Tag Archives: Mind-body medicine

Chronic Pain Relief Guide

Body-Mind Medicine, , ,

Chronic Pain Chronic Pain Relief Guide:

8 Essential Practices you need to live pain-free.

Are you part of the 20% of  people living with chronic pain? If so, you are in good company. It’s estimated that more than 1 in 5 Americans suffer from chronic pain. What’s worse many doctors may feel at a loss about how to help pain suffers, other than to prescribe more medication. For some, medication offers some needed temporary relief. For others, the side effects can be just as bad as the pain itself. Its seems that many solutions are often temporary or may not work at all. This can add to the sense of overwhelm, fear and exhaustion that is already part of the pain experience.

Health care: where we are now

Let’s face it, the pandemic hasn’t made things any easier. With long-haul COVID reported in anywhere from 15-50% of cases, it’s likely that many millions of people worldwide will be suffering from chronic pain. And with chronic pain often comes grief, depression, trauma and anxiety.  It doesn’t help that our current  healthcare system is already stretched to its limits.  Many folks can alternate between hopelessness and desperation when it comes to getting help.

This guide was designed to give you a window into another way. Both another way to think about your pain and another way to deal with it. That way involves a body oriented, holistic approach. I know! You likely feel you’ve tried that already. Perhaps you’ve done acupuncture, herbs, over the counter medicines, prescription medicines, maybe you’ve even tried meditation. That’s all good. But let’s explore for minute what might be at the source of the pain for a moment.

The Pain Dance

Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing and author of Freedom from Chronic Pain, has this to say “Since pain comes from the body, we abandon and leave our bodies behind. In that way we betray our bodies.” But many people also feel betrayed by their bodies and so it’s easy to abandon them in the first place. It can feel like a vicious cycle .

So the purpose of this guide is to help you gradually think about how you can build trust with your body. Once you have even a little bit of trust with your body you start to befriend it. Befriending you body is the essential first step in beginning to free your self from the pain dance. The challenge is to befriend your body even when it feels bad.  This is not an easy task. But like learning anything new, befriending your body gets easier over time. It’s like a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.

1. Befriend Your Body, Shift the Chronic Pain Dance

    1. Identify a pain free or less pain place within your body.
    2. Pendulate between a place of no pain or less pain ( hold your awareness there for 5-10 seconds). Bring your attention to a moderate pain point – not the most painful spot ( hold your focus there for 5-10). Bring your focus back to the experience of no/less pain ( hold focus for 5-10 seconds). Rest.

Do this during your free time at your own pace.

The more you can identify sensations, the richer your relationship with your body.

Let it go on the exhale

  1. Bring attention to a pain free part of the body. Sense into it as you breath in. Let it go as you breath out.
  2. What are you finding now in your body that you didn’t notice? ( no right or wrong answer here). There is only your way. And that way is always changing because you are always changing.

“““

2. Flow of Breath

I often invite people to explore breath flow in their body. Chronic pain suffers are often also shallow breathers. Or you may be more of a breath holder. Either way, both breathing patterns can create a sense of constriction in the body, which can aggravate pain. The following is a mindfulness practice using the breath.

To practice, do this now:

Take some time to sense your breath in your body. You are looking for areas that  feel OK,  relatively OK, as well as areas of discomfort. In addition to chronic pain, you might also notice parts of you that feel numb or disconnected. Now begin to notice the felt sense of right side of your body. Compare this to your breath. Is there a difference? Often there is. See if you can get clear on that difference. Usually, it’s a difference of quality or texture. Maybe one feels heavy and another light. Perhaps one feels tingly and the other calm. What ever that difference is see if you can hold both in your minds eye for at least 10 seconds. Breathe.

