Pain Journey - Week 4

Hi again, it's Virginia mcewan.

And this is week four of the Pediatric Pain

Series that we're doing virtually as a group.

And today's session, we are going to the island paradise. So

let us dive right in. That sounds like a great place to go right about now.

And in today's session, we're gonna be looking at three different techniques uh

and,

and test drive them really in the session today

to see if any of these things are helpful for you

to

manage some of your pain symptoms.

Now,

all of these things

work really, really well,

but they don't work well for everyone. So,

and the other thing that's important is doing it once isn't necessarily

the best way to decide if it's something that works for you or not.

So,

what we generally suggest for all of you when you're working through these things is

that even if you think the first time you try one of these techniques to

unwind from your pain,

if you feel like the first time it doesn't jive with you

do do give it another couple of goes like give it a few tries before you're like, no,

no, this just isn't for me,

it doesn't help me or I don't like how I feel doing it or whatever the case is,

there is probably going to be one or more

of these things that work specifically for you.

But if for you,

it's one thing uh only then then to just stick with what actually works well for you.

But

it is super important that you give each of these

things a few attempts before you make that decision.

So we're gonna start today with some abdominal breathing.

And this is basically something where you want to

focus on your breath.

And

this is often where we start when we're talking about many different kinds of pain.

Um

But it's one that I find especially critical if you have pain in the core of your body.

Ok?

And the way in which we

teach people to go about this is to find a comfortable position,

whether that's sitting or whether that's laying flat

with one hand on your chest, kind of over your heart and one on your belly,

you're going to breathe in through your nose, counting to five,

filling your belly with air, feeling the bottom hand move out

and

I'm gonna go through this, but then we're gonna actually do one

with a video link.

So I'm gonna kind of go through it quickly,

but I just want to give you a sense like this is

a way of doing it that they talk about in the,

in the app as well.

Now when you breathe in through your nose and count to five,

you're going to really focus on that belly as a balloon almost.

You want to envision that there's a balloon inside your belly so

much so that you can feel your bottom hand move out.

And then when you've got that balloon in your belly,

you're going to hold your breath and you're going to count to five.

Then when you breathe out,

you're going to be breathing through your mouth through puckered lips.

Kind of like almost. So you're trying to blow through a straw

and let your belly slowly deflate.

Imagine that balloon slowly

um

kind of coming down and shrinking in size for an eight count.

So you want to hold that breath and let it out much slower

overall than how much

it or how long it took you to get that breath in.

And as you breathe out,

you may feel the muscle tension flow out of your body.

But I also want you to try and imagine that that's

also happening to or tell yourself that that's happening too.

You're gonna do that several times. It's a suggested up to 10 times

every time you do that,

you should notice how your body feels more relaxed with each breath out.

Now, this isn't just like some hocus pocus like there's real science to this too.

So we know that certain things change your heart rate. Can change,

your blood vessels will relax and, and blood will flow more freely.

It also affects your nervous system.

So when you're moving your diaphragm like that,

it's kind of like massaging part of that nervous system.

And then part of that is your vagus nerve,

your vagus nerve is this really big nerve that goes to your

lungs and your belly and it's in charge of rest and digest.

So when we talked about fight or flight in the first week,

this is sort of the counterbalance to that fight or flight system.

So every time we do these deep breathing exercises,

it's kind of like stimulating that vagus nerve

and, and telling it to go more and more and more into that rest and digest mode.

So where your body is truly relaxed.

OK.

So we are going to dive right in.

Now, during the live session,

we are actively going through this breathing exercise

with the guidance of someone on the youtube video

for the sake of

copyright, we actually can't

record a session that plays a youtube video at the same time.

So you are going to be able to access this link

in the links that are sent to you when you miss this session.

The next technique that we're going to

practice is called progressive muscle relaxation.

I remember the first time I tried this when I wasn't actually much older than

you guys and remember thinking how profoundly relaxing it was. So

this does work.

The pain that a lot of people experience

naturally causes your muscles to tense up. In many cases,

this is a natural response of your body trying to protect

you from either overstretching or injuring the body part that hurts.

The other thing that can lead to tension

is stress in our lives and negative feelings.

So, with progressive muscle relaxation,

we're actually actively paying attention to

different parts of our body

and then we're tensing

those muscles

and

once we've tensed them, then we actively relax them

and it often starts from the head and moves down to the toes.

