Experiencing pain, especially consistent pain, can be debilitating. There’s nothing worse than your body hurting and having to wait for the next doctor’s appointment before finding some relief. Luckily, there are holistic pain management techniques you can do from home that can help!
As a mental health therapist and wellness enthusiast, I LOVE finding new ways to help people empower themselves. Pain has a major impact on mental health, and I frequently teach my clients strategies to manage their pain from a holistic perspective. This post is ALL ABOUT holistic pain management techniques.
What Causes Pain?
The perception of pain is caused by a feedback loop in your brain between different parts of the nervous system and the physiological system in your body. This loop is a continuous cycle of various signals and responses that shift the intensity and duration of pain that you experience.
To break it down, pain is a signal that your body sends to your brain to indicate that there is some sort of damage to the body, such as tissue damage. The brain then interprets and processes both the physical damage, such as how big the injury is, and the emotional significance of the pain, like what you believe about the injury.
Next, your brain sends out a response. This might include sending out cortisol (the stress hormone) to activate you to take action or create a behavioral response to encourage emotional processing or implementation of coping strategies.
This next step, called modulation, is the MOST IMPORTANT when understanding how to apply holistic pain management techniques. The brain has the ability to either intensify pain or dampen the pain through the release of neurotransmitters along the pain pathways in the nervous system.
This response from the brain creates a feedback loop, where the brain and the injury are responding back and forth. This feedback loop can impact your experience of pain. For example, if your brain tells your body to continue emotional distress and tension, the experience of pain will intensify, but if your body is told to relax or focus on something else, the experience of pain can reduce.
Mental Holistic Pain Management Techniques
Relaxation Techniques
There is no question that tension in the body can not only increase your perception of pain but can cause lasting pain by creating inflammation in the tissues and knots (or myofascial trigger points) in your muscles.
By practicing relaxation techniques, you can reduce these negative side effects, as well as encourage your brain to modulate the pain by releasing certain neurotransmitters designed to reduce the experience of pain.
There are quite a few different techniques for relaxation, including breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, and meditation.
Meditation
Meditation is one of the most important holistic pain management techniques because it not only helps you relax, but it can increase mind-body connection, and ultimately allow you to have more control over your emotional and physical experiences.
Some research suggests that certain meditations can allow us to tell our brain what to do, including pain reduction and physical healing.
If you are a beginner at meditation, try looking at YouTube videos on How to Meditate. Once you get the hang of it, imagine focusing on your areas of pain during meditation. Imagine there is a dial. Now imagine turning up the dial and noticing the pain amplifying, then practice turning down the dial to make it subside. The more you practice the experience of pain. able to consciously reduce the experience of pain.
Cognitive Restructuring
Cognitive Restructuring is not as intense as it sounds! Pain Reprocessing Therapy, which helps people who struggle with chronic pain, centers on adjusting your beliefs around pain, which can impact how you experience pain. Some limiting beliefs might be catastrophizing the negative consequences of pain or holding the belief that the pain will never end.
Shifting your beliefs about pain helps you focus on acceptance and management, versus increasing emotional distress. With enough practice, you’ll be able to observe pain objectively and without resistance, as focusing on how distressing the pain is can make it feel worse.
Physical Holistic Pain Management Techniques
Acupressure
Mental exercises can be super helpful with shifting the experience of pain, and there are also physical holistic pain management techniques that can decrease the root cause of pain.
One way to do this is through acupressure. Oftentimes, our pain stems from physical tension and energy blocks within our system. Acupressure works by applying pressure to certain points on your body that are believed to help the flow of energy. This pressure encourages blood circulation and releases muscular tension.
Click here for some Essential Acupressure Points
Low Impact Exercise
It may seem counterintuitive, but exercise is a great way to manage and moderate pain. Depending on the cause of the pain, many side effects of exercise can serve as pain relief.
Your body is designed for mobility, so increasing mobility through natural movements, like walking, yoga, cycling, and swimming helps t0 improve flexibility, increase blood flow, and lubricate and strengthen the joints. These benefits can reduce pain in your body.
Lastly, low-impact exercise boosts endorphins in your system, which is one of the neurotransmitters that the brain naturally uses to modulate pain.
Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Pain is frequently caused by or exacerbated by inflammation in the body. Luckily, there are easy changes you can make to your eating habits to reduce inflammation.
Here are some examples:
- Omega-3s (found in fatty fish)
- Anti-oxidents (found in leafy greens, berries, green tea, and dark chocolate)
- Lycopene (found in tomatoes)
- Tumeric, Ginger, nuts, and seeds (contain anti-inflammatory compounds)
There won’t likely be immediate relief with adding these foods, but over time you should notice a difference in physical pain caused by inflammation.
These are some of the top things I recommend people try who would like to reduce pain on their own. I hope this post helped you learn more about holistic pain management techniques.
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