Recovery from Chronic Pain
What makes you decide it's time to change and how do you go about it?
It’s so easy for chronic pain to simply become an accepted part of your life. Just take pain killers and carry on. The effort to change is often just too much.
But sometimes one event or thought can spark a whole change. This is my story of recovery.
For 19 years I battled with shoulder pain. It wasn’t constant, but daily activities such as getting dressed or washing my hair could easily set it off. Somethings were guaranteed to result in injury, such as going camping, gardening, or carrying one of my children because they were tired.
Acceptance
Ice and ibuprofen became my best friends and helped reduce the latest inflammation. Every few months when the pain got too much, I would visit my osteopath.
My shoulder injuries came from several dislocated shoulders that I had when I was between 16 and 19. Twice from playing Rugby, and once from swinging my arm too far back whilst playing badminton.
The weakness in my shoulders probably resulted from the stress I experienced from being painfully shy at school, (Actually the stress came from my thoughts about school, but that’s a whole other blog post!)
So from the age of 19 to when I was 38, I was in pain most of the time. Whilst I tried to avoid situations that would cause injury, I mainly just got on with life. Being injured just became part of my normality.
The Decision to Change
I trained to teach pregnancy yoga so that I would need to commit to having a regular self yoga practice. One evening whilst teaching a class, I was describing a pose that involves some shoulder rotations with outstretched arms. I demonstrated and felt a sudden painful pull across my shoulders and into my neck.
That was it, I’d had enough. Just one small exercise and I couldn’t do it. I needed to prioritize my own physical healing.
So off I went to the osteopath again.
This time he spotted my problem. For years he had just been patching me up and sending me on my way. Mainly because that’s all the money and time I would commit to.
But this one exercise showed him where the weakness lay. For 19 years my shoulders hadn’t been rotating properly and had been slightly pulling out of the sockets each time I used them.
And because I had made my mind up to sort out the problem, I was committed to pay whatever it cost and take the time to get it sorted.
Small Steps
So then the rehabilitation started.
The first exercise involved my partner firmly holding my shoulder in place, lifting my arm a few cms, and then letting my arm drop. Then repeating this several times on each arm.
It was painfully slow, not as in painful, but that I was so annoyed at the slow pace!
The problem was I couldn’t make much progress, as I had to stop each time my shoulders were injured. I rarely managed to go more than a few days, before I had to rest for a few weeks.
Inspired to Keep Going
My good friend and mum to two small children showed me how to keep going when times are tough. She experienced a marriage break up, a hysterectomy, and a house move, all in quick succession. I saw her at her lowest physical point, just after her operation. She struggled to even walk.
Her determination to complete her exercises to become strong again inspired me. If she could do this, whilst her life was totally turned upside down, then so could I.
It was just one step at a time.
All I needed to do was to stop looking at the whole thing and becoming overwhelmed and just take the next step.
As it had taken my shoulders 19 years to get this bad, then it didn’t matter if it took another 19 years to build my strength.
So I carried on, building on the mobility exercises.
I stopped doing anything that may injure my shoulders, including my yoga class, and looking after my large garden.
Slowly, slowly over the next two years, my shoulder mobility increased.
Exponential Increase
If you just keep going with small steps, eventually like a snowball rolling down a hill the improvements get quicker and quicker.
One day I was sharing an Airbnb with a fellow participant on a course we were both studying. She told me about Spiral Stabilization, a sequence of exercises she did with a set of stretchy cords. It's designed for building strength and rehabilitation for all the main joints. She showed me how to use the cord, and I knew straight away this was my next step. It changed everything!
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear (Theosophical origin)
When I returned home I purchased my own Spiral Stabilization cord with the exercise video and then I started practicing. At first, I would do just the first exercise and then need to take pain killers and ice for a few weeks.
But gradually my strength was built. Within 6 months I could nearly practice daily and I felt a wonderful achy sensation as my muscle strength increased.
Eventually, I was able to restart yoga and I committed to setting my alarm and getting up to practice every morning before my family woke.
Now I rarely see the osteopath and in the last year, I’ve started getting my neglected garden in order again too.
In summary, I decided to change and just kept taking the next step.
If you’ve enjoyed this post, you may also like, How to be OK with Making Mistakes
