Chronic and Persistent Pain
Pain can hijack a life, demanding our attention and bossing us around. Slowly, but surely, our self image, who we are in the world, and everything we do becomes about managing the pain. We measure our day by the level of pain.
Pain can happen with or without actual damage to our body’s tissuse.
Pain is an event of the brain that can be activated by more than injury to our tissues, a memory, a trauma (past or present), a sight, sound or smell can activate the pain pattern. Pain is our nervous system’s way of getting our attention when danger is perceived. Sometimes, with long-term persistent pain, the danger signal gets over sensitive and reacts to the slightest stimulation. When this happens, movement becomes more and more limited as seemingly everything causes pain or pain comes from “out of no-where”.
Many people in chronic pain feel:
- HELPLESS…”Nothing I do seems to help.”
- ANGRY….”Why is my body broken or letting me down?”
- DESPAIR….”Why is this happening to me?”
- FRUSTRATION….. “I have tried everything and nothing seems to last!”
The Feldenkrais Method is gentle and respectful of you and puts great trust in your nervous system’s ability to learn something other than the pain pattern. This is a partnership that we will embark on together. There is not one answer to resolve your pain, there are many. And together we will find them. Luckily your brain is plastic. That simply means that it can change. Like a broken record, your brain is stuck in the pain groove. Together we will find many other “grooves” so that your pain pattern is not the one your brain defaults to. We do this with very gentle movement explorations, trusting that if we introduce new ideas slowly, without force, your nervous system will find its way into movements that create new patterns, patterns of ease and comfort and hope. In fact, as we explore and begin to discover how you are moving, your curiosity will guide us.
The theory of pain that informs me comes from the NOI group in Australia. If you would like more information on their research check out these videos:
Trauma
Not always, but often there is issues of trauma where there is persistent pain. I am not a therapist but the work we do together can help you move through things with your therapist. If you are not seeing a therapist and would like a referral, I am happy to give you one.
Trauma is held in the body, still holding, protecting, guarding…. long after the event(s). Because we are working together with gentle, respectful movements of your body, things will open, change, release.
One Feldenkrais student expressed it this way: “As a person who has suffered childhood trauma, I felt like I had lost my boundary, my connection to the ground, my central line. I felt as if I was always holding and guarding against the trauma. These layers of guarding have kept me locked out of myself. Feldenkrais has become an amazing tool to help me self regulate, to unfreeze emotions still in me. It is helping me reintegrate myself, bringing me back home to me.”