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| Tulips Through a Screen by Melina Meza |
A: In that post I recommended the following four yoga tools to use for pain management: breath work, yoga asana, focused relaxation, and meditation practices. Today, I will try to give some of the “whys” for each of these recommendations. Let’s jump right in!
Breath Work: The way you are breathing is a good barometer of your pain and stress response. And it may be one of the easiest habits to change. Learning to slow down and deepen your breath, for example, can have immediate effects on how your body and mind operate, including lowering stress hormones and reducing sensitivity to pain. Even something as simple as paying attention to your breath and the sensations of breathing can interrupt pain and stress responses, so you can use this kind of practice for acute flares of pain as well as chronic, persistent pain. And using structured breath techniques, such as 1:2 ratio breath and alternate nostril breath, can help re-pattern breathing that is initially a legitimate response to acute pain, but may not serve you well with chronic pain. Research has also shown that alternate nostril breathing, for example, can reduce the effects of stress, lowering blood pressure as well as heart rate.
Chronic pain is often associated with changes in emotional states as well, such as increases in anger, sadness, and fear. Research has shown that how you breathe can change the way you feel, so breath work can have this added benefit of altering emotions for those this additional challenge.
Finally, adding in gentle movements aimed at releasing physical tension that could inhibit easy breathing can help improve overall breathing ability and add to greater ease when doing specific breath work. Gentle actions like Cat/Cow pose (LINK) and seated side bending are two examples of movements that could add to the overall effectiveness of your breath work.
Asana: There are two different ways of working with the yoga poses: statically, where you hold the pose for a given amount of time, and dynamically, where you move into and out of pose with the your breath. As you can imagine, many people with chronic pain are fearful that any movement will worsen their pain. In contrast to this real concern, research has shown that movement using either static and dynamic yoga asana can reduce pain, improve function, and reduce pain medication usage for a range of conditions, including low back pain and arthritis, in people who are otherwise reluctant to move. With a gradual, gentle approach to your yoga poses, your movement practice may relax physical tension and lower stress, improve your mood, release endorphins (the body’s natural pain-relieving molecules), lead to improved strength and energy, and improve your self-listening skills and self-care responses. And even on days when you really don’t feel like moving, research has demonstrated that using your imagination, such as imagining you are doing an asana, actually prepares your body to move with greater ease and comfort for when you are ready to move again.
Focused Relaxation: Many studies in the last 10 years alone have demonstrated that relaxation practices can reduce pain and improve the quality of life for many chronic pain conditions, such as migraine headaches, back pain, and fibromyalgia. Relaxation practices have immediate effects, turning off the stress response to pain and turning on immune, digestive and repair and growth functions instead, making it a great first line practice for acute flares of pain. These practices have long-term benefits as well, helping to train your mind to differentiate the sensations of physical pain from a true full emergency response. And focused relaxation can be practiced in a variety of restorative poses or with an audio guided relaxation, such as yoga nidra.
Meditation: One of the ways meditation is helpful is by shifting your attention and interrupting your pain and stress responses. This is true, in some ways, with all the tools mentioned here. But research has shown specifically that several meditation techniques (breath awareness, mantra repetition, and visualization) can increase your tolerance for pain and quickly shift you from a state of stress to one of relaxation. In addition, meditation has the added benefit of producing positive states of mind. One study showed, for example, that meditating on joy activated the areas of the brain that produce positive emotions. In addition to immediate benefits, meditation also has the long-term benefits of assisting you in unearthing your personal habits of mind that can be contributing to pain and stress, and allowing you to consciously choose new, healthier ones.
To learn more about all of these ways that your yoga tools are effective for chronic pain, consider reading Yoga for Pain Relief by Kelly McGonigal.
—Baxter
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