You Can Break the Cycle of Chronic Pain!

It’s All In Your Head: Your Brain & Pain

Many of us who experience pain might feel very offended if we were told that this pain was all in our head. However, all pain, as well as any other sensation, is created by the brain. This is because pain is a perceptual process- the experience of the pain is not actually happening in the part of your body that hurts, but rather it is happening in your brain. Sometimes this perception of pain can be a very useful process (Ouch, I just touched a hot stove, let me move my hand away as quick as possible!), but when it comes to chronic pain, this process can severely impact our quality of life.

In cases of chronic pain, the brain tends to get hypersensitized to the pain until we are in a constant state of high alert. A learning process occurs in which neural pathways involved in pain perception of a certain area (the low back, for example) become strengthened. The neural pathways responsible for chronic pain experience go far deeper than our acute pain pathways, such as in the stove top example. This is because over time, the neural pathways related to the chronic pain will be embedded into the memory and emotional centers of our brain, making chronic pain far more complex than pain from acute injuries.

As with any learning process, we form associations, such as... sitting = pain, long car rides = pain, exercise = pain. These associations can contribute to a self-perpetuating cycle in which we avoid certain activities because of the fear of pain, which decreases our quality of life, thereby contributing to depression, inactivity, limited social participation, and other factors that will actually make our pain worse over time.

How do we break this vicious cycle?!?

Pain is our brain's opinion of how much danger we are in, and we have to change that opinion. Our brain was capable of establishing these detrimental neural pathways that contributed to the chronic pain, and it is just as capable of creating new pathways that will help us get out of this situation. This is because our brain remains plastic for our entire lives, meaning we are always capable of learning. We must learn that we are safe, and that movement of the affected body part is safe and beneficial.

At The Wellness Station, we help those in chronic pain learn that they are safe.

By creating individualized movement programs, we help our clients learn ways of moving and relating to the body in a manner that will drive neuroplasticity. We will help to teach the little person in the control room (aka your brain) that movement can be associated with calm, pleasure, and ease, rather than movement = pain. The movements lessons are designed to help our clients move with greater efficiency to make movement easier and to decrease tension and tissue strain. We will also help with self-care tools necessary to calm down the nervous system to decrease pain sensitivity, and provide guidance regarding management of the psychosocial aspects of living chronic pain.

Do not let pain stop you from living life to the fullest. It is never too late to learn!

Written by Jacob Tyson, DPT - Physical Therapist,Yoga Instructor and The Wellness Station Team

You Can Break the Cycle of Chronic Pain!

It’s All In Your Head: Your Brain & Pain

Many of us who experience pain might feel very offended if we were told that this pain was all in our head. However, all pain, as well as any other sensation, is created by the brain. This is because pain is a perceptual process- the experience of the pain is not actually happening in the part of your body that hurts, but rather it is happening in your brain. Sometimes this perception of pain can be a very useful process (Ouch, I just touched a hot stove, let me move my hand away as quick as possible!), but when it comes to chronic pain, this process can severely impact our quality of life.

In cases of chronic pain, the brain tends to get hypersensitized to the pain until we are in a constant state of high alert. A learning process occurs in which neural pathways involved in pain perception of a certain area (the low back, for example) become strengthened. The neural pathways responsible for chronic pain experience go far deeper than our acute pain pathways, such as in the stove top example. This is because over time, the neural pathways related to the chronic pain will be embedded into the memory and emotional centers of our brain, making chronic pain far more complex than pain from acute injuries.

As with any learning process, we form associations, such as... sitting = pain, long car rides = pain, exercise = pain. These associations can contribute to a self-perpetuating cycle in which we avoid certain activities because of the fear of pain, which decreases our quality of life, thereby contributing to depression, inactivity, limited social participation, and other factors that will actually make our pain worse over time.

How do we break this vicious cycle?!?

