7 Easy Steps To Finally Get Rid Of Lower Back Pain

by Christine Sutherland

If you’ve been suffering from lower back pain for any significant length of time, it won’t surprise you to learn that it’s the single most common form of chronic pain on the planet. But an enormous number of sufferers continue to have terrible pain no matter what treatment they try.

If you are one of those people who have suffered from a long time and yet not been helped, it’s highly likely that this article, especially the experiment at the end, will prove to be what you’re waiting for.

CHRONIC LOWER BACK PAIN REQUIRES A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT APPROACH

When back pain continues over a long period, despite treatment, we can usually attribute that to a peculiar type of pain called chronic pain. Chronic back pain isn’t actually related to any injury or deterioration of the spine, muscles or nerves. We know this because studies show that there is no relationship between damage and pain.

Using x-rays of spinal damage, studies show that it’s impossible to predict who will experience pain and who won’t. Incredibly, there is no relationship between the damage and the degree of pain felt.

The reason for this is that chronic pain is generated in the brain rather than in the body, and we can prove this very easily just by looking at MRI scans of the working brain. In fact functional magnetic resonance imaging proves conclusively that chronic pain is just the same as emotional pain! How shocking is that!

So this is why, if you’ve had your back pain for a long time, despite trying many treatments, you are most likely to have chronic pain, and this article is most likely to help you.

7 STEPS TO ELIMINATE CHRONIC PAIN

Step 1: Take out the stress. Have you ever seen a car alarm that would go off for no good reason? Maybe a slight breeze would blow and off it would go! Your nervous system can be just like that, all tightwired and ready to produce pain at the slightest provocation. By taking out the stress, you help your system to calm down and behave normally.

Step 2: Emotional Reactions. Do you have strong emotional reactions to things? This doesn’t help chronic pain because it heightens the reactivity of your nervous system. You might be surprised to learn that there are actually ways to switch off unwanted emotional reactions so that you feel calm and can think more clearly, even in a crisis. Check out www.bmsa-int.com, which is a site for medical practitioners who are using this method very successfully with their clients.

Step 3: Being Sociable. I know it can be difficult to mix with people when you’re in pain, but social withdrawal or isolation is not only incredibly damaging to your general health and wellbeing, but it enhances your pain reactions as well. It’s necessary to make an effort to mix with people in a way that has nothing to do with your pain, so that you can at least for a short time put your focus somewhere else, and get all the benefits that “social engagement” offers.

Step 4: Get moving. The natural instinct is to stop moving, especially if the movement causes more pain. In acute pain, that makes sense, but it makes no sense at all with chronic pain unless it’s leading to increased nerve sensitisation (which is a factor we understand and can easily work with!). Activity is essential to mental and physical health, and no matter what your disability, it’s possible to work out a way to increase your activity level.

Step 5: Get an external focus. By having an absorbing interest or hobby, you give your brain an opportunity to take a holiday from total focus on the pain, and the nervous system is helped to switch off those painful signals. It’s not that you merely THINK the pain is lessened, it actually IS lessoned when your focus moves off it. This is just another amazing thing about the incredible human brain.

Step 6: Take a look at your relationships. Who are you dependent on? What would happen to that relationship (good and not so good) if your pain suddenly disappeared? Who leans on you or would like to lean on you? What would happen in that relationship if your pain suddenly disappeared? Pain can serve a very useful purpose in maintaining co-dependency, so it’s worth checking out they dynamics of your relationships.

Step 7: Actually treat the pain signalling directly. BMSA (Brief, Multi-Sensory Activation) is a relatively new set of techniques that quickly and easily switch off pain signalling. In clinical trials it’s proven to be highly effective for up to 100% of people with chronic pain. You’ll get an opportunity to experiment with BMSA for pain shortly!

TRY OUT BMSA FOR YOURSELF

Before you try any treatment, it’s a good idea to “dip your toes in the water” and have some experience of what it’s like. Not everyone responds straight away, but many people do, and so it’s worth while going through the following steps to see what happens for you.

Take time to really think about your pain, concentrating on what words most accurately describe the location and nature of your pain. It’s really important that they’re your own words, words that seem very natural to you. For instance it might be something like:

I have this deep ache near my left hip I have this stabbing pain just above my tailbone I have this burning pain in the middle of my lower back but a bit to the left Etc, etc, etc.

What we’ve done with these examples is to to describe how the pain actually feels (the type of pain) and where it feels like it’s located, in our own words. Once you’ve done that for your own pain, decide how strong it is, using 10 as your benchmark. 10 out of 10 is the strongest pain you could imagine, and if you have 0, your pain would be completely gone.

The next step is to repeat that statement about a dozen times, and each time you say it you follow it with something silly (or at least something that has an emotional impact very different from the thought of the pain). As you talk out loud, you’ll be tapping all over your body (for instance 6 quick taps on your head, 6 quick taps on your chest, 6 quick taps under an arm - wherever you can reach). You might get even better results if you walk around at the same time, especially if you’re following imaginary shapes or letters on the floor.

In the example given above “I have this deep ache near my left hip”, for instance, you could be tapping along saying:

“I have this deep ache near my left hip, but butterflies are crunchy.”

Say this 12 times, tapping away, and when you’re done, start tapping on the top of your chest, just focussing on the pain, take as deep a breath as you can through your nose, and then blow out as forcefully as you can through your mouth.

Now rate that exact pain in that exact place. You may notice other pain, or it might seem that the pain has moved, but what you’re most intent on finding out is what has happened in that exact location. Is that pain still the same number out of 10, or has something happened there?

This is just a little taste of what BMSA can do, but of course it’s not the whole picture. The book “The Pain Train - Time to Get Off” spells out much more detail and steps you through a personalised program designed to eliminate your pain permanently.

About the Author:

Christine Sutherland is a researching clinician and an expert in treating back pain. You’re welcome to view more articles on back pain on her web site.