3 Healthy Habits to Ease Chronic Pain
Updated: Oct 12, 2020
"The brain and body can fall into a groove, making an automatically looping response or HABIT."
If experiencing chronic pain, are you also experiencing fatigue, frustration, and/or feelings of hopelessness? Are you feeling lost trying to figure out doctor visits and tests including how to determine which experts can help solve the problems our bodies condition is creating?
Addressing these concerns is a significant part of healing pain. The problems that often lead to these feelings show in the way you do the things you want to do, things that you must do, and all while having the time needed to also take care of yourself. This is where developing new habits can help.
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What I am about to share can arise hope and excitement. The information comes from twenty years of pain and neuroscience research. Information is powerful; researched information is even more so. Applying even one simple practice can open doors to endless possibilities that assist in turning pain problems around.
Habits that Ease Pain
Routines help the brain relax. For example, when waking up in the morning, stiff joint pain is observed. By the end of that day, the pain is gone.
Try one or even all of these simple routines based upon these 3 points as an experiment and see what happens:
Move
Commit to doing something
Journal
Move
Move your joints when you wake up. Easy, right?
Why this helps: Your brain will begin to associate movement with feeling good earlier in the day.
Commit to something
Commit yourself to do a simple movement (anything you enjoy) daily for five days while having your morning beverage; see what happens.
Journal
Keep a daily journal of the activity you are doing for one week. Take notice to the things you’re doing and write everything down.
Why this helps: If you hear your inner voice telling you something such as, “I didn’t do anything today because I felt too much pain,” remember this; pain isn’t an accurate reporter! You may find you are doing a lot more than you realize.
What was noticed: A client of mine that went through this easy process discovered she was in fact doing a lot more then she thought. She was surprised as she was telling herself a different story.
Our thoughts become our beliefs.
Movement is Healing
Many people mistakenly believe the exercises done in a gym is what works to get stronger and better. Compare the 60 minutes spent in the gym versus the rest of the time you are living your life. Now, I am not saying gym time isn’t important, because it is. What I am saying is this, “the time we spend moving well and moving often in our daily lives is valuable too.”
If you are interested in learning more, easy, and effective ways to create new habits, try this Free 5 Day Habit Challenge Course.