Pain is your body’s way of communicating with you. It’s a signal in your nervous system that something may be wrong. It feels like an unpleasant feeling and can feel like a prick, tingle, sting, burn or ache. It can be sharp or dull. It can be deep or superficial. It can come and go or it can be constant.
There are two types of pain: chronic and acute. Chronic pain generally has come on slowly and gradually and it can last for a long time. Acute pain usually comes on suddenly because of injury or inflammation.
Pain can be inconvenient and frustrating, so it’s common to ignore pain or override it. It’s also scary when we don’t know what the cause is, and we can feel overwhelmed about how to address it. So we often push it to the side for as long as we can.
Muscle pain, like neck and shoulder pain or back pain, for example, often begins slowly and gradually. It’s easy to ignore it when it first begins and we hope it goes away. Things like massage or yoga help hold it at bay, but they can only provide temporary relief.
Muscular pain is often caused by a combination of unhealthy posture and repeated daily activities, like sitting at a computer in a slumped position for many hours each day or repetitive movements. It can also be the result of asymmetry in your body.
For example, let’s say you had an injury in your left foot many years ago. You recovered long ago, but in the process, you “learned” (and I really mean your brain learned, so this was unconscious) to adapt your entire body around your hurt foot.
Maybe you haven’t put equal weight on both of your legs since that time, but this imbalance between your legs feels normal to your conscious mind. And everything has been fine…until you started feeling (for example) pain in your right shoulder and side of your neck. And for some reason, now your lower back is complaining.
Your body does an amazing job at compensating for asymmetries for many years and when these aches and pains start showing up, they seem illogical. For more information about how compensation patterns occur, click here.
Another reason for physical muscular chronic pain is emotional stress. Our bodies take on musculoskeletal patterns of stress and anxiety. We round forward and all the muscles along our backs are held in a stretched-out position, while the front of our body is chronically contracted, causing our breath to be shallow, our bellies to be contracted in an unhealthy way, and our neck and jaw muscles to be contracted.
The Feldenkrais Method® is a way to identify these muscular contractions that feel like chronically tight muscles, and teach your nervous system how to release these habitual patterns that show up as chronic or acute muscle tension or pain. It uses your attention to small, slow, gentle movement to restore ease and freedom to your body.
The history of these muscle contraction patterns took sometimes years of practice to create, but with some time and commitment, these unhealthy patterns can be unwound so that you can move with freedom and ease once again. Many people no longer need pain medication and are able to do activities they once loved to do again, pain-free.
For more information about Feldenkrais, click here.
To schedule a virtual or in-person session, click here.