New Different Methods of Chronic Pain Treatment.

I guess if you’ve found my website you are looking for new ideas to help you live with chronic pain.

There are a growing number of therapists, doctors and specialists who are questioning the effectiveness of current pain management programs, me included.

We do not subscribe to the idea of “living with pain”principal being the best we can do for chronic pain patients.

Mind Body Treatment needed for Chronic Pain

For over 20 years I've been watching clients, reduce, relieve, or completely rid themselves of chronic pain. Yes, be free of pain even after years of chronic pain!

In the video below, I tell the stories of four people who took part in my clinical research.

72% of them sufficiently improved their pain and lifestyles.
16% were completely pain free.

These results were achieved in six or fewer one-hour sessions and sometimes included homework to do between sessions.

Unfortunately, not everyone is open to this new type of chronic pain treatment.

18% of the participants gained little from their treatment pulling out before having the six available sessions.

Barriers to New Neural Network Treatment.

Even though people worldwide are getting rid of their pain with the help such as books:

“Unlearn your Pain” by Howard Schubiner and Emotion Awareness & Expression Therapy (EAET)
“The Way Out” by Alan Gordon” about Pain Reprocessing Theory (PRT)

These well qualified specialists have developed new ideas over the past 20 years after being involved in the standard treatments and philosophy of the medical establishment.

Medicine does not generally recognise their neural network methods.

I discuss later how medicine continues to keep people ‘living with chronic pain’ rather than finding the cause.

My own point of difference is my teaching background. I understand how we learn or how the brain learns by building strong connections between the neurons [or nerves] of the brain. These collections of neurons build neural networks containing memories.

The Importance of Emotions when Treating Chronic Pain.

Medical pain management clinics recognise emotions are important. One example might be that anger has greater effects on chronic pain severity than sadness, due to its capacity to increase muscle tension.

Also, the recognition that anxiety can lead to catastrophic thinking fearful about an increase in disability and future life choices being impacted by the chronic pain.

I don't dispute these, but they are effectively treating chronic pain symptoms not finding the cause of your pain.

Anxiety about the future.
Stress about finances due to inability to work or having to work in pain.
Frightened about the progression of your chronic pain.
Anger and frustration of making life adjustments to ‘live with pain.’

It is time to find better ways to address the problems experienced by people with chronic pain.

Clinical Research on Mind Body Medicine

As I described in the video, the trauma and past life experiences we had should be explored. Awareness of the feelings or emotions together with their impact and to believe that you have or can be taught the tools to express or release those emotions.

The purpose of my clinical research was to discover the effect of:

identifying,
addressing,
and releasing each participant's subconscious emotions.

This research looked at emotional blocks that brought about chronic pain. Once released or “let go” effectively the pain neural network is broken. As in the 16% of research participants who were pain free after treatment. Incidentally these results were independent of the duration of their chronic pain which ranged from five years to 20 years.

Our past memories of trauma, life changes and challenges are stored in neural pathways or neural networks. You may have heard the expression,

“Neurons that Fire Together, Wire Together.”

Counselling or Psychotherapy for Chronic Pain

I need to stress that this is not counselling or psychotherapy, often I didn’t know the circumstances surrounding the emotion – just letting go of an emotions..

We need to accept that our thoughts, feelings, moods, and beliefs influence our level of health and the course of disease [Tortora and Grabowski, 2003]

For example, if we are thinking about changing jobs past emotional experiences of changing jobs and feelings about the future will affect our rational thoughts as if our subconscious is keeping watch?

Try out my free self-help techniques to start to make changes DOWNLOAD TODAY

Try Emotional Release for your Chronic Pain

Emotional release may be part of your chronic pain treatment to gain relief, chronic pain reduction or even be pain free as that those in my research and many of my clients over the past 20 years.

As I said above many practitioners in many areas of medical and complimentary medicine are looking at new ways to treat chronic pain.

They found by being able to identify negative periods in their life and use emotional release techniques “magic seemingly happens”.

Extensive Practitioner Education and On-going Training

Clients will often discover Natural Pain Solutions after many of their medical options have shown little or no improvement, Al's story in chronic pain levels or the ability to return to a happy, energised and successful pain-free life.

I believe a more integrative or generalist approach that I've developed and used over the past 20 years is a positive alternative for the relief and treatment of chronic pain.

Therapies I have used include the integration of

Naturopathic Medicine,
Educational Kinesiology,
Yoga,
Meditation,
Mindfulness,
Brain Gym,
Rhythmic Movement Training.

In addition to these my integrative or generalist approach has developed over the past 20 years of listening and interaction with clients.

Added to this my own pain experiences, and their effect on my life and my family.

