An article on health.com looks at a study which supports the minds power to assist with pain control. Sean Mackey, MD, director of the pain management division at Stanford University School of Medicine produced the study.
Dr. Mackey believes pain medicine is moving away from the concept of strict mind-body separation toward a more unified—and ancient-sounding—view in which “mind and body are really one.”
Source – health.com
His 2005 study supported his belief of the mind body connections ability to help to control pain. One of his volunteers Laura Tibbitts was linked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to see if she and others in the study could control a region of their brain involved with pain.
Laura hurt her arm, shoulder and back after a horse fall. She described her pain as:
My muscles and nerves feel like a bunch of snakes that are all intertwined, but then I also get a stabbing and shooting pain. So you have that horrible, achy, uncomfortableness, but then you get these jolts of pain.
Source – health.com
What a fantastic description of her pain, I can just imagine some great visualisation techniques which could help her with her pain thanks to her such creative description.
In the study, whilst Laura was in the fMRI scanner, Laura was asked to increase her pain. This is a very common practice in helping the mind take control of pain because if a person can increase their pain with the use of their mind, then logically that same person can decrease the pain back to its original level and beyond. When Laura increased her pain the region of her brain that controlled the pain lit up on the screen indicating that the pain had indeed increased. She was then told to decrease her pain and the pain region of her brain scan dimmed.
Laura described how she decreased her pain with a very interesting description of her visualisation technique:
Sometimes I would imagine that the pain was literally being scooped out from me, taken away and carried off. Other times I used water imagery, like it was flowing through me and taking it away.
Source – health.com
Laura used Distraction, Distortion and Dissociation from the 6 D’s to help with her pain management in her example above.
If you require support with your pain using a variety of techniques like ‘the A’s and D’s of pain management‘ with in the confines of Meditation, Hypnotherapy and Visualisation. We are here to support you but please keep this advice given by Dr. Mackey in mind:
The bottom line for pain patients is that they may want to pursue pain-control techniques such as biofeedback, yoga, and meditation. But they also need to be on the alert for scams and beware of claims made by therapists seeking to exploit their desperation. Before turning to one of these therapies, it’s best to thoroughly research the practitioner you choose.
So have a thorough look around this site and the web to see if you feel Possible Mind is right for you or if you feel there are other services out there which suit you better. It is all about what is right for you to make you as comfortable as possible.
