02 May Back Pain

One of the most common complaints in modern society today is the dreaded “Back Pain”

I have seen thousands of people all of whom have symptoms ranging from a “slight twinge” to “excruciating back pain”. Each person has their own story about what they think the problem is but from my experience very few of them actually know the true cause, source and reason for their pain.

Pain experienced by the body is the brain letting you know that something requires your attention.

For example, if you were to pick up a hot plate, signals would go from your hand to your brain informing it of the environment (the heat)
The brain then decides that this is hot and a threat so it sends signals to your hand to say “let go”

It can sound like a lot is going on here and to give credit to the body and brain, a lot is going on. All this is done in such a short space of time that we don’t need to think about how this process works; we just accept that it does and life goes on.

However, if you could not feel pain, your hand would never receive that message to “let go” and you could do some serious damage to your hand.

You see, feeling pain is a fantastic indicator for us for keeping us safe and making us aware of our environment.

In relation to back pain, the body is giving us very clear signals that it requires more of our attention. We all know that our back can become sore from excessive physical exercise, a slip, trip or fall, years of wear and tear and accidents in our lives.

These are the triggers that the vast majority of all the people I work with associate as being the cause of their current back pain. Most have been taking and still take huge volumes of pain medication, steroidal injections, anti inflammatories, massage and many many other modalities that help them to ease their pain. Mostly, people report that easing the pain temporarily if at all is as far as these approaches often take them and although these approaches are fantastic in their own right they may not be enough to get to the origin of the pain.

We all know how painful our backs can feel but we don’t exactly know why.
This is the fundamental truth of all pain. The not knowing.
If we were to know exactly why our backs were sore and were able to treat this reason effectively then the pain would have no purpose.

Some of the most common reasons I have found to be the cause of people’s pains and aches are emotions.

The body and mind require effective communication to co exist in harmony with one another. When a person experiences an emotional trauma in life the brain can instigate a process of mild oxygen deprivation to a nerve or muscle causing pain to serve as a distraction or an indicator to unresolved emotions in the body and mind.
This may sound strange to a lot of people reading this but the fact of the matter remains that pain is not always physical.
Ask yourself this question. What hurts more? Hitting your elbow off the corner of the table or being told you are a disappointment to your family or team mates?
You see, emotions do hurt and they hurt on a level that transcends the physical body and time itself.

I have seen so many people suffering from severe back pain, as they say themselves “I’ve gone to all the doctors, seen the specialists, taken all the recommended scans and MRI’s only to be told “there is nothing wrong, you are physically perfect based on what we and our scans can see”
So by reading this you can see where the problem lies can’t you.
If there is nothing physically or visibly wrong then the issue must be invisible.
The emotional level is one of these invisible levels to the mind that has an immensely powerful effect on the physical body.

Going deeper into the mind to understand the reasons for pain will open up a whole new world of understanding to those who seek it.