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Meditation with guided imagery, which frequently involves imagining yourself in a soothing environment, can reduce your need for pain medication. |
Relaxation, meditation, positive considering, and mind-body techniques can provide help to reduce your need for pain medication.
Medications are great for pain relief, but they often have unpleasant, and even serious, uncomfortable side effects when used long-term. If you may have back pain, fibromyalgia, arthritis, or other chronic pain that interferes together with your day by day life, it’s possible you’ll be in search of a technique to relieve the pain that doesn't involve medication. Some old techniques, including meditation and yoga, in addition to newer techniques will help reduce your need for pain medication.
Research shows that because pain involves each the mind and the body, mind-body therapies can have the potential to scale back pain the way in which you perceive it. How you experience pain is influenced by your genetic makeup, emotions, personality and lifestyle. It can also be influenced by past experience. If you've been in pain for some time, your brain can have rewired itself to feel pain signals even after the signals aren’t any longer sent.
The following techniques will help take your mind off the pain and help eliminate established pain signals.
1. Breathe deeply. It is central to all techniques, so deep respiratory is the very first thing to learn. Inhale deeply, hold for a couple of seconds, and exhale. To provide help to focus, you should utilize a word or phrase to guide you. For example, it is advisable to breathe in “peace” and breathe out “stress.” There are also several apps for smartphones and tablets that use sound and pictures to provide help to maintain a respiratory rhythm.
2. Demonstrating a softening response. An antidote to the stress response, which raises the guts rate and puts the body's systems on high alert, the comfort response slows down your body's response. After closing your eyes and relaxing all of your muscles, concentrate on deep respiratory. When the thoughts break, say “refresh” and return to the respiratory repetition. Continue this process for 10 to twenty minutes. Then, sit quietly for a minute or two while your thoughts return. Then open your eyes and sit quietly for a minute.
3. Meditation with guided imagery. Start respiratory deeply, being attentive to each breath. Then hearken to soothing music or imagine being in a peaceful environment. If you discover your mind wandering, say “refresh” and call the image back into focus.
4. Mindfulness Pick an activity you enjoy—reading poetry, taking a nature walk, gardening, or cooking—and immerse yourself in it. Notice every detail of what you’re doing and the way your senses and emotions are responding. Practice bringing mindfulness to all elements of your life.
5. Yoga and Tai Chi. These mind-body exercises incorporate breath control, meditation, and movements to stretch and strengthen muscles. Videos and apps can provide help to start. If you enroll in a yoga or tai chi class at a gym or health club, your medical health insurance may subsidize the associated fee.
6. Positive considering. “When we're sick, we often focus on what we can't do. Focusing on what you can do, rather than what you can't, helps you feel better about yourself and the world. A more accurate view, Dr. Slausby says, is to keep a journal in which you list all the things you are grateful for each day. But that doesn't mean we aren't still fully human.”
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