A mindful approach to back pain
A recent New York Times article discusses a new approach to easing back pain, called “mindfulness-based stress reduction.” This method involves “a combination of meditation, body awareness and yoga, and focuses on increasing awareness and acceptance of one’s experiences, whether they involve physical discomfort or emotional pain.”
The article cites a study conducted on mindfulness meditation and behavioral cognitive therapy for back pain, which reports that “many people may find relief with a form of meditation that harnesses the power of the mind to manage pain.”
It is a relief to see an article in a major newspaper that reports a different perspective (a somatic perspective!) on back pain. The somatic perspective is the understanding that we humans are not inanimate objects that can fixed like a broken toy or washing machine, but are self-guiding, self-sensing, self-teaching synergistic systems that are experienced from the inside out and, given the right feedback and stimulation, can improve through retraining of the mind, brain, and body.
Somatic Education pioneers as Elsa Gindler, F.M. Alexander (“the Alexander Technique”), Moshe Feldenkrais, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Thomas Hanna, PhD, have known for decades that by turning our attention inward to the sensations, through movement, of our own bodies, we can affect profound improvement and change our ability to function in an efficient, balanced, coordinated, and controlled manner. We can reverse the adverse effects of stress, relieve our own pain, and improve life through reeducating our brains and our movement.
This paradigm shift was bound to happen because, as the article states,
Sixty-five million Americans suffer from chronic lower back pain, and many feel they have tried it all: physical therapy, painkillers, shots.
This is something I hear every day when I work with clients: “I’ve tried everything to relieve my pain and only gotten short-term relief. There is something I’m doing – or have done that is causing the pain.” I have written previously about the questionable use of MRIs as a diagnostic tool for back pain, as well as why muscle pain is not a medical problem, but a functional problem in need of reeducation.
The Importance of Asking WHY
And yet there is still something missing from the mindfulness approach to healing back pain: an understanding of why back pain (or neck, shoulder, hip, knee or foot pain) occurs and an interest in finding the answer. The simple question, “why does this happen?” is not being asked. When that question is left out of the equation, comments such as this one from the New York Times article, will be repeated:
It may not be for everybody,” [Dr. Goyal] said, noting that some people with back pain find yoga painful.
Until the day that researchers pick up the books and research of Thomas Hanna and begin learning about Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA), brain reflexes, and pandiculation, nature’s “reboot” for the sensory motor cortex, they will always come up short in their quest to help those in pain. SMA is what researchers and practitioners the world over are looking at when they study back (or neck/shoulder/hip) pain – they just don’t know it.
Meditation is a wonderful tool for self-regulation, stress reduction, and pain relief, yet the root cause of muscle pain – the brain, and the way in which it habituates to stress reflexes, and thus organizes and moves our bodies – is where the gold lies. When you lose the ability to sense and move yourself fully, you will find yourself moving with less freedom, more pain, and more frustration. The answer lies within you and your ability to regain your movement. Without addressing the sensory motor system, brain reflexes, and how and why muscles become tight and painful, studies will continue to report that “this approach doesn’t work for everyone.”
And that would be a shame for those 65 million back pain sufferers across the United States.
Pain Relief Through Movement 