Chronic pain, back pain, plantar Fascitis, Stress pain, headaches, migraines, Sciatica and a multitude of other pain is part of life for many. This article is offering you an explanation as to the why that might be. By the end its hoped you may get perspective for your pain and answers on how to help yourself.
Many of you may think, what a strange question the title is asking and, I suppose it is hard to imagine a localised injury could travel and be felt as pain elsewhere in the body. Please don’t dismiss this as fantasy quite yet, because, in a few short paragraphs I’m going to tell you why, there is substance behind the question and by the end, it may help you understand if, you are someone who suffers from persistent, chronic pain, the reason why, that pain exists; or, you might just, like me, be fascinated by the mysteries of the human body and want to know more. Either way, stay with me and at the end I’m going to provide you with a few tips on how to overcome persistent headaches and other pain problems.
Simple Anatomy
I’m sure all of us as children may be familiar with the song that linked all the bones in the human body. The skeleton needs muscles to help it to move, it needs nerves to send messages to affect movement and it needs structures to stabilise joints between the bones so we don’t just fall apart. Connective tissue, I spoke about in a previous blog: How being brave does not overcome anxiety is the very structure that intertwines muscle, sheaths nerve tissue and provides the tensile strength for joints to articulate with fluidity, without coming apart.
Connective tissue or Fascia as it is often referred to, is continuous throughout the body, it can be a single cell thick and very delicate, or it can be tensile and strong, acting like a form of scaffold between the muscles lengthening into tendons and at the joints it binds as ligament. I think that the continuity of the connective tissue is its greatest asset and, I feel it is possibly one of the reasons why Reflexology, for example, is so efficient in its ability to stimulate circulation and nerve flow, through a kind of ripple effect.. So, having established the fact that the head is connected to the toe via the body’s fascia (connective tissue) how would a stub to the toe trigger a headache? To arrive at the how, we need to get an idea of the nature of fascia and what it reacts to.
The nature of connective tissue
In a large number of people the worst that might happen is a localised bruise and a swelling, but a stub to the toe is an impact that produces energy. The very nature of energy is that it does not disappear. It becomes dynamic, it travels. I suspect in many cases its trajectory might end at the knee joint, causing a few problems there but, left untreated, this can migrate up the fascial thread until it finds weakness. If that weakness could be in the membranes of the skull, it could theoretically end up as a persistent headache. When I use the term persistent I mean chronic. I’m suggesting that this is how many forms of chronic pain develop in the body. It starts as energy, which can be a physical impact or it could also be set up chemically via drugs or through traumatising factors that trigger negative emotions or psychological imbalance.
Does this help with understanding your pain?
Now you get a picture into why chronic, persistent pain may exist. Ask your self, if you are someone who suffers with pain if, you at some stage in your life have experienced an impact. The impact doesn’t have to necessarily be physical. As I explained fascia will react to emotional shock, an example of which could be grief, drugs or other chemicals. The impact doesn’t even have to be a singular event, it could happen over time. It could develop and build up until the fascia can no longer cope and just begins to react.
The thing to understand is that the body is a beautiful vehicle for life, it has been made most miraculously and so practically as to contain the information for its own healing. Understanding the mechanism of pain is often the key to access its healing. This sounds very simple and perhaps to good to be true, but osteopaths, physiotherapists, chiropractors, remedial massage therapists have been utilising the knowledge of fascia and its structure and function for decades. Healers, who are sensitive to the information given by the body through scanning with their hands can often sense minute differences in temperature at skin level, they can sense tightness, tautness and irregularity. The key is for those of us who feel pain to understand our pain and seek natural routes if they are available and to use them. Our bodies are mechanical structures and like any piece of equipment they need to be fuelled correctly, maintained and kept in optimum functioning condition. This is done through Bodywork. Bodywork is an industry term for any manipulative or hands on treatment that achieves physical balance.
Tips that may help you overcome your pain problems.
- When did the pain start? Did you wake up one morning with the pain at its worst or did it develop over time? This information may help you establish the cause. If its related to medication there may be options you have. If there was a physical impact that may have been involved you might seek out massage therapy or some other form of physical therapy that aims on finding the source of the pain, because the site of the pain may differ from its point of origin, and this knowledge is something a professional can make use of.
2. How does the pain make you feel. Are you angry, resentful or depressed by it? Does becoming stressed make it worse? Your emotions are locked into your body and though we never imagine there is a correlation between the two, please don’t discount it. It may be that you need to talk to someone.
3. Are you looking for a quick fix? Remember its your pain, you sustained it, its in your body, part of your life, which, no one but you really can know. Quick fixes to chronic pain are often impossible. Be realistic in your aims. Be determined in dealing with it, believe you can overcome it and own responsibility for reducing it, managing it or eliminating it. This will begin creating the mindset for being pain free.
4. What aggravates the pain? Sleeping, sitting, a particular position? Make a note and change things to achieve some improvement?
5. If you haven’t already, investigate mindfulness and breathwork. Centring yourself, raising your internal awareness, learning to use your breathing to regulate or ease the pain is powerful in pain control.
6. This last tip is specific to headaches, all the above apply, but for headaches specifically you may have sustained a build up of energy of impact in the neck muscles. A warm water bottle around the neck or one of those microwaveable heat bags, will increase circulation to the neck muscles, followed by some gentle yogic neck stretches may help alleviate.
Take some action for the future
If you found this blog helpful, or would like more information on how we might be able to help you if, you are struggling with pain problems then, please drop us a message at enquiries@thefeelgoodcentre.co.uk In case you might want to be added to our email list to be notified when future blog posts are put up, ask us to include you. Feel Good Therapy has the intention in the future to set up social media tools and training programs which you may be interested in. If again these are things of interest to you, then let us know so you are kept up to date. In the meantime, perhaps you might like to join the community we are aiming to build to support our journey through life, promoting an attitude of gratitude, the emotion of joy and happiness all, with the goal of living our best life. If that’s the case then please click into this link: bit.ly/3ERQJDG