Fibromyalgia affects more than 3 million people in the US each year. According to traditional medicine it can’t be cured. That’s only because they haven’t discovered the magic drug for Fibromyalgia.
And, they won’t find it! But that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome Fibromyalgia and the pain, tenderness, fatigue, altered sleep, memory and mood challenges. You can!
Medicine Misses the Mark by Focusing on Symptoms
I understand that with Fibromyalgia your life is largely dictated by how you feel. Whether that’s pain and tenderness, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, or the impact on your mood.
But, the solution does not lie in unsuccessfully focusing on alleviating the symptoms. The key is to change the underlying imbalance that is driving all those symptoms.
The Mayo Clinic believes Fibromyalgia is in part a disturbance in the communication of pain and other signals between the brain and the body. What they miss is focusing treatment on restoring that communication pathway. Mayo Clinic Fibromyalgia
Check out this post on the problem with focusing on symptoms: Focus on Symptoms & Miss the Cause
Change Your Nervous System…Change Your Life!
And Your Fibromyalgia!
Every symptom you are experiencing from your Fibromyalgia is due to some combination of imbalance, tension, and interference in your Nervous System. I was never diagnosed with Fibromyalgia but I have experienced chronic pain that interfered with normal daily activities and made me miserable.
I’ve focused the past 35 plus years on refining my approach to bringing balance to the nervous system. I’ve done this partly out of frustration in my own life and also to be able to deliver results that are predictable.
Your nervous system is how you experience everything. If you are experiencing chroni pain, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, muscle and joint stiffness, tenderness and pain, numbness or tingling, challenges with concentrating, brain fog, sensitivity to light, or digestive issue; they are all mediated by your nervous system. NIH Fibromyalgia
With all then doesn’t it make sense that the primary focus of treating fibromyalgia should be to reduce as much tension in the nervous system and restore it to as much balance and ease as possible?
Fibromyalgia Relaxation Steps
Fibromyalgia is characterized by an overall excess tension within the body. That tension is directly related to tension within the central nervous system. There is an overactivity of the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ portion of the nervous system. This drives muscle tension and pain, disrupts sleep, promotes inflammation, as well as disturbs digestion.
Whenever there is an increase in Sympathetic activity there is a corresponding decrease in Parasympathetic or Vagus Nerve activity. The Vagus Nerve is responsible for and involved in heart rate, digestion, relaxation, rest, recovery, sleep and much more.
Special relaxation techniques have the ability to activate the Vagus Nerve of the Parasympathetic Nervous System. This is an absolute key to reducing activity of the Sympathetic Nervous System and restoring more balance and ease.
One of the great keys to changing Fibromyalgia is to change the imbalance in the nervous system. There are a number of practices that promote more ease or relaxation in the nervous system and as a result, the body.
Here are my 5 essential steps to powerful
Fibromyalgia Relaxation Techniques:
These will accomplish a couple of things. In the short term there will be an almost immediate reduction in tension and an experience of greater ease in the body. With time and repetition, you can retrain your nervous system to operate from a baseline of greater Vagus Nerve activity and a corresponding reduction of Sympathetic activity.
1. Body Awareness: It’s natural with Fibromyalgia and any chronic pain to adopt movements and posture in an attempt to relieve some of the pain. The problem is that these strategies often cause a long-term increase in pain. The very movements and positions that appear to offer short-term relief can actually perpetuate your pain.
Body awareness practices are key for a couple of reasons. First, they can be very effective by themselves in reducing tension and pain. And, they are key to help you monitor the effectiveness of other techniques.
We live in a culture that does not place much value in paying attention to our bodies other than when something is wrong. Yoga Nidra is an ancient practice that has been shown in research to promote deep relaxation. Here’s a description from the Cleveland Clinic: Yoga Nidra
2. Consistency: I often say that consistency is more powerful than intensity. It’s taken you likely years to get to the point where Fibromyalgia has become a central issue in your life. Relaxation techniques need to be done multiple times per day. And, they need to be practiced every day. The body is amazing in its ability to develop patterns. If you have fibromyalgia you are stuck in a nervous system pattern of tension and imbalance. It has developed over months, years, even decades. It will take time and repetition to develop a pattern of relaxation and ease.
3. Safety or Ease: No single technique is effective for everyone. Different techniques work differently for different people at different times. You must learn to identify the feeling of safety or ease in your body. This will enable you to find the approaches that work best for you. Notice when your body feels the most ease, the greatest relaxation, or the least amount of pain. This is how you will judge the appropriateness and effectiveness of any practice. Does it bring even temporarily a greater sense of ease?
4. Identify Multiple Approaches that work: there are 3 broad categories into which every relaxation approach fits. There are embodied practices that involve your body. These might involve touch, movement, and breathing.
There are environmental approaches that have more to do with your surroundings. Getting outside in nature is an environmental approach that has been proven to promote deep nervous system relaxation.
And, there are relational practices that involve your relationship with yourself and others. Notice what brings you more ease.
5. Breathing: A core of my approach is what I call Conscious Breathwork. Before you can properly apply breathwork you need to learn to change your breathing pattern. Learn to breathe in through your nose, slow your breathing down, and use your diaphragm to breathe. When you breathe slowly and lightly using your diaphragm you are communicating to your nervous system that you are safe.
Think of a child having a tantrum or an adult experiencing a panic attack. Their breath is rapid, shallow and comes from their upper chest, shoulders, and neck. They are stuck in an acute episode of fight-or-flight.
Every effective Fibromyalgia Treatment approach has one primary goal in mind. That goal is to shift the balance of the nervous system from Sympathetic Dominance to an active Vagus Nerve. This shift will have a number of effects. It will tend to improve sleep quality which will reduce pain and inflammation.
Sympathetic Dominance is associated with fatigue, muscle tension, pain, poor sleep, inflammation, and often anxiety and depression. This is a lifelong pattern. It likely started well before your Fibromyalgia showed up but it provided the fertile ground for Fibromyalgia.
Your body has developed some very entrenched patterns that are not serving you. The goal is to shift those patterns to one that offers you safety, ease, relaxation, sleep, and recovery. It won’t happen overnight but you should notice some immediate shifts, even if they are short lasting initially.
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