HEALTH SPOTLIGHT: Relaxation Techniques for Chronic Pain Management, Distraction Against Pain
By Space Coast Daily // May 4, 2018
Meditation can take your mind off your pain
Stress makes pain worse and can easily put you into a never-ending loop where your pain leads to stress and stress leads to pain. To counteract this process you need to relax.
When you learn how to relax you reduce the amount of pain you feel and the anxiety caused by it. While relaxation alone is not going to cure your chronic pain, it will help you reduce it.
Relaxation enables you to free your mind from pain and focus on something else. To put it differently, relaxation can become a distraction from your pain.
Deep breathing
Breathing deeply is one of the easiest methods to fight chronic pain on the go. All you need to do is focus on breathing using your diaphragm and inflating your belly. This method of breathing relaxes your body and helps your cells receive more oxygen, which enhances their function. You can focus on your breathing to reduce the pain at any time.
Guided meditation
Meditation can take your mind off your pain and guided meditation is one of the best ways to relax and send the pain in the background. You can focus on an image or you can imagine yourself doing something you love, like cycling or having a bath in the sea.
Each time you need to block the pain, you can focus on that image. The advantage of this method is that it can be used anywhere, at any time, with maximum effects.
A walk in nature
The great outdoors are great for relieving pain, so a small walk in the park can help you relax. Drink some water and just enjoy the environment. Look at the sky, the grass, and the trees and breathe deeply, soaking in all the energy from the nature around you.
Yoga
Yoga is a popular active pain management method, which increases your flexibility and strengthens your body. At the same time, it helps you clear your mind and distracts you from the pain. Yoga also includes breathing techniques and it can be conducted in the park.
This means you can benefit from yoga in multiple ways, by merging the benefits of several relaxation techniques from this list. Depending on your needs, you should be talking yoga classes once or twice a week to help you manage your pain.
Massage
A massage can relax your mind and your body as it releases the tension from your body. A trained massage specialist can address your pain by applying certain techniques for pain management.
You can also see a chiropractor, who is trained to soothe physical pain. Most of the times, a massage is accompanied by aromatherapy and music therapy, which helps you relax and provides a distraction from the pain.
Combining multiple techniques from this list can help you relieve the physical and mental stress which comes with pain and promotes it at the same time. Don’t expect to try one of these methods and get instant relief: you need to experiment until you find the one which works best for you.
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