13 years or 39 years later depending on your viewpoint, I finally have the cap.
Fibromyalgia, FM for short, is a chronic pain condition, disease, syndrome or something which doesn’t exist, depending on your point of view. Some 5 million people have been diagnosed with pains which don’t seem to go away nor can be fully understood.
While I’m no expert on the subject, having been diagnosed with FM and successfully overcoming it… I can talk about a useful way to use our brains to change how our muscles feel and respond.
First, I’m going to talk about pain as an “it”. Like playing that game of tag, you know when you’re “it” and you wanted to get rid of “it” as soon as possible even though we were laughing, huffing and puffing trying to give “it” away to someone else.
Merely mentioning the word pain is sometimes too painful for people to even think about “it”.
Instead of talking about the aches, constant soreness, dullness, lethargy, burning, sore to touch, and tension which has you tied up in knots… see that might already be working for some of you.
I’d rather talk about “it” to take some of the edge away.
One of the most powerful lessons I learned along my way to a full recovery out of fibromyalgia. Yes, let me repeat that. I don’t have “it” nor got “it” anymore, nor am in remission, “it” isn’t coming back to take me down or out.
How can I say that?
Living pain free for the past 13 years is like a day and night experience. The night was like living in “it” in my 20’s and 30’s, where now… I am free, comfortable and no longer binded with any chronic discomforts.
Sure, there are occasional bumps in the road, yet in fact, it’s getting easier to move as I age. 50 is a good thing.
Life used to be too “it”-ful to even mention “it”.
During the period of recovery, I didn’t like to think of “it” as it seemed to rekindle more memories of “it”. Memories I wasn’t trying to repress, merely memories to learn from and let go of… saying goodbye to an “it”-ful friend and identity wasn’t easy… yet when that happens, you may be able to appreciate how not going there is necessary for that time being.
Yet life goes on, and “it” happens even when we’re living as healthy beings. Now all I have to do is tap into that resourceful brain of ours and feel the self-correction take place. We can self-regulate our self once we know how to wield the inherent powers of our brain/body.
Having been told “it” was all in my head… was actually pretty close to what some of the research is pointing towards… that the invisible fibromyalgia is a condition of the central nervous system.
If this is so, if “it” and you know “it” if you experience “it” enough… Would the possibility exist to change “it” from the inside, from inside our brain.
When we experience “it”… I knew “it” as body wide, moving here or there, zapping me, clouding my thoughts… making sometimes s-l-o-w and foggy decisions… at times often mis-understanding whatever verbal instructions over and over and over again… since I was about to forget them just as soon anyway.
Whew… too much work even if repetition is the mother of learning… and learning with a nervous system in jeopardy made it all the more frustrating at times. So if I ever met you and forgot your name… well that was par for the course and a person with fm was being a “normal” fm’er.
Now back to the brain… which can be changed doing simple movements.
The “tricky” part for people in chronic pain is to un-do patterns of movement which no longer serve us and re-establish new patterns which allow for a degree of different movement here or there.
Gradually, the brain and body learns how to un-learn what it is holding onto and remind itself of past patterns which were useful… while molding newer ones, we can move better as we age, otherwise what’s the point of going on binding ourselves over and over.
For “its” sake… something’s gotta to give.
Some of us know this state all too well and many people are looking for a way out.
The practice of somatics uses a brain process which is at the heart of somatics exercises. The exercises are more akin to un-exercise since they target a specific part of the brain to release muscles which are holding.
The downside is that it takes time to reorganize muscles yet the nervous system can be readily changed. A little bit of practice reminds the brain of how we once used it to self-correct the muscles.
The upside is easy, simple movement done with awareness… releases brain chemicals to allow the muscles to function at a better level while being tuned down to be less reactive and calmer… the binds begin to unwind.
Fibromyalgia, “it” sucks… yet with a little time re-organizing our nervous system… the brain can change and the body can feel young again, naturally, easily, and effortlessly.
