Walking toward the Pain
I feel very inspired to write this morning. I have had so many wonderful connections with humans lately and they have inspired me and spurred me to think deeper.
There is a podcast called The Happiness Lab and it talked about learning from our emotions instead of always trying to suppress them. If you are anxious, your body is communicating to you that there is a fear somewhere inside you, if you are angry, what is that emotion communicating to you? I feel the same with my career as a pain specialist. After all these years of helping people through massage, this is really the root of my career, find the pain, eliminate the pain. What I have come to recognize though, is that if I can help that individual recognize that the pain is communicating something to them, that there is an imbalance somewhere in their bodies or lives, that is where the true healing begins.
“Live in your body like you're going to need it for a hundred years!”
If there was no pain, how would brains know what is wrong?
If there is a muscle that is weak, in what way would that tissue alert the brain that strengthening is needed to recreate balance? Well, through signals, and communication. If a child is hungry what is the basic human way of communicating straight out of the womb?
Crying. Signaling the mom to nurture and feed the baby. That is a very basic, rudimentary way of correcting an imbalance in that child. It needs food and connection to be happy.
Why would the body be any different as an adult? It still uses signals to communicate imbalance. When that communication is ignored, pushed down, and even misunderstood, the body does not give up on its need for balance. This is where I believe the body just stops you dead in your tracks and says, “No, no more work, play, or movement until you listen to me”
I have experienced this and I see it over and over again in my practice. It started as a small hip pain for a few weeks, moved over to the other side, then I couldn’t bend my knee, yes, this is me I am talking about. I still ignored it. There is nothing wrong with how my body is communicating to me at all.
It gave me all the right signals, pain (insert nagging voice…
”Hey, you should start exercising with weights, just walking right now is not enough” my inner reply
“I am still exercising, and I am so busy right now I have no time or energy to listen to that advice, maybe next year, thanks Tips”) and on and on it goes.
“Hey, there is something really wrong here, you need to take this serious” says Body.
“I hear ya, I really do BUT I am super low on energy right now, and I don’t really have the time, in fact, for sure I don’t have the time, I am just going to keep walking instead”
UNTIL my body threw a hissy fit, screamed and threw a tantrum like a newborn without a way to soothe it. If you read a previous post about my knee, it was in December and I was still full of optimism that I didn’t HAVE to have a specific workout program…
Can you see how everyone—and I do mean everyone—pushes their emotions and signals down, ignores the communication. I have done so much research on how the body communicates with the mind and keeping our bodies balanced and I am constantly ignoring my inner cheerleader.
I am now on the downhill ride from this major pain and imbalances in my body, I am feeling great and listening to all the cues my brain is sending, for now. I know that I am human though and in another few years I know that, if not careful, this will most certainly happen again.
By the way, we are talking about ALL the body, whether this is a muscle imbalance, mind imbalance, stress imbalance, or trauma imbalance. The brain and body love what scientists have coined homeostasis. Homeostasis is defined as ” the tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes”. Hmmmmm…stable equilibrium. This is where the body loves to be.
Once we listen, acknowledge, and trust ourselves to help heal, our bodies step right up to the plate. They are healing machines if we listen and input the right elements. It’s boiled down to just a few elements. Nutrition, movement, community, and our spirituality. If these four areas are in a homeostasis state, our bodies tick along like a well-oiled machine.
The body and mind is so complicated and yet so very very simple. It's like working on this computer, I have no idea how this thing works, but if I keep it charged, and virus-free (no pun intended there), learn about how to use it, and then do so regularly. This computer serves me well, even though I may not fully understand it.
This is what I try my best to do, for to me, it is not just about massage, helping them feel good for an hour, it is about the knowledge, the understanding of the body. In my limited way, this is what my goal is for every person who comes to my treatment room, empower them to walk towards the pain and listen to what that pain is teaching them.
“Knowledge is Power”
Once you have that knowledge, you can truly heal. I have been through this cycle many, many times and each day that I have pain, I learn so much about who I am. How much stress I am under, how much exercise my body needs, how I need nature and my dog walk to calm my nervous system. How I need my community and friends to help me get out of my head and learn and grow from them. What my spiritual needs are and how they give me a sense of purpose in this life.
For me in this pain cycle, I have discovered that
A form of birth control that was deemed very safe (Mirena IUD) was affecting me in so many terrible ways (extreme exhaustion, which I am a high-energy person normally so this was a side effect, weight gain (18 pounds in just a few months)
Stress, starting my own business, carving a massage retreat out of a blank forest, and having to deal with all the decisions and banks
I walked a lot, but the same route all the time, it is amazing, in the forest and along my mountain (as I call it) but my brain was also telling me to work with weights, and I was not listening
I took on a massive project to reno and RV during all this (yes, I am that crazy) and I went up and down those little steps about 10, 000 times, and that, I believe tipped the scale.
So how did I walk towards the pain? Well, after a few months of feeling sorry for myself, getting an MRI that was the usual diagnosis that I hear in my office all the time “arthritis is setting in, and there is a tiny tear that shouldn’t affect you”, this didn’t help me at all. I found a free workout program on YouTube and one of my clients (community!) said to me ”Heidi, work every day and don’t miss”) and so that is what I did. I was so out of physical strength and my knee hurt so bad that I could barely step forward, never mind do an actual lunge. But every day I persisted, repeating the mantra
“We underestimate what we can do in a long time, and overestimate what we can do in a short time”
Teaching my brain to not give up, and to keep going so that I could rehabilitate my knee. I started listening to my cheerleader, less food, and intermittent fasting ( I have never wanted to do this ever, but I listened) I started researching how food affects my body. I removed the IUD! Here I am, three and a half months later, with a stronger body, not 100% pain-free on my knee, but at least 90% better. So now, I am implementing a specific plan for knee strength on top of my daily weight workout. It is all a process, time is your friend.
Enjoy the time you get to spend taking care of yourself, I love what I heard the other day. If you only had 20 seconds to give someone advice, what would it be? The answer he gave was:
“Live in your body like you're going to need it for a hundred years!”
