Pain Relief & Foundation Training
Are you driving with the “check oil light” on? The check oil light I am referring to is pain. (For those of you who’ve taken anatomy with me know that I like to use metaphors when talking about the body and find that the car metaphor makes a lot of sense.)
I was recently working with a client, let’s call her Trisha, who has had hip pain for the last 6 months. Trisha was driving with her check oil light on for 6 months and had decided to just cope with the pain. Trisha is 40 years old, a mother of 2 and sits much of the day for her work. She is active but the hip pain was disturbing her sleep and interfering with her activities. When I talked to her on the phone she was well aware that the pain was an issue but she did not know what to do about it and thought it was just part of getting older.
Trisha lives in another state and can’t see me for bodywork and chiropractic sessions in person, so we started doing Foundation Training over Zoom (I’ve been doing a lot of these even with local patients due to COVID).
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I showed her how her to use the principles of Foundation Training to lift her out of the habitual pain patterns she had sunk into over time. We worked together for a few sessions and found that some hands-on work with a skilled manual therapist would also help. We’re happy to say, she’s feeling so much better, exercising without pain, and sleeping more easily through the night. A huge part of the improvement is her ability to track when she is falling into old habits and then to do something helpful for it.
Most of the issues in the tissues I see in myself and my patients come from compression. Over time, the nerves, blood supply and joints start to absorb this compressive stress decreasing the body’s ability to move and feel well.
One of the best remedies for compression is DECOMPRESSION. I’m not talking about the decompression of a hanging out with good friends (although there’s no denying how good that is for the soul!), but engaging your muscles and consciously creating space in your body through Foundation Training.
I admit, I am also guilty of letting the oil light flash in front of my face and just continue driving as if it will slowly dim or just go away. Personally, everything about 2020 is making me more and more distractible. I’m searching for things to get lost in, such as YouTube satire comedies for hours. But when I do that for too long, I forget that my body is sending signals to my brain all the time - the flashing check oil light - about my physical, emotional and mental wellbeing (or lack thereof).
Questions I ask my patients (and myself) when the check oil light (PAIN) is on are:
How long have you been on for?
Are you more present during the day or night?
Are you on all the time?
What makes you feel better or worse?
These are the same questions I asked of Trisha when we had our first Zoom meeting to see what was happening in her body. I came up with strategies specific for her based on her answers and we created a plan.
The moral of this story is that age is not the primary culprit of physical pain (although it can definitely be a contributing factor) and there are ways to make a change in your body. If you want to learn more about how you can decompress and develop strategies to find relief from pain patterns in your body, check out Foundation Training. You can join group classes or private sessions with me virtually and/or in person.
Be Well,