Now let’s do the same on the left side. Is there one side of your body that’s more comfortable than the other? See if you can use the language of sensation ( hot/cold, heavy/light etc) to sense that difference from the inside. Imagine you can breath in through and up the more comfortable side of your body. Starting up through your foot, to the center of your breathing, your belly. Sense your breath crossing up through your body and as you exhale, cross over. Feel your breath moving down and through and out through the other leg, through the center of the breath

Breath + Image

Imagine for a minute that your breath is a magnet that can pick up more comfortable sensations. What sensations would it pick up? Warmth? Coolness? Calm or ease? Pulsation or stillness? Take your time to imagine this now. As you breath in the breath picks up the comfortable sensation. Then, as you exhale visualize  bringing those more comfortable experiences into your body. You can either see these sensations move down from the top of your head to the rest of your body. Or  you can see them traveling up through your feet to your leg.  Pause and see what’s different in your body. No rush here.

When there’s flow in our bodies, we don’t experience the pain as much, and sometimes not at all. Flow is the opposite of the pain state.  Where there is a sense of flow there is no pain.

 

For back discomfort: Imagine, as you inhale, breathing from the base of the pelvis up to the mid line.  Imagine coming all the way up to top of head.  Feel your spine naturally lengthening. As you exhale, imagine your breath down through your low back and out your mid line. What’s different? What’s the same?

 

3. From Chronic Pain to Deep Rest 

Start at your head or your feet. Take a journey up or down your body and find places of respite or rest from your pain. Pay particular attention to parts of your body you can’t feel. Now go up to your legs and pay attention to areas where you tend to connect and also where you tend to disconnect.  Move up or down the body gradually.  Take a few moments to use your breath and sense your way into the numb and disconnected places you have found.  Breathing in, feel the numb or disconnected parts of your body. And now do the same breathing out.

What’s different? Are there ways you feel more connected?  Is your sense of pain different?

Chronic Pain

4. Touch  Ground to Ease Pain

There often exist a connection between trauma and physical pain. If this true for you, than you already know that spending too much time in your body can sometimes feel like too much.  This next exercise may be helpful. The goal is to fine safety in your physical environment, but also in a neutral body part, like your feet. If your feet are the primary source of pain for you than choose a different body part such as your hands. Assuming your feet are a neutral place than let’s begin there.

You can do this in a standing, sitting or laying down position, though sitting is better. Notice how each of your feet contact the ground. Allow your feet to become wider as you breath. Notice the ground support you from the bottom up.

Gently shift your weight more onto your left foot. Shift your weight ever so slightly so there’s a little more weight on your right foot, subtly shift back and forth.  As you do this a few times you’ll probably notice a rhythm emerge. Allow your body wants to continue to go from one side to another. Remember to stop and rest if your get tired or dizzy. Enjoy this sense of rhythm and flow.

5. Simple Breath 

Follow the flow of breath as it moves and it moves out again. Notice what changes in your body with that one simple cycle. What a changes in your pain? Try another breath, like waves on the beach. What changes next time?

Explore Sound:

Sound can open and create vibrations in the organs and in the belly.  Expression through sound can also send new signals to the body and brain that may have been shut down due to stress.  When you make a sound you stimulate the vagus nerve which helps signal relaxation and also social engagement. You also open up the chest, throat, and lungs. It’s also a great way to help to  self regulate.

Voo Sound. This is both a sound exercise, as well as a breathing  breathing practice. To get a sense of how this works you might first watch this video.  Feel the vibrations that are created in your belly. Imagine a fog horn. Enlivens our viscera while creating an optimum balance of carbon dioxide in the blood. Getting down deep to the very reptile part of our brain can shift your relationship to the chronic pain dramatically. But it takes some time! Do this as much as you want. At least 3x a day especially when you notice your chronic pain increase or you start to feel stressed.

6. Shift Your  Posture=decrease chronic pain

A combination of life habits and trauma can have an impact on your posture. That posture can then reinforce chronic pain patterns. Mane people get stuck either in a bracing pattern or a posture of collapse. The goal here is to shift out of these patterns to a neutral posture.  Bracing posture is often characterized by tightness or rigidity through the spine and limbs. When you are in a collapsed posture, your shoulders curl forward and there is weakness in the belly.

