I hear a knock on my on my bedroom door - it's my roommate.
“I’m going for a hike today, want to join?” he chirped.
I replied with a meek smile, “I’ll pass, my back is hurting a bit.”
I wanted to go more than anything. I had been in bed for days. At the age of 25, I had developed a severe back pain after a basketball game. Now, two years later, I could not believe this was my life. The truth was, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be active again.
When the injury first happened, I urgently went to the doctor. He told me to go to physical therapy, which I followed religiously. Despite the weekly sessions of stretching, ice, and guidance...the pain didn't go away. In fact, I started to feel pain down both legs. I went back to my doctor and he ordered an MRI scan. I was diagnosed with “Degenerative Disc Disease”, a condition that causes the spinal discs to bulge and pinch my sciatic nerve.
There were intense periods of physical pain that brought me to tears. Interactions like above became commonplace. I said no to sports, no to road trips (car rides were especially tough), no to dancing, no to flying (same with plane seats), and so on. If you’ve never lived with a similar affliction this may sound extreme. For someone observing, it’s hard to understand how drastically one’s mental state changes when the body is suffering. My life switched from thriving to surviving. Every situation was now full with danger; will carrying a backpack cause a flare up? Should I sleep in to avoid pain later in the day?
One day, a colleague of mine, who’d suffered from severe migraines, told me about a book that helped him understand and relieve his migraines. I was skeptical. I picked it up and honestly, read myself on every page. The book described the idea of the biopsychosocial model of pain.
In a nutshell, pain is generated and amplified by biological, psychological, and social factors. Often people who've had a history of difficult life situations are more prone to developing persistent pain.
That sounded like me -- I was starting to connect the dots.
I was quite ill through most of my young adult life (kidney disease, cancer, etc.) These intense emotional and traumatic experiences sent my nervous system into overdrive. It’s well known that adverse experiences can cause the fight or flight response to get stuck. All of this happens in the nervous system, comprised of 52 miles of nerves that travel between brain and body. The nervous system regulates many of the autonomic bodily functions like heart rate, breathing, and nerve firing patterns. When chemicals like adrenaline are produced for long periods of time, the body starts to change.
Was my degenerative disc disease real? I was at best skeptical, but I found more research and heard stories of people just like me. They swore by treatments like Pain Reprocessing Therapy to rewire the nervous system. At this point I had nothing to lose. I loaded a 10 minute guided mediation and closed my eyes. I tried to observe any pain sensations in the body. After 2–3 times of doing this, I had an aha moment; the pain changed! Within two weeks of nervous system retraining I was 50% better! I’ve continued this practice and can thankfully say I’ve been almost pain-free for five years.
This is the science and techniques we teach at Menda. It's far beyond ‘thinking your way out of pain’ or ‘mind over matter’. We hope that you'll join us with an open mind - things always seem impossible until they happen.
Warmly,
Arun
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Modern research shows that psychological and emotional elements can play a major role in chronic pain. These non-physical components can help the brain “learn” to be in pain. By training the brain, we can re-wire the body’s neural circuitry to dial down pain sensations and bring relief.
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