IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD

Have you ever been to the doctor complaining about muscle, bone or joint pain and after being seen you left the office with the notion that the doctor was saying, “It’s all in your head.”?  This type of interaction happens more often than you might imagine.  There are several reasons why you leave thinking the doctor is saying, “It’s all in your head.”

One reason is that the doctor is looking for a serious problem–he’s looking for swelling, deformity, loss of motion, loss of function, and significant x-ray or MRI findings.  If these are lacking and all he has to go on is pain, then he’s saying that there’s no serious problem-there’s no broken bone, no major finding, no cancer, no infection-no major treatment is necessary and you’re going to be okay.  Of course this is good news.  But it doesn’t get rid of the pain.  Much of this type of pain is related to muscle and ligament shortening, and although soothing therapies can be prescribed, often the quickest and best path to healing and pain relief involves a program of full range of motion of the involved muscles and joints.

Another reason the doctor may come up empty-handed is that the source of your physical pain is not in your body.  You are experiencing real physical pain, but the source of your pain is elsewhere.  We talk about the pain of marital problems, children problems, financial problems, etc., but rarely do we acknowledge that these pains are real pains.  We just don’t put them in the same category as our physical pains.  But all of our pains register and are ultimately felt by our brains.  Even when we have no physical problem, a source of intellectual or emotional pain can readily express itself in a physical location.  Physical weak links exist in overused and underused body parts, or when an emotional tie exists with a loved one such as a parent who complained about or had a particular physical problem.

Although this process can involve pain in any body part, a common place for pain of this type to reside is in the muscles, ligaments, and joints.  In the past this pain has been called psychosomatic and was relegated to a few.  People generally would think this word meant someone was crazy.  But in today’s world this type of pain is very common.  It is a pain that doctors generally are not trained to understand or appreciate.  The reason for this is that our doctors-of all types-are physical doctors.  And the real source of this pain is that part of ourselves that is nonphysical.  Doctors do not learn about God or soul in their training and they only see the body and its physical parts.  Deep-seated pain of the soul needs a release and can cause muscle and joint pain.

Motion of your muscles and joints is some of the best prevention and treatment for these conditions that lead to “the pain is in your head.”  The STRETCHING FOR PAIN RELIEF routine is a powerful program which if done daily and repeated through the day will be of great use preventing and relieving these pains.