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1) The brain-body link.
If you’ve suffered from severe pain, or seen a loved one in pain, you’ll understand how difficult it is to fully understand the pain levels of others. Pain can be really disabling and have severe impacts on your mental and physical health. In fact, studies continue to show the neuro- chemical links between chronic pain and anxiety/ depression. If you’ve ever studied the knee jerk reflex, you’ll know that every sensation in our body travels from your nerves to your brain for ‘assessment’. Simply put, your brain decides if something is painful or not. But before your head starts to hurt, there is hope. As well as physiotherapy, craniosacral therapy (CST) can help. CST is a gentle, hands on treatment which is excellent for settling that nervous system and helping you to relax, reduce your brain’s response to pain and generally improving wellbeing.2) You hold the key to your recovery.Much as we love our clients, we don’t want to see anyone three times a week forever- we want you to get better and get on with your lives! Luckily, physiotherapists are experts in prescribing the correct rehabilitation exercises and pain management techniques to help you do that. Add in Clinical Pilates, where the correct exercises post assessment can help reset some of the neural changes mentioned above. Studies show that patient self-management of pain (rather than relying solely on massage and manual treatments) predicts a better rate of recovery. So let us assess what’s really driving your pain and work with you to achieve the best results for you.

3) Your muscles may need re-education
In physiotherapy research and education, the buzz-words of the past few years have been ‘motor control’. Motor control means your muscles’ ability to control your movement- whether you’re in standing, bending, sitting or any number of positions. Studies are finding that poor movement patterns (perhaps due to pain or poor lifting techniques, for example) and postures over time are contributing more and more to pain and dysfunction. Deeper stabilising muscles are often ‘shut down’ by pain or overactivity within the more superficial (yet quickly fatiguing) bigger muscles. This leads to a vicious cycle where the wrong muscles work for the task, pulling your joints into unusual and aggravating positions, which then creates further pain. We can stop this pattern using manual therapy to settle pain, followed by a graded specific exercise program to get your muscles working the way they should again.

4) Many painkillers won’t help you.
If you’re a regular follower of the news you’ll have heard about several studies of recent months which demonstrated that painkillers are all but useless in treating many of the pains for which they are prescribed. We will often advise you to speak with your doctor or pharmacist about anti- inflammatories and other pain medications in your time of need, however you shouldn’t despair if they don’t work. Wellness Embodied physiotherapist Suzanne Rath uses a combination of foam rolling, medical acupuncture, yoga and meditation to manage her own headaches. These are just some of the options we can educate you in, in addition to providing quick relief from hands-on techniques in clinic.

5) Don’t give up.
Generally chronic pain requires a multi-facted, individualised approach. Daily relaxation, whether through meditation or any number of other activities, can help. So too can proper diet, sleep, hydration, gentle walks, spending time with loved ones- the list goes on. Some people will obtain relief from alternative therapies, others from medications. It’s important to see your doctor to out- rule any serious causes of pain, but remember that most of the time there won’t be one- your pain is probably completely normal and you’ll be able to recover and manage well in time!

At Wellness Embodied, we pride ourselves on our whole person, comprehensive approach to assessment and treatment of your pain. As well as Physiotherapy and Craniosacral Therapy, our services include Remedial Massage and physiotherapy led small group exercise sessions. Our Cairns city physio practice location offers us spacious treatment rooms and a Rehab Room for performance of whatever Clinical Pilates, vestibular rehab, proprioceptive, strength and conditioning, stretching, tissue release or other rehab exercises we’ve seen fit to give you! For further details, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 07 42319777, email admin@wellnessembodiedcairns.com or find us on Facebook.

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