Daily yoga practice has helped keep my occasional bouts of chronic arthritis pain in check. But, when life gets in the way and I miss a few classes, the low level ache in the backs of my legs starts to radiate out to other areas of my body. It's hard to describe exactly, except to say that if I bend down with my legs straight and try to touch my toes, the pain is often excruciating.
Forward bends are incredibly painful when I'm dealing with this chronic pain.
Ironically, it's when I come back to yoga after this hiatus and do the forward bends and downward facing dogs that the pain is the most intense. But what I've discovered is that if I force myself to do whatever versions of forward bend or downward facing dog that I can do, things usually get better by the end of class, and they continue to get better on successive days until about the fourth or fifth day when the pain completely disappears. After the pain goes away completely, I can switch back to doing yoga every other day without experiencing any relapses in pain.
So how does yoga work to relieve pain? According to Stanford University Professor Dr. Robert Sapolsky on page 170 of his book "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," when you experience short bouts of intense pain -- like if you hold your hand too close to the flames -- there are pain sensor neurons that fire in the area where you FEEL the pain and there are also neurons in the spine that receive these messages. There's also an entirely separate neural circuit that turns OFF the pain when you pull your hand away.
So one neuron receives the pain message and another neuron shuts it off. The only trouble is low level pain (like my arthritis pain) has NO shut off switch. Chronic pain does not warn the body to respond, according to HowStuffWorks.That's why slow (chronic) pain continues unabated the way it does.
In some cases, you can fool your pain (or itch) receptors into shutting off. Here's how it works: The next time you have an itch from a mosquito bite on your hand run it under a stream of hot water. Slowly turn up the temperature on the spigot until it's as hot as you can stand: And then shut it off. (You don't need to burn yourself.)
When you shut off the water you'll notice: The itching almost immediately subsides and doesn't come back for hours.
Here's why: Low level pain, like itching (with no off switch) shares the same pathway (in other words the same wiring) as would a sudden burst of intense pain from the same area (like the hot water on the same piece of skin as the itch). But this time the ON/OFF circuit is activated by the sudden pain. Turn off the hot water and the OFF button on the circuit is now activated. No pain whatsoever (either intense heat OR low level itch) is experienced from this area of skin. You fooled your nervous system into turning off the pain receptor for the itch by sending an intense wave of pain up the same nerve highway as your low level pain was traveling.
Downward facing dogs are difficult too.
So what does all this have to do with chronic pain and yoga? During the various stretches I do in yoga class, I very carefully find the position in the stretch (typically in forward bend and downward facing dog) where I can endure a short blast of intense pain. I know I can vary the intensity of the pain by lengthening or shortening the stretch. So I'm totally in control of the pain, but I deliberately go to the edge where I can turn it ON with some intensity. As Dr. Sapolsky confirmed when he previewed this blog, I'm probably activating the on-off circuit for this pain in the same way that I turn the itch off with hot water.
Thus my yoga practice may be helping me manage my chronic pain by allowing me to turn off the pain circuits that normally couldn't be turned off.