WEEK 2 More Relieving Skills for the Physical Intensity of PAIN

The second weekly lesson from the Pain Mastery Institute is about another set of skills designed to reduce the experience of pain in the body. These skills are to impact pain that is a result of muscles tightening up as a reaction to pain of any type, located in various parts of the anatomy.

What is taught is a series of tensing and relaxing of muscle groups, starting at the toes and working up to the head and neck of the body. I was told to tighten and then release systematically the tension I had created, and then relax after releasing, and then breath deeply.

These techniques are very similar to some exercises I learned many years ago, as part of creative visualization and meditation. Instead of focussing on achieving a receptive state of mental suggestibility, these relaxation techniques are designed for the specific purpose of releasing muscle tension underlying many of my experiences of pain – especially in major muscle groups in my body, such as cramps in my feet and calf muscles, lower back and upper back muscle aching and tensions, head aches from neck and head muscle tensions. And so forth.

After completing the lesson, and doing all of the tightening, releasing, and relaxing exercises for the various parts of my body I realize that this technique is intuitively a part of pain management strategy for most of us, but only used occasionally. The purpose of the course, I’m sure, is to create a conscious awareness of yet another technique that promises some relief from pain, which we have all practiced once in a while, and bring this technique into daily use, as a part of our Pain Toolbox of resources.

Even after only two of the weekly courses in the Pain Management Institute online course I am beginning to realize the efficacy of this program. It’s success will be in part a result of bringing into conscious control elements of knowledge and behaviour that help ameliorate pain. These techniques are a part of innate knowledge but without conscious awareness of their use and potential benefit we only apply them randomly, rather than on purpose to structure our response to chronic pain.

This is a good start to a realization than I may indeed have the ability to management and improve my experience of and control of pain, not necessarily all at once, or even ever completely, but incrementally somewhat better.

When I started this set of blogs related to pain I was looking for some real improvement in my experience of and control of pain. Even after only a few weeks of analysis and discovery I am more hopeful of making gains.