The mind-body connection implies that chronic back, neck, shoulder and hip pain can sometimes be the result of long term stress.
Stress triggers the fight or flight response, or activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
Under normal circumstances, the fight or flight response kicks into gear for a short period of time, helping us find the energy to defend ourselves and solve an immediate problem.
Then the body returns to homeostasis.
But if we are under daily stress caused by financial and job pressures, family concerns, conflicts, and attending worry, fear, or anger, then the resulting over-activation of the sympathetic nervous system can result in chronic pain.
How Stress Creates Pain Here is how stress creates pain.
When stress triggers the fight or flight response, and the sympathetic nervous system gets activated, this leads to a number of physiological and biochemical changes.
Among other things, the breath becomes shallow, and muscles throughout the body--and especially in the upper back, diaphragm, pelvis and leg--contract in preparation for fight or flight.
Blood vessels also contract and blood shifts away from the digestive centers of the body.
Endocrine changes accompany changes caused by sympathetic nervous system activity.
Adrenalin is released into the body, along with other hormones that are triggered through actions of the hypothalamus and pituitary.
Over the short term, hormonal and sympathetic nervous system reactions provide a healthy defense mechanism.
But over the long term, they wear down the body.
If we feel continual stress, our muscles stay contracted and our breathing remains shallow; our adrenal system becomes exhausted; our digestive tract no longer receives adequate support; and excessive hormone production becomes a source of tissue inflammation.
Long-term stress means illness and pain.
Stress Can Be a Habit Many people suffer from the internal and external over-stimulation that leads to stress.
Stress can also be so chronic that it becomes a habit.
We no longer even realize we are under stress.
We just know that we do not feel well.
Often, we suffer from free-floating anxiety.
Our life no longer seems to belong to us.
Instead, we feel driven by a million tasks that we never have time to complete.
It may not occur to us that our own feelings of anxiety, nervousness and pressure play as much of a role in driving us onward as does the mountain of demands by which we feel consumed.
We suffer from the Type A personality pattern, a pattern that now represents the dominant lifestyle in the United States.
You Can Reduce Stress by Proper Breathing Because stress almost invariably reflects itself in shallow breathing, the clearest indication of stress is the habit of chest breathing.
By working with shifting from chest breathing to diaphragmatic breathing, you can reverse the sympathetic nervous system tendency toward hyper-arousal, along with the Type A compulsive qualities that support it, the physiological and biochemical events that it triggers, and the pain in which it results.
Worrying about Pain Only Increases it It is also important to recognize how and why our mental attitudes can play a big role in increasing stress, and therefore in triggering pain.
This can be challenging, because if we have pain, we tend to worry about it.
If we have low back pain, we may worry about whether our back is going to bother us when we get out of a chair, stand waiting for the bus, or go out for the evening.
If our knees bother us, we may worry about whether we can walk down a flight of stairs.
If we suffer from headaches, we may cancel a dinner date because we do not feel one hundred percent and we think a headache just might hit.
Such worries seem rational.
After all, they are based on experience! Unfortunately, however, worry contributes to increasing pain, and can cause needless pain.
As soon as we worry, we put ourselves under stress and activate the sympathetic nervous system.
The more we worry, the more we trigger the fight or flight response, and the more our muscles and joints ache.
As you work with reducing your chronic pain, it will be important to recognize when you go into worry, and to learn how to distance yourself from that pattern.
Commit Yourself to Reducing Stress If you want to reduce your pain levels, commit yourself to using mind-body holistic health tools to reverse the stress response.
Train yourself in the use of breath awareness and in other mind-body tools for self-healing.
© 2007 Ingrid Bacci PhD All Rights Reserved This article is FREE when published with resource box.