Pain is our brain's opinion of how much danger we are in, and we have to change that opinion. Our brain was capable of establishing these detrimental neural pathways that contributed to the chronic pain, and it is just as capable of creating new pathways that will help us get out of this situation. This is because our brain remains plastic for our entire lives, meaning we are always capable of learning. We must learn that we are safe, and that movement of the affected body part is safe and beneficial.

At The Wellness Station, we help those in chronic pain learn that they are safe.

By creating individualized movement programs, we help our clients learn ways of moving and relating to the body in a manner that will drive neuroplasticity. We will help to teach the little person in the control room (aka your brain) that movement can be associated with calm, pleasure, and ease, rather than movement = pain. The movements lessons are designed to help our clients move with greater efficiency to make movement easier and to decrease tension and tissue strain. We will also help with self-care tools necessary to calm down the nervous system to decrease pain sensitivity, and provide guidance regarding management of the psychosocial aspects of living chronic pain.

Do not let pain stop you from living life to the fullest. It is never too late to learn!

Written by Jacob Tyson, DPT - Physical Therapist, RYT-200- Yoga Instructor and The Wellness Station Team

Solving the Pain Mystery: Movement Alleviates Chronic Pain

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

1. 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.

2. Please take a moment to pay attention to easy breathing.

3. 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.

4. 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?

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. Pause; interlace your fingers and place them on top of your head so that your elbows are out to the side like wings.

8. 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.

9. Rest for a few moments.

10. 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?

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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!

The Elusive Obvious: How Better Movement Heals the Whole Person

How are stress, anxiety, movement challenges (e.g. balance issues, neurological disorders, musculoskeletal injuries), chronic pain, and even long-term symptoms of COVID-19 related to our approach at The Wellness Station?

At The Wellness Station, our clientele present primarily with issues of musculoskeletal pain, movement disorders, balance challenges, and various stress-related conditions. Our therapeutic approach is neuroplasticity in action, with the goal of helping people achieve their goals and live healthier, more active lifestyles. We provide movement lessons that emphasize working with one's body, rather than on one's body. These lessons help to establish and strengthen motor pathways that facilitate efficiency of movement and inner calm in order to move towards a more fulfilling and pain-free experience of daily life.

Our approach, based on the Feldenkrais Method and therapeutic yoga, helps to shift the autonomic nervous system into the parasympathetic state with all of the various organ systems working inter-dependently in a homeostatic, rhythmic flow. And thankfully when the body is more in a state of calm and balance, that systemic harmony allows for healing to occur in a variety of our bodies systems.

Our focus on decreasing the body's stress response (fight or flight) goes beyond improving movement and decreasing pain. Much to our delight, our clients often report that other health issues also improve, including sleep quality, gastrointestinal distress, memory and cognition, energy levels, and positive management of blood pressure and other heart-related conditions. While we do not claim to treat those conditions directly, research and our experience as healthcare providers can tell us that lifestyle choices- how well and how often we move, our ability to manage stress, the choices of what we put in our bodies, and our daily practices of self-care can have major influences on our mental and physical health.

For example, COVID-19 can lead to long-term symptoms including cognitive issues, labored breathing (dyspnea), pain with deep breaths, loss of smell and taste , and overall malaise. And all of the above create tremendous fear and anxiety about one’s present and future capacity for functioning well -the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system becomes over-stimulated, and fight, flight, or freeze characteristics prevail. By learning tools to regulate the nervous system through mindful movement and other daily practices, our clients develop the self-efficacy, knowledge, and wisdom necessary to combat or prevent the symptom manifestation of many diseases.

Coming full circle with the above health challenges, at The Wellness Station our emphasis on improving the quality of how we move, think, feel, and sense regularly resolves musculoskeletal pain, improves balance and movement difficulties, and also has many positive effects on the various organ systems.

It is wonderful to hear our patients report improvement with memory and other cognitive issues, high blood pressure and cardiac disorders, various gastrointestinal challenges, sleep quality, and expressing “I feel I have my life back again!”

In the words of Moshe Feldenkrais, we help our clients "make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy elegant."