Western Methods Not Changing Your Pain
Many of our Western methods of working with pain are very tissue based. We strengthen and we stretch, there are surgeries and injections and medications, there’s one doctor and specialist after the next. You may leave your medical visits feeling hopeless or defeated, like no one is listening to you. You may think that they think you’re crazy and you even might start to feel crazy yourself. Unfortunately, this is all too common of an experience for people who are experiencing persistent pain.
We now know that a strictly tissue based approach doesn’t work because it is only addressing a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to pain. Pain is incredibly complex. The complexity of it can be overwhelming AND it can be very hopeful!
Where there are soooo many factors that influence your experience of pain, that also means there are sooo many different ways that we can start to address it. The tissues are certainly a piece of this puzzle. There is benefit to stretching, strengthening, stabilizing, working on posture and body mechanics through more typical practices of physical therapy. There can even be benefit to surgeries, injections, and medications when used appropriately. And then we need to look further. We need to look at you as a whole, complete human being – physical, mental, emotional, energetic – and look at your context, your life, what influences you and what drives you.
Together we can look at all aspects of you to learn more about what is driving your pain experience. From there, we work together to build your self-care tool box. This can include lifestyle changes around sleep, stress, hydration and nutrition. If we need to go beyond the basics of nutrition, I know some great providers that can help you there! Your self-care tool box can also include tools for supporting your physical body, breathing practices and affirmations to help soothe your nervous system, and journaling prompts to help you uncover your blocks. To support this self-care journey, we can use soft tissue work, integrative dry needling, and Reiki to rebalance and restore. You are not on this journey alone and I would love to help support you along the way.