Effective Coping Strategies Using Yoga for Chronic Pain

How Yoga Therapy Can Help Chronic Pain

There are two levels of conversation happening in the chronic pain space. I want to be clear that I’m not using the term “level” in a hierarchical sense. Both levels of this conversation are important, and both have their place. Whether it’s medication, physical therapy, or yoga for chronic pain, I’m a huge fan of doing what works for you, and I’m glad we have choices on our healing path.

Conversation One: Potential Coping Strategies for Chronic Pain

One conversation happening around pain is about what we might call “coping strategies.” Again, this isn’t disparaging. If you’re a chronic pain sufferer, you know how terrible it is to NOT be coping with your pain. Tools that give you temporary relief and help you mitigate the impact pain has on your life are truly gifts in this situation.

We can easily get stuck in pain cycles. One example of this is when pain prevents you from getting restful sleep, and then the lack of sleep increases your pain levels. Another example is when pain prevents you from doing activities with your loved ones, and then the resulting isolation again contributes to your pain. Coping strategies, or tools that provide temporary relief, can be brilliant at disrupting these cycles.

Tools that often work as coping strategies to provide short-term relief are:

• Medication
• Stretching
• Massage / Foam Rolling
• Chiropractic Care
• Meditation

These are tools that help relieve pain in the short term. However, when symptoms return, you have to keep “doing the thing” on a regular basis without much long-term trajectory of improvement. (It’s worth noting that there’s a lot of individual variation, so if you personally get longer-term healing from any technique, trust your body and keep doing what works!)

Conversation Two: Using Yoga for Chronic Pain for Long Term Relief

The other important conversation about chronic pain is how to create substantial, lasting change. This is where a lot of my therapy work is focused – yoga for chronic pain. While we often start by finding coping strategies to give you temporary relief, in my work with clients, I’m always looking for that relief to last longer, and require less intervention to maintain. In my opinion, if you need to foam roll twice a day every day for the rest of your life, something is missing.

Keys to Creating Lasting Results with Yoga for Chronic Pain:

• Retraining muscles, and strengthening your brain-body connection to create better stability and more efficient movement patterns.
• Strengthening muscles that are weak, and shifting patterns of gripping or bracing.
• Developing a trusting relationship with your body in which you believe what you feel, and are responsive to the messages you receive.

Not everyone is interested in long-term change, and that’s totally OK. If your coping strategies are working for you, I’m so glad you have what you need to thrive.

Regardless of your long-term goals, if you’d like to learn some techniques that can help with short-term relief from foot pain, check out the video below.

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