Practice:

Feel strength in your legs. Push down into your feet. Notice vertebrae by vertebrae how your spine starts to strengthen and lengthen. Notice how the strength in your legs starts to move up into your spine and how the shoulders begin to rest open into a more even position. Imagine a tiny string attached to the top of your head. And as you feel the string pulling you up to the sky, feel your spine elongating. Feel your head floating and moving toward the sky. Notice what happens to the feelings of helplessness and collapse. As you feel the strength, the feelings of helplessness and collapse disappear. Practice times several times throughout the day. Whenever we feel triggered by feelings of helplessness, notice the collapse in your body and the strength

Move a little bit into the familiar collapse posture, then move out. Notice your spine elongate again. Your breath now has more room to move. Feel the strength in your feet and also the length of the spine. Imagine your head as though it were a balloon. The balloon is light and lifting upwards. yet, your feet still keep you connected to the ground. See if you can sense both. Note what happens to your pain when you create this much space in your torso.

7. Notice Exceptions to Chronic Pain

When your pain is at it’s worse it’s easy to fixate on it. That’s understandable but not helpful. the problem is that your brain can easily get into a habit of fixation. This can actually amplify your experience of the pain and make it feel more chronic. To counteract this, it helps to notice exceptions. For many people this is hard to do! You’re not alone if you struggle with this exercise. The brain’s natural negativity bias is partly to blame. But you can change it!

Practice:

Try answering the following questions:

When in the past days or week have you felt less chronic pain?

When in the past day or week have you felt less anxious?

Are there any times in the past week to two weeks when you felt most like yourself?

Can you feel what happens in your body as you recall this experience? Take your time. This is what the late Dr. Maggie Phillips called the conflict free moment.

8. Explore Your Fight Response

Many of us have an unhealthy relationship with anger. It’s one of the strongest and hardest emotions to navigate. Anger can get triggered for any reason, but it often gets triggered in our most intimate relationships with partners, friends, kids and family. Some people express anger too much, and it can become almost like an addiction. Others do not express it enough. Regardless of where you fall on the anger spectrum,  anger, like any emotions can get stuck. Especially, for chronic pain suffers. When anger gets stuck it is often held in the body. When that happens it’s often helpful to explore your fight response. By exploring you fight response you can gently begin to release it.

Practice:

Imagine you are your favorite wild animal. Picture in your mind’s eye what that animal looks like. See it’s face and body. Notice how it walks, whether it makes noise or not. Now, step into the body of the animal. Feel the strength and power of this animal in your body. How does this animal see, move, taste or smell? What’s different about this experience compared to your own?

Now, pretend that an equally powerful animal is entering your territory. They are coming closer. Remember, this is YOUR territory and it’s your job to defend it. If you notice your body moving into fear, retreat or collapse, then stop. Go back and imagine the animal again. Take time to feel the power in your own body and also your connection to the ground. This may be enough for now.

You can go back to explore the fight response again whenever you are ready.  Practice feeling the determination to protect and fight back. Remember, this is not about anybody getting hurt. It’s about simply practicing a natural nervous system defense. You may start to feel yourself prepare for action. Notice the strength in your arms and legs. Feel the readiness in your torso. How long are you able to stay with this strength? Stay with this experience as long as possible until it begins to naturally shift.

Want some guidance with these practices?

Connect with a highly trained Somatic Therapist or Yoga Therapist by contacting our office.

Book your appointment now.

We are located in St Louis, Missouri and serve people in the following communities: Webster Groves, Kirkwood, Crestwood, Maplewood, Brentwood, Rockhill, Richmond Heights, Clayton, Shrewsbury, Lindenwood, Ladue, Central West End and the surrounding areas.

Give us a call at: (314) 827-5448 or email us at admin@danceofchange.com

We offer in person sessions in our office in Saint Louis, MO in Webster Groves as well as video (Telehealth) session for anyone located in the state of Missouri.

 

 

 

Dancing with Anxiety: overcoming fear in four steps

Counseling for Anxiety, , ,
Dancing with Anxiety
You can actually thrive and shift the grip hold that anxiety has on your life.

