From The Professor:
Pain Care Aware can be classified as a biopsychosocial process. The medical world typically categorizes pain as arising either from biological problems, or psychological issues, or social factors, and can treat people in pain as if the answer comes from fixing the one problem. Pain Care Aware views pain as always multifaceted.
Answers come when we create positive change through any and all aspects of our existence, such as using movement to assist with the mind, and using cognitive and social influences to change the body.
As a practising physiotherapist I will not recommend or prescribe treatments outside my scope of practice. As an academic, and based on ongoing reading of scientific literature I can tell you that there is considerable evidence that the techniques and practices of yoga have been shown to benefit people with anxiety. As a public educator, I have received feedback from attendees affirming that their new understanding of pain science has assisted them with their emotional pain as much as physical pain. We witness the same reports in interdisciplinary pain management programs.
Research supports the benefits of activity, movement and yoga for people with anxiety. We also know that all treatments can be associated with adverse effects. If you experience an increase in your symptoms, or adverse effects which you would categorise as from the bio (body), psyche (psych-emotional) or social realms the best advice is always to seek guidance from a skilled, competent health professional.
From The Swami:
The answer is yes it can.
When we are suffering, this is dhukha/pain. Our “whole being/true nature” does not differentiate as to where the pain/suffering comes from, only that we are suffering and that there is danger and dis-ease in suffering.
Yoga says pain is pain. The Biological-Psychological -Social connectedness or Spiritual connectedness (BPSS) of the human experience says that pain is pain.
What I find so interesting is that our understanding of pain science agrees with this concept, and that together, in knowing pain science and knowing yoga, our ability to change pain is beyond possible, no matter where or how we experience it or in which “letter” it falls under (Biological-Psychological -Social connectedness or Spiritual connectedness).
Yoga offers us an approach to living with more ease, and the methods to establish “good space” in life; sukha. By intimately knowing the eight limbs of yoga our emotional suffering can be greatly reduced and we can abide in this good space and sustain it with more ease.
Anxiety can land in the body in many different ways, just as it can land in the heart and mind in many different ways. It all affects our pain and suffering.
When we are Pain Care Aware we are working with energetic vibrations within an embodied system to maintain wellness of our Whole Self, and this changes our pain no matter its source.
Be curious.
Change is possible.
