First of all let’s be clear … that if you own one of these things called a body, you WILL have to learn how to deal with pain. Pain is actually a means for your body to communicate to you that something is wrong. Sometimes the source of pain is where the mystery lies and can be quite confusing. It’s someplace in the BODY/MIND. What do I mean by that? Sometimes a headache or low back pain signal is caused by something physical like doing yard work or sleeping on the couch and you’ve irritated nerves through stressing the normal biomechanics of your body. Sometimes a pain in the body can be caused by mental and/or emotional challenges like stress or crisis in life such as too much work and not enough down time, or perhaps you had horrible argument with someone important to you. We can’t forget about the chemical causes of pain too. Eating foods that don’t agree with your system can cause body pains or inflammation in the joints or a medication can throw our biochemistry off … that’s what side effects are.
So no matter what the pain is, I have some tips for you to interrupt the current path that your body/mind is on.
The first tip is to engage your brain in something that you like or need to do that makes the time move. Often times, if you increase your happiness quotient or get something off your “to do” list, you can break out of your body’s downward pain spiral. Take a walk, go to a movie, read a good book to “escape” into, organize the garage, or sometimes the best one for downplaying pain: take a nap and get some healing “ZZZ’s”. Remember, what you focus on grows. Focus on the pain and you will have a harder time getting out of the that groove. Get your mind of the negative.
The second tip is to stretch and hydrate the system. Did you know that tension in the body is often because we got stuck in a Subluxated pattern? Yep, your body will sometimes go down the path of least resistance and that can be an old pattern that your adjustments are unwinding over time. Especially if you are a new patient, your body needs the accumulated reminders of your adjustments to teach it a new healthy position. A great way to nudge your body into a new position and offset pain fast is to do the customized stretches given to you and dilute your system’s inflammation levels with lots of good ’ol H2O. Move around, even if you have to walk or do your stretches slowly. All patients can benefit from this tip. Even yours truly, who has been adjusted for 25 plus years, still does my customized balancing stretches and spinal exercises! Sometimes sitting/standing with an ice bag to reduce swelling after you stretch and hydrate, can help too.
The third tip is learning from what got you in the situation in the first place. This will help you to be “proactive” for the next time. I chuckle when patients get themselves in a jam and “they didn’t do anything”. I try my best to teach you how to be a good detective in how you participated when your body “talks back” in pain messages. Open your mind to the activities you do or how you do them, and don’t let the pattern happen the same way. Change it up the next time. I realize that your day to day activities are “normal” but within those activities there may be the Subluxation Villains disguised as nothingness. Ahhhh … not so subtle activities like “sitting around doing nothing”, “took a trip and slept in a different bed” or “had an argument so I took a 2 hour bike ride to blow off steam”, can all set us up for an exacerbation of symptoms. When patients learn how they participate, often they say at their next “tune-up”: Alright, I’ve got “working out in the yard Subluxations” or “playing Frisbee with the kids Subluxations”, or “I’m gluten sensitive and now I’ve got pain between my shoulder blades Subluxations”. Learn what makes YOUR Subluxations tick! When we can move on from what caused the aggravation, often times we are able to move on from the nerve irritation … and pain will diminish. This often opens you up to trying tips one and two.
Give these pain reducing concepts a go and see how you do. I kept it simple here. See how they work for you and let me know!