Pain and Injury
What do you think of when you hear “pain management”?
It makes me think of biting my lip, suffering through the aches and pains, and forcing myself to smile anyway. How miserable!
Okay, so there may be other options, too… but, do I really have to give up the activities I love? And the pain medications available are so risky; is it really safe to take them?
I’ve tried just about everything, with no success. Why should I believe this would help?
The Alexander Technique is not like anything else you have tried. It isn’t a treatment. It isn’t a medication. It doesn’t treat symptoms. And it doesn’t treat your body as if it can heal separate from the involvement of your mind in the process. It offers the only real solution – it shows you how to stop doing the things that cause the pain.
You don’t have to live with the pain or medicate it away, and you don’t have to limit what you do to keep it away.
You can take charge of yourself and the things you do that cause pain.
Most chronic pain results from moving our body a certain way…
The aching in the muscles in your lower back – it may be related to the way you tense those muscles constantly… to sit at your desk, to pick up a bag, to stand in line… tensing, all the time, in everything you do.
The deep pain in your spine – it may have to do with the way you collapse your body down into poor posture, compressing the discs in your spine, which over time might pinch on a nerve and cause radiating pain elsewhere in your body.
The achy wrists – it may be a combination of too much tension in your arms and not enough support for your arms from your back.
Pain that seems to move around your body – it may be from a mild form of hypermobility in your joints that puts pressure through different parts of your body depending on what you are doing.
Slow recovery from an injury – it may have to do with how you continue to put pressure through the injured area even when you are trying to protect it.
As we use the same bad habits in our posture and movement over and over – often for years of our lives – we start to feel the strains, aches, and sharp pains they are causing.
We don’t realize we have a choice… but we do.
Most of us don’t know how to stop moving or standing in the ways that are bad for us. We think pain is a fact of life. But we can live pain-free – we just don’t know how.
We are not able to change, because we don’t realize that having a choice in how we stand and move is a skill.
But, like any skill, it can be learned with instruction and practice. You can develop an ability to stop the habits that cause pain and to develop a more coordinated and supportive body.
We can do more than MANAGE our pain… we can STOP it.
Alexander Technique lessons give you the tools to stop your bad habits in how you approach posture and movement, to stand in a way that takes pressure off the places that hurt, and to move in a way that benefits your body rather than hurting it.
I can show you how to stop repeating the same movement patterns that contribute to the pain. You can develop a conscious approach to your actions that facilitates the kind of posture that doesn’t involve tense muscles and compression through your spine.
You can learn to integrate how you use your legs and arms with your back so everything moves as freely and easily as possible and doesn’t put pressure or strain through the parts that would otherwise hurt.
When we stop doing the bad habits that cause our pain – we stop the pain, too.
We can also speed up RECOVERY from acute injuries…
… like car accidents, falls, and recurrent types of pain like “throwing your back out.”
Even when we experience pain and injury from an accident or acute incident, the way we stand and move has a big impact on how quickly we get out of pain and recover the strength and balance in our movement that may have been lost.
The Alexander Technique offers a conscious process you can use to take care of yourself during recovery.
It helps you know the limits of when to push yourself and when to take a break… and what to prioritize about how you move, so you can get back to living your life without exacerbating the injury.
We can PREVENT pain from developing…
If you move in a healthy way and approach your activities by consciously putting your own well-being first, you can avoid pain and injury in the first place.
Are you ready for a better way?
Stop trying to put band-aids on the pain you are experiencing. Schedule a free consultation and let me show you how to live a pain-free life. You can take charge of what you do and how you do it.
Replace the fear of pain with confidence that you know how to prevent it.