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I suffer from chronic pain. Can I exploit yoga for pain relief? I don’t need to make my situation worse.

Absolutely, in line with Kelly McGonigal, PhD, the writer of Yoga for Pain Relief.  She is a noted yoga and movement teacher and health psychologist at Stanford University.  She has not only researched and written about pain, but she has known it firsthand: For a few years McGonigal experienced every day, debilitating headaches. Nothing appeared to help.

“My doorway into relief got here first through mindfulness meditation,” she says in a YJ interview. “I took a category for individuals with chronic pain and learned an entire recent solution to relate to sensation.”

What are various kinds of pain?

Although all and sundry may experience pain in a different way, everyone knows pain after we feel it. But all pain shouldn’t be the identical, either. Acute pain may end up from an injury or illness, nevertheless it generally resolves after the condition is treated—with medication, surgery, or another intervention—or when it runs its course. Even if you’re in an important deal of acute pain, you’ll be able to expect that there’s an end in sight.

Chronic pain settles in and is reluctant to ease its grip. It’s more complex and it doesn’t reply to treatment in the identical way, McGonigal says. “It’s more strongly influenced by stress, thoughts, and emotions. And the pain doesn’t necessarily reflect a single identifiable ‘problem’ within the body, like a compressed disc or an infection,” she says. It might involve your whole body—muscles, nerves, hormones, and brain.

Pain research supports the concept pain is a mind-body condition. For that reason, healing chronic pain “will likely be a more gradual process that requires a holistic approach, including medicine, social support, and mind-body or psychological approaches,” she says.

Yoga for pain relief

As research on the connection between yoga and pain continues, studies indicate you can access pain relief through respiratory, rest, meditation, or movement. Research has shown that yoga asana practice has an impact on low back pain, neck pain, and arthritis. Although yoga postures could help ease muscle tension in your back or tightness in your shoulders, for instance, its true power could also be in its impact in your neurobiology.

Some research suggests that folks who practice yoga have more gray matter in brain regions related to pain tolerance. The longer your yoga sessions, the greater the profit. In accordance with a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience, the brain responds to meditation in a different way to yoga than it does to other types of pain relief—suggesting that using each mindfulness practices and medical treatments may match together for more practical pain management.

“Treatment often involves an individualized approach which will include each pharmacologic therapies (prescribed drugs, analgesics, and NSAIDs) and nonpharmacologic interventions akin to exercise, muscle-strength training, cognitive-behavioral therapy, movement/body awareness practices, massage, acupuncture, and balneotherapy,” in line with a report from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Regarding the feeling of pain

Taking a specifically mindful approach taught McGonigal to have interaction the pain relatively than fight it.

“I learned how one can give attention to my breath and feel sensations without resisting them. I remember the primary time I attempted breath mindfulness during a nasty pain episode, and it helped,” McGonigal says. “The pain had been so intense, and yet I had the experience at the identical time that it was OK, that I used to be OK, and I could handle it.”

She began applying “mindfulness acceptance of sensations” to her yoga practice. This implies paying close attention to what you’re feeling in each pose, not only what shape your body is making. Moderately than give attention to what the body is doing, or what shape you make, you give attention to noticing how you are feeling within the pose.

“Practicing mindful yoga was extremely useful, since the poses created so many intense sensations. It was an ideal solution to learn a recent way of regarding discomfort,” she says. After incorporating these techniques into her practice, her pain lessened in frequency and severity.

“The pain isn’t gone; it has been just a totally different experience. It has no hold on me, my emotions, and what I’m capable of do,” she says.

Using all of your tools for pain relief

Addressing pain “involves every possible tool of yoga, including respiratory, rest, movement, meditation, philosophy, and self-reflection,” McGonigal says.

“It’s recognizing that yoga’s healing power comes from its ability to alter the way in which you breathe and move, yes, but in addition how you are feeling, think, and relate to yourself and to pain,” she says. “Individuals with pain often feel betrayed by their body, and this was definitely true for me. Yoga can make it easier to restore trust in your body, and learn how one can hearken to your body.”

Got an issue about alignment in a certain yoga pose? Want to raised understand a facet of yoga philosophy? Need advice on how one can approach a difficult situation in your class? Submit your questions here or email us at asktheteacher@yogajournal.com, and we may answer it in an upcoming column.