Chronic sciatica can be a grinding reality. The pain can get the better of you. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
This post offers some techniques for coping with chronic sciatica. Of course, I’m going to tell you that participating in ongoing medical care to help relieve your sciatica pain is a best-in-class solution. It’s true. Regular visits to pain-relief professionals will improve your quality of life by diminishing pain.
But because you’re someone who believes in helping yourself, you’re here to read about these techniques and actively pursue them. And self-help is a pro-active support to managing pain and living a better life.
Perhaps these techniques aren’t for everybody, but they’re accepted as complementary solutions that can really help.
Disassociation
Pain can only rule your life if you allow it too. Main chronic pain sufferers (including those with sciatica) look inward to manage their pain, using the power of the mind/body connection.
Disassociation is a practice which allows you to put pain in its place. By imagining that the part of your body which is causing you pain is no longer part of it, you’re commanding your body to stop sending pain signals to your brain.
Picturing the part of you body which is most affected by sciatica as separate from your physical reality requires patience, perseverance and concentration, but this method has worked for many people.
Biofeedback
Since the late 1950s, biofeedback has been touted in some sectors of the medical community to exploit the mind/body connection for gaining control over one’s physical reality.
Using a monitoring machine to report the status of physical functions, biofeedback trains the person implementing it to exert control on bodily functions not normally under the influence of the patient’s mind.
Conditions like sciatica can benefit as patients learn to control tension – often a source of even worse pain than that normally associated with sciatica.
Indulge yourself
Like the other techniques discussed in this blog post, indulging yourself by participating in your favorite activity can train your mind to “forget” pain.
The pain signals are still there, but when you’re doing something that makes you happy, the theory is that the happiness conquers the pain.
With pain, perception is everything. And your perception can interrupt pain signals (at least temporarily) when it’s engaged in doing something your genuinely enjoy and look forward to doing.
Whether that something is walking to the park to watch the birds play in the trees or curling up with a book you’ve been dying to read, tricking your brain is what it’s all about. In these terms what you’re doing is taking control by saying you won’t be a slave to pain.
All this said, it’s important that you understand what’s causing the sciatica pain. That’s easily resolved, with a visit to Back & Body Medical.
Back & Body is an award-winning clinic practicing leading-edge, multi-disciplinarian care. With a team of chiropractors, acupuncturists, sports medicine experts and physical therapists, we take pain on with an integrated approach.
Got sciatic pain? Contact us.
