This blog by Sue Hitzman originally appeared in March 2013 on www.meltmethod.com. Since we’ve got a lot of MELT workshops coming up specifically addressing pain, I thought it’d be helpful to repost her words here to help people better understand what’s causing their chronic pain. Thanks Sue!
When pain becomes chronic, life becomes awfully small. When you find yourself struggling to get out of your house in the morning because you hurt so bad, it not only physically feels miserable, emotionally it can change a person.
What’s more compelling to me is the lack of understanding or admittance of the emotional side of pain. I’ve seen people taking pain meds, when the pain is simply unbearable turn into addicts and literally not feel that’s what is happening. They don’t even realize how their entire outlook on life has changed. How they react to daily stress… it is different.
I’ve seen people I know very well take pain meds and turn from Jekyll to Hyde from one day to the next. It’s a rare person who realizes that being on the meds is actually altering how their body manages stress . Things that didn’t really seem like much of a thing to fuss about suddenly becomes such a major part of the day, they continue for the rest of the day to nearly obsessed over something that happened. It could be something simple like your GPS system taking you off of a highway for no reason to follow a route that becomes an out of the way event. What should just be a frustrating moment becomes something that makes the person yell, raise their voice, and talk about the moment multiple times later that day.
I know pain in my own body. From injuries as a young athlete to a debilitating pain in my foot that doctors, therapists, exercise, stretching, meditation, or medication didn’t solve. I was even told by one doctor my pain was all in my head and I needed to see a psychotherapist.
My pain and the desire to resolve it was the catalyst to finding a universal solution and answer to what really causes pain to become chronic. I’ve been privileged to be a part of a growing field of science and research leading the way to figuring out the effects of daily living on our body’s natural ability to remain stable and efficient. What most people don’t know about is something I’ve become a bit obsessed about – cellular stability. What keeps our cells and ultimately our entire body stable?
The connective tissue system is what provides our body architectural stability. Our repetitive habits from sitting to training for a sport cause the cells of our connective tissue to become stressed and dehydrated. Think of your connective tissue like a sponge. When it’s hydrated it’s flexible, resilient, and mobile. When it’s dry it’s stiff, and inflexible. You can’t just
pour water on a sponge to get all the cells to juice up. You have to “work” the sponge, squeeze it, twist it, and that’s what gets the fluids deep into the sponge.
Connective tissue adapts to our posture and movements. This is a good and a bad thing. If you sit all day long your connective tissue will adapt to allow you to sit there with your head carriage forward so you do it efficiently. However, that will mean that for you to do much of anything else will take more energy to yield the demand of other positions or
movements. This is where things can go awry. Your nervous system has to work harder and harder just to have you move about and that exhausts your internal resources that provide stability.
If your stability system is inefficiently keeping your joints stable, well, you move inefficiently too. This makes life awfully tough to live. Your body simply adjusts to reserve energy. This means slower metabolism, increased weight gain, and slowly both cause low grade inflammation to be a constant state of your body. This type of inflammation decreases your body’s ability to heal and repair cells – accelerating the aging process and increasing your sensation of pain and ache.
It’s time America stopped relying on pain-meds to resolve these issues if chronic pain is the issue. Pain becomes chronic because of this slow road of connective tissue dehydration and a lack of absorption and transportation of nutrients, and ultimately elimination of waste.
Can we help our connective tissue sustain it’s ability to morph and adapt in a positive way? YES. This I know for sure you can do. MELT is a way to do just that. I’ve been doing this for people and for myself for over a decade and IT WORKS. I’ve seen enough transformation in my own body and that of tens of thousands of people to know this is the doorway into better living.
The MELT Method book simplifies the science and the method of MELT so YOU can do and learn about this in your own home. If you are under a doctor’s care for your pain, add MELT to whatever you are doing. Find an instructor, try the sequences, try it at home… just try it!
Much, much more to come!!