Chronic Pain is a vicious cycle for so many people on the planet. We often end up feeling victimized in our own body. The search for the cause of the pain seems never-ending and the treatment feels obscure at best. We can feel like we are shuffled on and off medications with no real relief.
As most of you are starting to realize (as you read my articles more and more) that I am a huge believer and practitioner in the mind-body connection.
As a person who has suffered in the whirlwind of chronic pain, I truly understand my clients' misery. I've been there. At a certain time in my life, I used to rely on 15-20 Ibuprofen tablets, three glasses of wine and multiple visits to Starbucks daily just to function. I remember feeling like I was on a sinking ship and that this spiral downwards had no foreseeable end.
Luckily, I stumbled across the mind-body medicine and through yoga and meditation I started my own journey of self-healing.
But, for many of you who are suffering daily, it may feel like the pain will never end and will only worsen with each day that passes.
I do believe there is hope, and the rest of the article is designed to guide you and hopefully direct you on a path that may be of benefit to you.
There are a few important bullet points that relate to mind-body medicine, which are different than our current medical model, that I will describe here, which are important to understand:
•Your body is smart
•All of the trillions of cells that are in your body are awake, alive and sentient beings
•They respond to external cues and just because they are giving you pain now, does not mean that this cannot stop
•The pain does not mean that you are a bad or evil person
•Your body does want to release the pain so that you can live a pain free and happy life
•With practice and patience, you can reverse the pain cycle
•It does not have to take long, and in fact it can be almost instantaneous
Now that you understand some of the basics, let me describe pain and the mind-body connection a bit more. For many of you, this information is different than what you have learned about the human body. Having studied this for the last 15 years, and having practiced allopathic medicine for about 20 years, I can understand why this new model may be confusing at first.
Within mind-body medicine, we believe that your cells are actually holding onto some 'energy' that is not allowing them to float around in your body and be happy. The energy is usually related to a heavy feeling or what we call 'stress' that is literally stuck in your body. You can visualize this heavy energy or stress like tar that literally sticks to the cells and pulls them down.
Imagine having a fight with your lover, and then feeling the consequences in the body. Most people can relate to developing headaches or neck pain immediately after a bad argument. This is because the emotion (or energy) of anger or resentment or sadness or fear is literally 'stuck' in the fascia layers of the body. You can definitely get massage or physiotherapy done, which will likely help at least short term.
If, however, you stay mad or angry, you may have had the experience that the pain actually comes back, despite the hands on therapy that you received. Most people can relate to this experience, even if they cannot define the emotion or the upset that is stuck in their body.
This is where I come in. As a practicing Mind Body Medicine coach and medical intuitive, I can actually 'feel' another person's energy. I use my sixth sense of intuition to feel another's body and sense what is happening. It is a skill and a gift that I have harnessed over years and practiced with thousands of clients. Once you can figure out the energy, then with a little bit of guidance, you can release that energy and be pain free.
Here is a story of a client that I worked with about a month ago:
This woman is a 45-year-old housewife with two kids. She was suffering from chronic neck pain that was debilitating for three years prior. She had exhausted the medical route, including fancy MRI scans, multiple specialists, and over $3,000 in massage and alternative therapies. When I worked with her, I felt the anger and guilt she was feeling in her neck around her husband. I used my intuition and conversation with her to label it.
She had made it clear that she wanted to stay in the relationship. My work was to tell her what emotion she had in her neck and then teach her how to think of her husband differently. She did a few exercises that I taught her, including writing down all of the amazing things about her partner amongst others. As she did this, she felt differently about her partner, was able to release much of her guilt and anger and voila -- within 48 hours the pain was completely gone. To date, it has not returned, but this client knows exactly what she would have to feel to reproduce the pain if she chose to!
Can it be the same for you? Of course it can.
For many of you, just thinking of and understanding pain in a different way may be the start of a new existence in your life. I encourage you, if you have never thought of your body in this way, to start the process off. Break out of the structured model of health.
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