Often people come to my office asking me to help them “stop their anxiety”. They say that no matter what they DO, the anxiety keeps getting the best of them. That is certainly understandable. Anxiety that’s out of control can wreak havoc on our health and our sanity. But here’s the painful truth: you can’t stop fear or anxiety from happening, our brains and bodies are wired for it. What you can do is shift your relationship to it.

Shifting the dance:

Anxiety does not have to run your life. And you don’t have to work so hard to try and stop it.  You can actually thrive and shift the grip hold that anxiety has on your life. This is what I call dancing with anxiety. Like learning a  new dance, there are steps that you’ll need to learn. There is some practice involved. But mostly all that’s required is a little patience and a desire to do it differently. Let’s look at what this means.

Dancing with anxiety means…..
  • Befriending yourself and your body even when stress is high
  • Learning to shift your attention in ways that actually help you calm down vs just “manage” your symptoms.
  • Gently confronting anxiety, without making it worse or spiraling out of control
  • Shifting your perspective of your own anxiety to see it as the super power it really is.
  • Enjoying a life with less anxiety. Also, feeling confident that when anxiety does hit, you can handle it.

How anxiety works

Before we start doing that steps and start dancing with anxiety, first we have to understand the mechanism of fear. Let’s figure out why you are using anxiety in the first place.

Just like you can’t prevent a car crash from happening after it’s already occurred, you can’t prevent an anxiety attack after the fact. The good news is that anxiety is actually very predictable cycle. Anything you can predict you can actually change to some degree.

If anxiety is the match that eventually leads to a forest fire, we must first understand how that match gets lit.

Your brain on Stress and AnxietyYour brain on fear: Signs you are being hijacked by anxiety:
  • Narrow, tunneled vision
  • Mind in a frenzy: Rapid, negative, future-focused thinking “What if…”
  • Self-perception also becomes narrow and also negative focused.
  • Judgement and complaining about self and others increase “somethings wrong with me” or “something’s wrong with them”
  • Obsessive thinking about how it “should be” how we or another person should be behaving, performing, thinking.
  • Mental Repetition: Replaying the same dreadful scenario over and over again in our mind.
  • Over focus on “Doing” vs “Being”
  • Perception shifts from Perception of a self whose on her way somewhere, get to something
  • William James “ we leave in a perceptual frenzy, always thinking we should be doing something
The two kinds of Anxiety:

 Though anxiety comes in many flavors and variations, it can be boiled down into two main categories: specific anxiety and general anxiety. Specific anxiety I just as it sounds, the anxiety is usually focused on a specific target or triggered by a known set of circumstances. Specific anxiety can include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Specific phobias like agoraphobia and many others. General Anxiety does not have a specific known target or trigger and appears to be pervasive and chronic. Some people also refer to this as Existential Anxiety.  Some anxiety has its origins in deep trauma. Existential Anxiety does not. Existential Anxiety looks and feels like habitual stress.

Regardless of the type of anxiety you are suffering from there is a way to shift the dance.

When we begin to feel at home in our bodies and our minds, we can begin to interrupt that anxious part of us that wants to sound the alarm.

A New Approach to Dancing with Anxiety

There are some predictable steps we can take that will help shift the dance.
1. Start with the body.

Anxiety is primarily a lived and felt experience. That means your body is giving you important signals for you’re to pay attention. No matter what you are doing, start by taking a pause. Listen and feel what your body is trying to communicate to you. Is it tense or constricted in anyway? Are there places where this is less the case? Just by slowing down to notice our physical state can shift us out of the anxiety a bit. Stop and allow the dust to settle.

2. Create a Circle of Safety:

Often we don’t allow ourselves to enter our own experience because we have been taught it’s not safe. Part of stepping out of the grip of anxiety is letting ourselves know it is safe to feel now. Set an intention to step out of anxiety and befriend yourself. Once you befriend your body you might start noticing and befriending other parts of your experience: your thoughts, your emotions. Try to do this without judgement. If you need help with this you might imagined safe people, places or allies that represent safety and curiosity for you. You can also ask for help from a trusted friend or therapist.

