Joseph H. Watts, LMT

Why do our bodies hurt—sometimes, seemingly, for no reason? There are systemic conditions with such symptoms, like Fibromyalgia, but today I’d like to talk about something else: those sharp pains that seemed to come from nowhere, or the slow building pain that can creep up on the joints. The pain that plagues most Americans costs us billions in lost work and destroys our chances to do the fun things we have always done. What can we do?

To begin, we need to talk about communication, particularly interpersonal communication. (Trust me, this will all come together.) Communication is extremely important for survival. Beyond that, it is important for conducting business and fo effectively connecting with our families, friends, and neighbors. We all know the emotional pain of miscommunications, or worse, non-communication. Business fail when the communication fail. Families are split when they cannot effectively communicate, and many of us know the pain that occurs when communication is cut off completely. Often if one person in a relationship stops communicating, the other person will eventually start to plea or yell to open those lines back up. Do you see where this is going?

Our minds and our bodies are intertwined; they are one, yet they are separate. The only way to keep both working together happily is if they are communicating. So understand this, your body is always talking to you. It is always telling you if something is not right. Something is a little off here, or something is a little tight there. Yet, we often ignore it. Actually, we are usually so distracted and busy we just don’t hear it. So the reason we have pain is because we haven’t been participating in this conversation. Pain is our body yelling at us that something is very wrong.

So back to that first question:what do we do about it? As an orthopedic massage therapist, I confront this everyday. I work hard to educate people about our wonderful bodies, and I have noticed that as people receive bodywork more regularly, they start to feel and indeed to “hear” their bodies again. People will begin to notice the small cues, and they can make corrections early on and avoid unnecessary pain. Adding something like yoga and mindfulness meditation to life also enhances our ability to listen to our bodies and rebuild that relationship. So the next time you feel that twinge in your back, realize that it might be time to quiet your mind and listen to your body.

To Your Health!