Breaking Free of the Fibromyalgia Pain Bubble

Do you or someone you know suffer with fibromyalgia (FM)? Often the symptoms of this chronic pain takes an emotional toll and leads to feelings of frustration, sadness, anxiety, and depression.

FM can cause the central nervous system to become more sensitive to pain signals. With this heightened pain response, people can experience pain more intensely and pain can spread throughout their whole body.

With the increase in pain, sleep can also be affected. When there’s less sleep and rest, the pain, brain fog and feelings of hopelessness will be exacerbated.

The symptoms of chronic severe pain can then limit your ability to participate in social activities. Clients I work with have lost the ability to dance, hike, and swim which makes it hard to maintain relationships and can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness.

That's why people feel like they’re in a pain bubble - it's just never ending.

So how can yoga therapy help?

When you think of yoga, you think of big movements like downward dog, tree or mountain poses. That's not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is very small movements where you focus on moving the muscles that should be moving and quieting the ones that should not be moving.

When stillness is the only thing that you need…

We as humans think the answer is in doing more. When we have a problem, we think we need to fix it by doing more of something. Doing more is what puts us in the pain bubble because we're pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves. Sometimes, the answer lies in doing less, and being still.

When you are still, quieting the noise of your everyday life, you are able to free yourself from the mental chatter and become able to listen and become aware of what your body truly needs.

This is not easy. It sounds like it would be, but it is counterintuitive and a practice in and of itself.

To become an expert at stillness (sounds kind of silly, right!?), you need to become intentional in the pause. Start by slowing down. Get comfortable just slowing down. Eventually you will be able to stop altogether and get really practiced at being comfortable in stillness.

Yoga Therapy is the perfect experience to use as practice. It allows you to slow down and listen to what your body is trying to tell you.

When you slow down, you find that your body knows what it needs.

You can grow your ability to hear what it is saying with practice.

When becoming aware of what your body is saying is the answer…

Once you have conquered slowing down and being still, you will want to work towards hearing what your body is saying to you.

Sometimes it says things as simple as... “ahhhhh, this feels good. Let’s do more of this.”

Other times it can be fighting you and saying... “What the heck, how is this going to help? How is doing less going to make me better?”

Watch out for those types of thoughts – they come from the SHOULD area of your brain!

They have been ruling you forever and may even be the culprit of what got you to your current situation.

Sometimes, you may even be hearing other medical professionals who have been trained that “more is better”, trying to help you the best they can. But the truth is there is another way to approach healing, where a “less is MORE” focus!

I once was suffering from the effects of a concussion and was being led to believe that doing more work, more movement, more exercise would help me heal faster.

Luckily, I found a Chinese Medicine practitioner who helped me to slow down and listen to my body. My healing started to move faster with less headaches, sleep disturbances and even less dizziness. I was amazed that this “less is more” principle could truly be the answer to the pain bubble that I had found myself in.

When small movements allow you to move ahead faster…

The final step in this process of incorporating Yoga Therapy principles to break free from the FM pain bubble is another counterintuitive approach.

Here’s another myth we have been told about our bodies' ability to heal.

We’ve been told that getting stronger requires big movements with heavy resistance.

So. Not. True.

Yoga Therapy is ideal for using smaller movements to help strengthen muscles and provide more stability for your joints.

The movements are so micro, you may not even be aware that they are moving.

Here’s the secret to how this works.

You are teaching the muscles to work properly in their range of motion rather than cheating and recruiting other, larger muscles to do the movement for them. I tell my clients that those bigger muscles are not allowed to come to the party! They aren’t invited!

Over time, you will learn that you can have increased strength in the smaller muscles and have a larger range of movement. The muscles that had been working so hard and causing you so much pain, can finally rest and stop hurting. The result is moving smoothly with ease and less tension.

It’s truly magic! People are often so surprised at how quickly they can see results.

So how do you do this?

Breaking free from the pain bubble is absolutely possible for someone suffering from FM if you are willing to take a different approach that may be outside of your comfort zone at first.

Doing this work by yourself can be a little challenging, but with the help of someone like myself who is a trained yoga therapist, you can experience remarkable results very quickly.

If something I said in this blog resonates with you, I encourage you to check out my "Unleash Your Ears: Grab Our Guided Audio for Mastering the Art of Deep Breathing!" guide which will give you some immediate relief to symptoms you are experiencing. Then reach out to me and let’s talk about how to apply these tips to get longer lasting results for you.

Please go to my website for more information or send me an email so we can connect.

About Bobbi:

It's been quite a journey! Graduating from Simon Fraser University in 1994, I've dedicated my career to helping clients with their rehabilitation, particularly those recovering from motor vehicle accidents.

At Christmas time in 2018, my family experienced a roll-over accident, down a mountain in our brand new minivan. My entire family was in the vehicle, and thankfully I was the only one who was injured. The resulting concussion caused memory fog, insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, nausea, and headaches.

Navigating the Western medical approach didn't provide the relief I sought. Despite being advised to rest, I persisted in working and caring for my family. After almost a year of frustration, a yoga therapist/kinesiologist introduced me to a different path. Through slow movements, body reconnection, and doing less, I surprisingly began to improve. This contrasted with what I'd been taught in Western medicine.

Curiosity led me to dive into yoga therapy training, and the changes were astounding. Symptoms lessened, energy increased, anxiety vanished. Inspired by my own transformation, I became a yoga therapist with a mission to help those who struggle and might be labeled with "chronic pain." I'm eager to guide others toward the change they deserve.