Treating chronic pain gently

As a practitioner of Japanese acupuncture, many of the people who I see in clinic are surprised at how gentle the treatments are. One of the questions I often get is this: if the treatments are gentle, does that make them less strong or effective in dealing with pain?

I can understand why this comes up for people as it entered my own mind when I first received Japanese acupuncture. Before I started receiving Japanese acupuncture, I was a “hard massage person”. I was a dancer so I experienced chronic pain and muscle soreness and I had a strong preference for firm pressure. I would’ve said at the time that the reproduction of the pain I was experiencing during treatment made me feel like the pain would shift, like they’d really “got it”. It wasn’t until I discovered Japanese acupuncture while I was studying that I realised this idea about my pain was what was keeping me stuck.

The acupuncturist that I saw helped me to reflect on the fact that whilst these strong treatments made me feel better in the moment, afterwards I often felt worse. I felt sick, sore and really tired. And a few days after the massage things were pretty much back to how they were before. Conversely, with the lightest touch from her, often in areas far away from the pain, my pain seemed to melt and unravel. It defied my understanding of my body at the time, until I studied Japanese acupuncture myself and started witnessing it daily.

Effective treatment protocols for pain usually involve treating the areas that are not in pain, rather than going directly to the painful body part. When I try to explain this power to patients, I will often use the image of placing your finger on the surface of a still lake.

With the slightest touch the ripple effect can be seen across the whole surface. This is how profound results can come with a light touch.

The gentle yet potent power of Japanese acupuncture can defy our understanding of pain and our bodies. However, recent chronic pain research can help illuminate why such powerful transformations are possible.

Current research on chronic pain has demonstrated that a lot of what we experience as pain occurs in the pain pathways to the brain, rather than at the damaged tissue. Pain tends to persist long after the tissue itself has healed because the neural pathway on the way up to the brain has become stuck “on”. It continues to send signals to the brain that there is pain, despite there being no damage. This is a revelation to pain experts! Instead of concentrating all of the treatment on the painful part, examining our relationship to our pain is the crucial missing link.

This can help to explain what happens with Japanese acupuncture treatments. Instead of going to the part of the body with the most pain, we work with the other body parts to change their relationship to the pained part. By changing this inner relationship, we can reorganise and make space for the pain, and often this is what the system needs to start dialling it down.

I think of it like when somebody tells you not to think of a pink elephant and all you can do is think of is a pink elephant. When you tell your body that the pain has to go and that you cannot tolerate it, it tends to ramp up. We don’t usually do this consciously, rather, subconsciously through our behaviour and language. By seeking harsh and painful treatments to make the pain go away, or constantly pushing or moving the painful part to check that it’s still painful, we tell our pain that it is not welcome. When you are unconsciously telling yourself this, your body thinks you are unsafe and the nervous system responds as such. Chronic pain research tends to agree that in the end safety is what it comes down to. When you do things that signal to your nervous system that you are safe, your pain tends to decrease. The opposite is true when you do things that signal to your nervous system that you are not safe, like provoking pain.

When your body feels safe enough to feel the pain, to have that pain listened to, witnessed and heard, the nervous system starts to relax.

It goes, “oh it’s safe to feel this pain, I am not in danger, I can relax”. Your nervous system comes out of fight or flight, inflammation and stress markers come down, and pain starts to improve.

An image that helped me to understand this was of a knotted piece of string. When you apply a lot of force to a knotted piece of string, the knot usually gets worse. It gets tighter and the problem becomes more entrenched. The body is similar. A symptom can be thought of as a knot of energy, or Qi stuck in the body. If we apply a lot of intervention to it, the problem often won’t change at all, will rebound very quickly to how it was before treatment, move to another area, or worsen. By applying gentle interventions we are slowly unravelling the strings around the knot and the knot gets looser. Things start to improve globally in the body because our body is in balance. From that place of balance the body can metabolise, digest and rest better, and heal. This creates change in the body that is sustained and in line with the bodies natural state.

I am curious about what you think about your pain now. Does this resonate with you? If you want treatment that signals safety to your nervous system and tends to your whole body, Japanese acupuncture might be what your system needs. Come and see me in clinic to find out more.

References:

Ridder,D,D., Adhia,D. & Vanneste,S. 2021. The anatomy of pain and suffering in the brain and its clinical implications, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,Volume 130, pages 125-146, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.08.013.