenkrais inspired lesson, especially shorter women, explain how grateful they are to reach higher — no longer experiencing strain on the neck and shoulders.
How would you describe the difference in effort and relative ease when you compare reaching after having done the lesson?
That lesson, “reaching with my foot,“ is an example of a task being done with optimal musculoskeletal organization.
When we move with more awareness and bio mechanical efficiency, the outcome is less stressful forces on our tissues and joints.
Please, again reach for a higher object. Can you feel your body thanking you for the absence of muscular strain and the experience of ease and flow?
The take away relative to chronic pain is that by using the Feldenkrais method to you are practicing preventative medicine and enhancing the healing of overstressed tissues.
If you pause and reflect on what happened with your reach after doing that lesson, you may realize that the missing link in resolving chronic pain is learning how to better coordinate and integrate all of the moving parts from the head to the toes.
In summary, by moving better, we feel better!