I will never stop learning, reading, and experimenting on myself with nutrition, exercise, pain management techniques, how to better work with my audiences, and so much more.
My chronic burning pins & needles pain reaches about a 8.5/10 each day & can be utterly debilitating. If you’ve experienced chronic pain I’m sure you can appreciate. Over the years I have created an arsenal of different neuro focus strategies to help turn down the volume so to speak in order to live my life.
Each day I use a form of meditation, guided self-hypnosis visualizations, over a dozen small mental conversational strategies with myself, distraction in the form of working towards a greater purpose, and more. They help. Don’t get me wrong.
However, as I age with spinal cord injury the pain levels started to change year-over-year & some of my current techniques are no longer as effective as it would like.
Not only do I believe in neuroplasticity (Neurons that wire together fire together), think use it or lose it, but I have proved it works. Science backs it time and time again. We, human beings, quite literally are our thoughts and they have the power to make us better or make us sick. Consider reading the book by Joe Dispenza the “You are the Placebo.”
A few months ago, I decided I needed to experimenting new techniques. I know I can completely eliminate my pain; I just don’t think I’ve had the right modalities in place for me over the last several years.
I recently got connected with Ann Van de Winckel, PT, MSPT, PhD at the University of Minnesota at the Brain Body Mind Lab. She and her colleagues are running a fascinating clinical trial funded by the NIH to explore the feasibility of reducing chronic pain through a virtual clinical study.
I am so happy to announce I have been accepted in this multi-month trial where I will be assigned a Chigong instructor (Ancient Chinese breathing + coordinated body-posture movements + meditation) to work with over many months to retrain my brain once again.
It is a major time commitment each week, but what wouldn’t you do to turn down the volume on whatever pain you suffer from in life? Psychologically? Physically?
We pop on social media for an hour in the blink of an eye, but what if we took this hour a day to engage our minds more cohesively? I do this every day whether that is in reading or meditating or learning something new. However, I realize that I need to tweak my daily practice and I am ecstatic to be accepted into this exploratory virtual clinical trial.
I think a brilliant way to start off 2025! Remember, if we don’t have our bodies, where are we going to live? Take care of yours. A friendly PSA reminder 🙂