Chronic pain is a complicated thing to deal with. Research has claimed that pain is usually influenced by emotional and social factors. They need to be looked upon with the physical causes of pain. Chronic stress is a factor that leads to chronic pain. The best part here is that you can cure this by making relaxation exercises a part of your pain management regime.
Your body response to stress
For understanding how natural pain relief works, you need to understand how stress impacts your body. Stress and pain have a very similar impact on your body. Your heart of blood pressure may increase, your breathing becomes fast and shallow and your muscles tighten as well. you can feel your body responding to stress when you are faced with an unexpected stressful event like fearing if you are going to have a car accident. The car misses you by inches and in time, your system is back to normal. Then you relax. When it comes to chronic stress like when you are anxious about your money or health or feeling stuck in a job or marriage or fearing that something unfortunate may happen, the nervous system always keeps your body on alert. This tends to take a huge toll on your body. The levels of stress hormones also increase and the muscles always stay in the constant state of stress. Chronic stress may literally cause you pain.
Studies claim that patients having chronic back pain when talking about or even thinking about a stressful event significantly increases tension in the back muscles.
Relaxation Techniques for Natural Pain Relief
Relaxation helps in soothing your mind, eliminate the stress hormone in your body, relaxes you and your muscles. When you use these techniques on a daily basis, it can cause long term changes in your body to combat the effects caused by stress. Here are some of the techniques.
- Foursquare breathing.
Inhale deeply to expand your abdomen and contract like a balloon with each breath. Inhale by counting till four, hold till 4, exhale on a count to four. Do this 10 times.
- Guided imagery.
Inhale slowly and deeply. Here you need to imagine a soothing scene where you feel comfortable, safe, and relaxed. Bring in all the colors, smell, sounds and your feelings. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes daily. For this you can refer to this Relaxation Script for Pain too.
- Self-talk.
This changes how you think about your pain and yourself. Here you need to say more positively about yourself rather than the negative self talk.
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