Coping with Pain

This month's thoughts revolve around pain, how we cope when we experience pain in our bodies, and how embodied movement can change this conversation. 

People come to me in a lot of pain. They often come to me after surgery, or after Physical Therapy, or because they have an issue that hasn't yet been resolved. They come to me with preconceived notions about their trouble areas, and this often sounds like, “Oh that's my bad shoulder. It always hurts," or “It's always the right side of my body - everything is out of whack,” or “My low back hurts and I've just gotten used to it,” or “I've always had trouble with my hip, I'm just good at ignoring it.” If you look closely at those statements, you'll notice a tone of frustration, a dismissal of the part that hurts, and some pretty big generalizations about it.

When someone is in pain, it makes sense that they would be frustrated, especially if it's an issue they've dealt with for a long time. Of course they are exasperated and have arrived at, “What's the point of focusing on it anymore if I can't get it to change?” It hurts so we shut it out. We find ways of dissociating from or numbing the discomfort, because it's horrible to live with chronic pain.

While I completely understand this frustration, dismissing the part that hurts means that people also stop listening to the information and sensations they receive from their bodies. When we shut out this information, we disengage from a conversation with our bodies. While this is completely relatable, disengaging doesn't solve the problem, and can actually keep us from positive change.

It is my job to help you interpret the sensations in your body, and to help you develop discernment about which sensations need your specific attention. We need to engage in this conversation if we are going to change the pattern that's causing the pain.

I imagine each client coming into my studio with a big box, full of a variety of types discomfort and pain, which over time have all been dumped in the same box and stuffed in the back of the closet, labeling it all “Pain," and saying things like, “Oh that's my bad shoulder, it always hurts.” I want to get that box out of the dark, take each item out one by one and help you identify which sensations mean what. Generalizations don't help us here. Some sensations turn out to be a feeling of tightness, some turn out to be over stretched tissue, some turn out to be nerve pain, some turn out to be fascial pulling, some turn out to be joint issues. We can't dump these all in the same box, call it “My problem area” and then ignore it if we want to solve the problem. Each of these types of discomfort require different approaches to solve them. 

While I happen to love the challenge of sleuthing out the problem, people often find these first few sessions highly uncomfortable. As we start unpacking your box you now have to feel all that discomfort as you sort through it all. It takes lots of patience, care and attention, along with a new intellectual understanding of your body, to sort through these issues. It takes time for the body to adopt and adapt to new movement patterns. After about 5-10 embodied movement sessions folks tend to start feeling improvement, since it takes the body much longer to adopt new patterns than it takes your brain to intellectually understand them. The space in the middle can be quite challenging. 

My goal is always to help you find new strategies and movement patterns that serve you better. The longer I work with people, the deeper their understanding gets, and the more able and pain free their bodies become. People begin to engage in an empowering conversation with their bodies. This is where I see change happen. 

So, if you're new to this work, stick with it. I promise it gets better after the initial unpacking. If you've been doing this work for a while now, I invite you to look back and try to remember what it was like when you started. 

I'd love to hear from you: What have you noticed as you begin your embodied movement practice? What do you remember about your experience when you first started unpacking this box? What helped you stick with it in the beginning? And last, how has embodied movement changed the way you work with your body and it's many sensations?