So the steps of this type of technique

are the number one tense.

Number two, isolate

the area you're focusing on,

you're gonna concentrate on that area

and then you're gonna let it go and relax.

So again,

the youtube link for this video for you to go through, this

is going to be sent to you with the session recording

so that you can

go through that on your own.

So this is the link on the video. Now, of course, the app also has

a progressive muscle relaxation exercise.

We've included a different one just to give you

a sense that there are lots of different resources,

that kind of do the same thing.

So if you find you like the one on the app better, that's great.

You can do that as many times as you want.

If you like the one online better that you

may even find other uh progressive muscle relaxation,

guided videos on youtube that you like better.

The last thing that

we're going to talk about today in terms of tools that can help us relax

is the concept of imagery.

And what this means is using your imagination to move your attention

from an unpleasant thought or feeling to a more pleasant one.

So you can actually build in your mind and, and not everybody actually, again,

I should say preface this by saying that

not everybody can imagine things in their minds.

Some people don't have that visual ability to

have a what's called a mind's eye or have that picture in your mind.

But for those people who can, if you uh are able to,

then this is really where you're going to potentially create AAA

rich imaginary scene where where you're using all of your senses

to

transport yourself to somewhere.

Uh

that is

a safe or a comforting place for you.

And you're going to do this by thinking about what you're hearing in that place.

Like if we are on an island, are you hearing the ocean waves

in the background?

What are you seeing? Are you seeing

beautiful beach, beautiful, like beautiful sky, um beautiful forest.

Like it doesn't have to be an island paradise.

It's, it's a space that is a comforting place for you.

You're gonna imagine what you smell. Do you smell the campfire if you're in a forest.

Do you smell the ocean

and then things that you might taste,

uh, like, what might you

imagine, like if it's, if it's a, um,

a

cold winter day,

maybe you're imagining having a hot cocoa by a

fire and thinking about the sounds of the fire.

Um, what are you touching or feeling in that area? Is it the sand between your toes?

Is it the warmth from the fire? What,

wherever your space is

you wanna kind of think about all of those five senses.

So this could be a real place or it could be

an imaginary place or favorite place.

And

sometimes it is uh kind of um

more encouraging to think about warm images that tends to help with relaxation.

So you'll notice even though I mentioned like a cold day,

I talked about a hot chocolate with marshmallows or,

you know, being sitting next to a fire, right?

Those kinds of things are often quite helpful

and I have to say there's a fair amount of science in this as well. So there's um

even so much evidence behind this kind of thing

that you can use this to um hypnotize people.

And this is how often how those kinds of things start is by

using

that person's own mental ability to

um suggest

a different experience than what they're currently feeling.

And I've actually used this when I've had to do procedures with,

with kids that are difficult for kids

um with some good success in a lot of cases

uh where I was able to, to help somebody kind of

think about being somewhere else and then as a result, get through something

that was difficult.

Um So as an example, like if I've had to do a vaccination, that kind of thing,

taking that little bit of time to

try and

use imagery has,

has definitely got value to it for those of you that this

is

something that works well for you.

So again, uh a video link will be included in the links um

along with this session recording if you've missed it and

you're not able to go through it with us um

in the live virtual session today.

So and again,

you may not like this one as much as the one in the app or you may find other ones.

So this is by no means the only options you have,

it's just meant to kind of give be a starting point.

So

that sort of is uh the quick

uh version of the of the live session.

Obviously,

I would ask that you go through each of those

links and try and work on some of these things.

We want you to practice all of these relaxation techniques,

at least one of them in a day.

And

yeah, repetition is the key here. Like if, if try and do

a technique a few times really before you decide

that it's a yay or a Nay.

And we'll talk about what you guys thought or which one was your favorite.

We'll maybe do a poll and see who's who's was

or who found which one agreed with them the best next week.

Um

Again,

this session is usually delivered by a counselor who

has years of experience helping people with mindfulness and,

and um working through tech

techniques like this. So,

um

yeah, if you have any questions around that, feel free to,

to share those questions at your next session,

we'll do our best to try and answer them for you.

OK? So this is

again, it's week, that's week four actually. So I am signing out.

Thanks again for watching

and we'll see you next week. Take care guys.

Pain Journey - Week 4

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