The Missing Link in Pain Relief Treatments

Current treatments for pain relief include manual therapy (chiropractor / osteopath), massage, stretching, foam rolling and trigger point tools.

These often make you feel better quickly, but the pain always returns a few days or weeks later. The only way to keep your body moving and pain free is to keep repeating the treatment, often with diminishing returns over time.

The reason that these pain relief treatments are less effective for resolving chronic pain long-term is they're aimed at changing the physical properties of the muscles by pulling, rubbing or pressure.

But, muscles are controlled by the brain and nervous system. To get long-term relief from pain, this is where you need to create change.

Your movement patterns are influenced by your lifestyle, job, stress levels, emotional state and injury history. The movement patterns you use the most become habitual  and unconscious.

Remember when you were a learner driver? You needed to really concentrate to get the timing of using the clutch and changing gears to avoid stalling the car.

But once you've been driving for a while, the coordination becomes second nature, and you change gears smoothly every time.

But say, you hurt your ankle and can't push on the clutch pedal like before. You'll find a different way of using the clutch so you can still drive whilst protecting your ankle.

The same thing happens with your movement patterns.

If you roll or sprain your ankle, you'll change how you walk to protect the ankle form further damage. Over time this new way of walking becomes your normal gait.

These protective, compensatory movement patterns are less efficient, because they stop you from using your body as Nature originally designed. Joints become unevenly loaded, muscles are used in different ways to their original functions.

Result = Muscle tension, pain, injury, wear & tear.

Bringing conscious awareness to how your body creates movement and the recurring patterns of tension in your body helps you to re-programme your brain to reverse these inefficient, compensatory patterns so you move with more ease, skill and efficiency.

With repetition and practice, your body shifts from exhausted to empowered.

You can only change what you're consciously aware of!

Try this body scan exercise to recognise your patterns of tension. 

Body Scan Exercise

• Lie on your back with your arms and legs in a relaxed, comfortable position. You want to place a cushion underneath your feet or knees to better support your lower back
• Close your eyes and allow your breathing to settle into a natural, steady rhythm
• Using your mind as if it were a medical scanner, move your mind's attention slowly from the crown of your head all the way down to your toes. Then slowly scan back up your body, from toes to top of head.
• Repeat the scan 5 times
• As you scan your body slowly, where do you notice tension in your body? Is it clustered in 1 area of your body, or maybe on 1 side more than the other? Is the tension forming a pattern, or randomly scattered?

Repeat this body scan exercise daily for 1 week, and observe if there are any patterns of tension that recur more frequently than others?

NEXT STEPS

• Book into a Stretch, Yoga or Pilates class with me - these are a good introduction to The Befriend Your Body (BYB) Method for pain relief.
• Attend a mind-body retreat - these are deeply relaxing, fun, social small group experiences typically held in various locations within easy reach of Worthing, West Sussex. The next retreat is  on Sunday 24th March. Click HERE for all the details.
• ** COMING SOON ** New 60 mins pop-up classes. One class a month, a different theme each month,
• Subscribe HERE to receive "The Movement Chronicle", a weekly e-newsletter delivering mobility and pain reduction tips directly into your inbox every Monday morning,

If you would like support with managing pain or an injury please reach out to me on any of these channels:

• Email at norma@unicornhealthandfitness.com
• DM me on Facebook Messenger 
• WhatsApp message to 07801 867361.