To get relief from the pain you need to:
- Understand and feel how the interconnectedness of your body can make a problem in one area cause pain in another area, and what to do with this information.
- Understand the cycle of trauma and how a trauma not attended to can cause pain months or even years later, and how to deal with those traumas in the present.
- Recognize how the ways you are using your body every day are contributing to your pain, and what to do to change that.
- Have practical tools that help you listen to your body when you have pain, and know what to do to help yourself.
These four elements come together to help you create a partnership with your body, so you can come out of this pain cycle more comfortable in your own skin. This is authentic healing.
I’ll guess you have heard or experienced some of this before, what you need now is a program that puts it all together, and supports you as you go through the process of healing yourself. People are constantly talking about the “body mind connection,” but those are nothing but words if you can’t feel it for yourself.
Before any of this can happen, you need to feel heard! You need to feel safe. Once you feel you can let your guard down a little bit, your body will allow for change to take place. For some people safety comes from satisfying the intellect enough that it will allow them to consider the possibility that this could help them. For others, it is more of a gut feeling—knowing that your therapist has your best interests at heart.
One patient who had been through a lot of trauma as a child said that she had never felt safe enough to let herself feel what it was like to “be inside her body”. Once she knew we were there supporting her in feeling it, she was able to allow herself to sink in and feel her body from the inside. Just doing this helped her feel how she was holding her muscles tense all the time, causing her more pain! She was able to decrease her pain by almost 50% just by noticing when she was tensing up unnecessarily, and using the techniques we taught her to let go of the holding. She came to feel for herself how her childhood trauma was still causing her body to be hyper-vigilant, even after lots of psychotherapy. By the time she had completed her therapy, she was pain free, and was much happier and more easy-going in her life in general.
Once you feel safe, and understand how your body, mind, emotions and spirit all work together, amazing things can happen!
One patient had been suffering from terrible neck pain and low back pain for years, she had pretty much resigned herself to feeling this way for the rest of her life. She had tried every kind of medication, doctor, and alternative treatment by the time she walked in our door, and she was exhausted! By doing a thorough history and evaluation, we quickly realized that even though she always felt the pain in the back of her body, the real problem was the tightness in the front! A whiplash injury from 7 years earlier had never been resolved, and was a big part of the pain she was feeling. Once that was taken care of, she was able to get back to living her life, with only occasional stiffness that she knew how to deal with on her own.
Sound too good to be true? Not really, when you recognize that most current methods of dealing with pain look at only one aspect of it at a time. Psychology for the mind; Drugs for the emotions; therapy, surgery, or more drugs for the body; and (rarely) some sort of counseling for the spirit. This is a simple minded approach. We all know, from living in a body, that all of these things are inseparable. Our approach lets you deal with all aspects of your pain simultaneously, in one place, and finally ties it all together.
We hear the words “miracle” and “life-changing” around here on a weekly basis. Of course, we love to hear that people are feeling better, but it all just seems like common sense to us. When we look at and listen to and honor the whole person, and they will show us just exactly what they need. All we have to do is follow the body’s cues.
Still Skeptical? That’s OK, open minded skeptics often turn out to be our biggest fans. Ask yourself these questions