3. Shore up on resources:

Once things feel safe enough on the inside and the outside we can look towards sources of creative and life inspiration to help heal. Anything that inspires us, opens us up and allows us to feel free can be used to transform our experience of anxiety. I call these resources. Often it’s a good idea to have a combination of resources to offset the effects of anxiety. Resources can be positive affirmations, soothing people, exercise, creative practice, spiritual practice, community, as well as a whole host of other things. In my work with people we often identify the specific resources that people are using already and which ones are most effective for them. We may also identify new ones that perhaps have been overlooked.

4. Add a Dab of what Frightens

You may be surprised to discover that things that frighten you and normally cause anxiety can actually strengthen you if used in the right way. Familiar anxiety “triggers” can be transformed into helpful reminders to change course. We can learn to choose a different path than the one our anxiety tends to follow. A racing heart can be transformed into a reassuring beat. A tightened jaw can soften and open.

 

Do you have anxiety?

Ready to  dance with it instead of let it run you?

Contact our office to make an appointment:

Give us a call at: (314) 827-5448 or email us at danielle@danceofchange.com

We offer in person sessions in our office in Saint Louis, MO in Webster Groves as well as video (Telehealth) session for anyone located in the state of Missouri

Yoga for the Eyes: 4 simple exercises to prevent pain and strain

Body-Mind Medicine, , , ,
Yoga for the Eyes
Yoga for the Eyes: moving the eyes in all six directions

As I’ve conducted more and therapy sessions online I’ve noticed increased somatic symptoms both in myself and others. Staring at a screen for long periods in not a natural behavior and puts an incredible amount of strain on your body, your brain. Over time it can  create screen fatigue in your entire system,  especially your eyes.

Eyes train can lead to migraines and a whole host of other problems. In addition to following best practices during screen time use, these four exercises from the yoga tradition can be helpful. I’ve put together some of these exercises in a picture format so you can just print out the picture and hang it near your computer. Again, the less screen time the better, and chances are you are reading this on screen right now. J I’ve also kept the exercise descriptions as short as possible. These can be done in any order, but if you are experiencing eye fatigue currently, it’s probably best to start with Palming.

  1. Palming

This is savasana for the eyes. To rest sore eyes immediately after a screen time binge, start by finding a comfortable positon either sitting or lying down and allow the eyes to close. Place your hands together in prayer position and rub them together vigorously to generate heat. Now cup your hands over your eyes and allow the heat and darkness to sooth a relax them.

Variation: If you tend to run hot and/or dry and heat is aggravating to you, place a cool, wet washcloth over your eyes and allow the coolness, darkness and moisture to do its work.

  1. Explore the Six Directions

If you’ve had a lot of screen time already, feel free to print this image and hang on your wall by your computer for a quick visual reminder.  If the eyes are already aggravated, you can do palming in between each direction to allow for both rest and integration.

  1. Look up for a few breaths, then down ( repeat 5x)
  2. Look to the far upper right hand corner; moving the eyes on a diagonal line look down to the lower left. Hold for a few breaths each ( repeat 5x)
  3. Look to the far upper left hand corner; moving the eyes on a diagonal look down to the lower right. Hold for a few breaths each ( repeat 5x)

 

  1. Eye Circles

Now we will put all six directions together. Start by looking up. Circle the eyes slowly by touching all six directions in one smooth connected circle. Switch directions and go counter clock-wise.

 

  1. Near and Far

Hold your thumb close to your face. Let your eyes focus on your thumb for a few seconds then find a point far away to focus. A window with a bit of a view is great for this exercise. Look as far away as you can for a few breaths. (Repeat 5x)

Further exploration on yoga for the eyes:  want more ? Check out these articles here, here and here.

Looking for a somatic therapist and yoga instructor who works online and can help with your particular situation? Check out our schedule for availability.