I also believe it's important to engage in continuous study and training in a range of modalities.

Pain Management courses at Edinburgh and Otago Universities.
Freedom from Pain - Howard Schubiner - presently studying

We need a Bridge between Medicine and Naturopathic Medicine

Sometimes, the medical model nor the purely natural medicine model is not exactly correct. I believe we should be advocating a bridge between these two philosophies. I hope I’ve found my place somewhere in the middle. I am many things. I am a naturopath, a kinesiologist; I am a yoga teacher. I teach breath meditation and mindfulness. Now I have training and knowledge of the medical approach to treating chronic pain.

Experience in Online Delivery of Natural Therapy - Positively Relax

Because of my experience my background I have developed variety. In 2018, I created a 12-week online course comprised of mindfulness and medication techniques, positive thinking and body awareness, after running a pilot course with 14 people utilising email for communication.

It used the delivery of supportive videos, audios together with training and education information. These variety of resources will be used in my chronic pain self help treatments.

Treating Compensations not the Cause of your Pain

Over the past 20 years I’ve discovered many different and unique ways of working, as each client I meet teaches me something about their pain journey with medical chronic pain specialists in addition to physiotherapists, chiropractors and more.

At times clients have used natural remedies or natural remedies such as massage or they tried herbal medicines. All of these treatments and experiences have to some extent brought you to my webpage as you are still looking for a way to reduce your pain.

Chronic Pain treatment viewed through a "Wide Angle Lens"

What I offer you is very much a generalist point of view. Yes, I have for many years specialised in treating chronic pain but my viewpoint, my lens is very wide from my career as a natural therapist.

Presently I've joined Howard Schubiner to learn his process of Freedom From Chronic Pain. His philosophy of neural circuit disorder actually explains my many successes of freeing clients from pain.

Study of the medical methodology and philosophy, as a postgraduate, helps me understand the pain journey that clients or patients had in the proceeding months or years before I met them.

Unfortunately most clinicians and medical specialist change my 'wide angle view' into a magnifying glass and see only the physical part of a person who has chronic pain. The often mentioned 'biopsychosocial model' seems to get stuck on the biological methods rather than the mind body holistic ideas of health.

medical view through magnifying glass.jpg

How Medicine does Chronic Pain Management

Chronic pain is unlike other types of illness or disease, such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome or diabetes that are present in our bodies.

We have been diagnosed, measurements and blood test have been taken. But the symptoms of these illnesses: -

have little or no impact on our daily lives
don't generally cause us to lose our jobs
or have difficulty carrying out our daily employment
or challenges looking after our family

Consequently, we can be more accepting of high blood pressure and diabetes with many of us happy to take medication to "manage the disease". Although, if we wanted real change we could fully alter our behaviour, what we eat or perhaps exercised and moved more.

Unfortunately, this 'manage the disease' concept extends into chronic pain treatment

To enable self-responsibility - I suggest you ask questions about pain treatments

Medication for chronic pain relief.

How long will it take to work?
Will it make any difference?
Will it reduce my pain?

And most important of all

What are the side effects?
Both short-term and in the long term.

Injections for chronic pain relief. (this includes such things as dry needling, acupuncture etc)

Needless to say we need the same questions as above.

Perhaps you also need to know,

Will treatment be painful?
How long will it last?
Will I need some more injections?

Do you need Surgery for Chronic Pain Relief?

Surgery is often offered when nothing else has worked, by that I mean nothing else has provided complete pain relief.

But as surgery is a one-way door it is more important than ever to ask the questions we asked for pain medication and for pain relief injections.

It has to be remembered that this final option can change your physical body so you come out of the operation different from how you went into the operation.

"The very best advice is to ask questions, more questions and then think about being creative and taking action and responsibility to ask more questions and ensure that you get

an explanation that you can understand."

Chronic Pain is Unlike other Illnesses

Chronic pain is unlike other types of illness or disease such as: -

high blood pressure,
cardiovascular disease,
metabolic syndrome,
diabetes

Diseases that are a physical changes that take place in our bodies. We have been diagnosed, measurements and blood tests have been taken, however often symptoms don't impact us every day as does chronic pain.

When you have chronic pain over months or years this can cause us to: -

lose our jobs
have difficulty carrying out our daily employment
challenges looking after our family
carrying our normal everyday activities

As I said above - pain, chronic pain is different

we feel pain,
we're tired, achy and frustrated after a day at work,
perhaps we can't sleep because we are in so much pain,
and then even if we do sleep as soon as we open our eyes we meet that pain again.

Chronic pain can persist, even though we are given tools and advice on how to manage that pain,

We cannot,

just take a pill,
have an injection,
or even an operation,
replace parts of our body,