05/10/2024
❤️
As I prepare for class 2 with my new yoga therapy for fibromyalgia class, I review,reflect, and meditate on chronic pain teachings from my training & my own experience. I start focusing on & noticing others saying the same things about chronic pain.
Sending messages of safety to the nervous system seems to be at the base of it, if I had one sentence to explain it. The nervous system needs to receive messages of safety, so it can stop sending back signals of danger. We know this retraining is possible (neuroplasticity tells us so).
Anything which calms the nervous system, from relaxing body tension, calming the mind, breathing more deeply & smoothly, laughing/ smiling, all of this is helpful to create an environment of safety for the nervous system. Monitoring all signals from the body, including the area of pain but also all other areas (not fixating nor ignoring areas of pain- ignore it and it gets louder)- practicing body scanning, moving attention step by step through the body can help with this.
Pushing through the pain doesn't work, ignore the pain and the message gets louder. We start holding the breath, and tensing the body- sending messages of danger, so the message/the pain gets louder. We need to work with the edge, as one student actually described to me ´´where it is interesting´´, but not past that, only then will the edge slowly move further & further.
It has (thankfully) been many years since I experienced chronic pain from a pulled hamstring. It has been so long, that I have forgotten much about that experience & the way in which I used these techniques and got better. It is only in retrospect that I understand how the chronic pain got better. I was very fortunate to have a teacher at that time in my ashtanga practice who coached me through what I now understand as what I have described above.
I´d like to acknowledge my ashtanga teacher, who applies these concepts beautifully, gave me this lived experience, and helped me back to my full ashtanga practice & beyond . I also acknowledge .pearson431 who has taught me most of what I now understand theoretically about chronic pain. I hope to pass on these teachings.
