In my Denver office, I see a lot of clients dealing with chronic pain. This pain is often the motivating force for coming to see a Rolfer in the first place. Although we want to try to find the source of pain and restriction, this can not usually be dealt with sufficiently until we establish balance and support in the individual's entire structure. More so, pain is a subjective experience for everyone, and it may or may not be affected by one's attitude towards it. Here are few ways of working with pain directly and without medication.
Focus on your health, not your pathology
If the pain one experiences is fairly intense, it can be quite consuming. It may be easy to neglect other aspects of health and wellness when in pain, though it is important to understand that the signals interpenetrated as pain are processed in the brain, not in the nerve receptors that send the signal. If a person is tired, has not eaten, and is under a lot of stress, and then they stub their toe, it may a very painful experience. This same person may not be much bothered by stubbing their toe if they are well feed, rested, and dealing with stress in a healthy manor. The same can be true with chronic pain, so neglecting your health because you are in pain creates a feed back loop that can be hard to get out of.
The other aspect of focusing on your health is to try to bring your awareness to the sensation of the whole of your body. Hopefully your whole body is not in pain, so if it is not, try to have a wider more global sense of the body so that the one or two spots giving you pain does not consume all of your attention. This pain is not the whole of your identity, try to stay in contact with the whole of the self, try to focus on your health not your pain.
Don't Take the Second Arrow
There is a Buddhist analogy that I like very much. It says, when you are in battle and get struck with an arrow, it could do quite a bit of damage, but getting hit with a second arrow in the same region could do 10X the damage, so don't take the second arrow. This analogy is really about negative emotions arising, which any honest Buddhist will have to agree is simply part of the human condition. So the real danger is either reacting to the negative emotion and feeding it with more fuel. This can be true of emotional reaction to pain as well, which can intensify pain. We view pain as an enemy and an intruder that we have to fight rather than just a segment of the experience of one's self. When experiencing pain, it can be helpful to try to acknowledge it without being sucked into it. Try to relax the unnecessary tensions in the body rather than tensing up as a reaction to pain, otherwise you will have two types of pain, one physical and one emotional.
Allow yourself some space
Pain and stress usually ends up as muscle tension in the body. Our muscles and joints end up stuck in flexion, it's a trauma response. This unnecessary muscle tension can tend to further aggravate structural issues in the body and lead to more pain. When we are tense, rushed and anxious we experience constriction. When you experience this, see if you can let go of unnecessary tension, allow the breath to be a bit freer and try to experience the body as something spacious rather than constricted. When in pain I know this is easier said than done, but if you try you may have some success. Realize that nothing lasts forever, and so pain can not be forever, but it can be perpetuated either by the environment or by the individual experiencing the pain. Sometimes the brain just stops sending the pain signal even if the issue is still there. Also, sometimes the brain interprets perfectly ordinary signals as pain and there may not be anything perceptibly wrong in the area in which the pain is perceived. What ever the case, developing a better relationship with the body can help one deal with chronic pain better and avoid pain killers.
As a Rolfer, we don't simply address a problem, we address the individual and their whole structure. This often means, going around the problem rather than fixating on it. The problem is not your hip, your neck, or your shoulder, it's your relationship with your hip, your neck or your shoulder that is the problem. When the body has balance and support, it has a chance to heal. It is this natural ability to heal that the Rolfer tries to assist in the individual by working to build structural support and ease of movement. No one likes to live with chronic pain, but it is a chance to listen to the body, and develop a new relationship with it. If we can not help eliminate chronic pain then maybe we can help make it more manageable. Either option is going to take some work.
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