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Notes -
Is most chronic pain 'in our heads?'
I spent almost a decade dealing with chronic pain of various sorts. I had many diagnosis such as TMJ, Hypermobility, Repetitive strain injury, Carpal tunnel, Tennis elbow, Conversion disorder, etc. What finally ended my pain was close to 5 years of serious meditation, stretching, dance training, and most importantly yoga. Eventually I developed the ability to relax muscles at will even if they were tense from stress.
Right now 20.4 Americans experiences chronic pain(1), with more people in rural populations dealing with chronic pain than in urban populations. Early research shows that this rate has been rising over time. (2) My pet hypothesis is that over time Americans have become more stressed for a variety of factors, which has lead to an increase in chronic pain. This is also most likely linked to a lack of mobility and a sedentary lifestyle.
However, doctors are very wary of telling a patient something is 'in their head'. This isue has probably gotten worse due to the recent backlash against doctors for ignoring someone's personal experience or opinion. I'm afraid that with the current state of our culture this problem will not get better at any time soon.
The most common way to get chronic pain fixed is seems to be to look for non traditional sources of information, typically 'woo' stuff like crystal or energy healing. Unfortunately I have seen a number of chronic pain suffers fall to these types of outlooks, after 'getting in tune with the universe' seemingly healed their pain. In reality I believe that these people simply develop the ability to visualize and relax their muscles.
I think this is a highly neglected problem and something that many people do not realize because chronic pain is often not talked about, and if you do talk about it most of people will either ignore you, give trite and terrible advice, or stop wanting to listen to you. Perhaps most people innately have the ability to relax their muscles, or lose the skill over time for one or another reason.
Has anyone else experienced something similar or observed it among others?
Sources (Cant figure out how to link text from my mobile device)
1 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db390.htm#:~:text=Interview%20Survey%2C%202019.-,Summary,65%20and%20over%20(30.8%25).
2 -
https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/58/2/711/168526/Pain-Trends-Among-American-Adults-2002-2018
Edit: fixed spelling/formatting errors.
Isn't this just a thing one can do with muscles, like moving them?
Yoga is physical activity though, this doesn't distinguish between "more physical activity / stronger core / better integrated muscles / stretching muscles" helping the pain and it being mental
Claims that it works, from patrick collison's twitter - the "sarno method", fixing chronic pain just by intent, he claims it worked for 4/4 people he knows and many agree in the comments. Maybe ... the whole "people tense muscles when stressed for a long time, relaxing them fixes pain" is a component - the "stress = tense muscles" thing is certainly true in some sense, but the woo/therapy interpretations aren't quite right imo. And most woo-seeming things that work don't work for the reasons people think they do, and come with meaningless pacifying therapywoo! It just coming down to relaxing the muscles is plausible, but probably not the whole story, idk.
This may depend on the instructor, but I find yoga to also be a bit mental as well. There's a bit of meditation going on. Your breathing is regulated, you may be encouraged to clear your mind and focus solely on the pose you're holding. As TheDag describes, the instructor may tell you not just how to engage the appropriate muscles but disengage others, helping you "get in touch" with how your body works beyond mechanical movement. This meditation and bodily focus is why yoga attracts or creates the "woo" energy/spiritual types.
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