For Neck and Back Pain Relief -
RESPOND to Pain

Do you really want to have to live with back or neck pain? I didn’t think so. The path to finding back and neck pain relief starts with understanding pain and healing.

Remember this simple rule:

RESPOND to pain. Understanding pain and its role in finding neck and back pain relief is a major factor in recovery and getting your life back.

Use this simple acronym to get the right start down the right path toward healing and freedom from pain:

• Recognize pain as your body’s signal that something is wrong. It's a sign that something is wrong and needs to be addressed.
  
  Back or neck pain a sign that something's not working properly. The source of the problem may be physical, nutritional, or emotional. Listen to your body and heed the message. In order to find neck and back pain relief, your first have to see it for what it is.
  
  
• Embrace pain as a partner in healing. Sounds crazy, but it is the absolute truth. Pain lets you know what’s going on in your body. Pain is an incredibly great barometer for healing and progress toward neck pain relief and back pain relief.
  
  Replace your negative image of pain with the image of understanding how well you are healing. It helps you understand your limitations so you can continue to expand them. That results in you taking an active interest and participatory role in your healing.
  
  Back and neck pain is a signal from your body that you need to reflect and make change to better accommodate your body's needs. So listen up!!
  
  
• See the healing taking place. Visualization is a strong tool in healing.
  
  More and more clinical studies reveal the mental picture of healing as a major catalyst to neck and back pain relief. Even the simplest-sounding techniques have proven wildly effective in facilitating neck pain relief and back pain relief.
  
  For instance, try closing your eyes, breathing five slow, deep, relaxing breaths. In your “mental TV screen,” assign a color to your pain. See that color on your mental TV screen. Then replace it with a different color you associate with healing. Allow yourself to see that color for a minute or two while you continue relaxed breathing, and imagine what it feels like when it doesn’t hurt. Remember what it feels like to be pain-free. See the look on your face and connect to what you feel like when that look is on your face. See yourself freely doing the things you love to do: playing with the kids or the dog; having incredible sex with your partner; hiking; playing tennis, WHATEVER it is that you deserve to enjoy in your life! It will help you begin to believe you deserve to feel better and that you actually can.
  
  Do this exercise once a day, and create a mental image you can reference when the pain reappears, or simply when you have a few quiet moments you’d like to focus on feeling better.
  
  You have to believe you can feel better before you will.
  
  
• Pain is temporary. It’s designed by nature to be a signal of damage, injury or danger.
  
  Pain in your back or neck is an alarm shrieking to you that it’s time for you to make a change.
  
  Don’t accept pain as permanent. If you believe you can find neck and back relief, there’s a strong likelihood that you will. Even if your back or neck pain is from known tissue damage or an established chronic condition, changing your approach to how you deal with pain will take you light-years forward in how you decide to live and manage the best possible quality of life.
  
  
• Open yourself to all your options. Surgery for back and neck pain is not necessarily the answer.
  
  I will never tell you to not see your doctor about pain. But don’t just assume you need surgery just because you hurt a lot.
  
  Most neck pain and back pain will go away without surgical intervention so long as you are supporting your body's own natural ability to heal.
  
  The best doctors will help you explore other options before they recommend surgery, because they know it only adds more layers to the recovery.
  
  You can heal with time, patience, understanding of back and neck pain, and commitment to doing the right things the right way to help and take on the quality of life you deserve.
  
  No single approach to neck pain relief and back pain relief is a guarantee - it's a multi-faceted approach to pain relief.
  
  Healing fully and effectively involves full understanding of  the physical, emotional and nutritional aspects of healing.
  
  Work the whole solution and you’ll find much more complete relief for your back or neck pain.
  
  Realize that knowing the next steps is the key to any phase of healing. Know where your body is now, and you can figure out what you need to do next about back or neck pain. Just focusing on one part of the solution will only solve one part of the problem.
  
  Always know where you are -- remember the old navigators’ axiom: You can’t know where you’re going and how to get there until you know first where you are.
  
  Don’t rely on medications. Pain killers make you feel better only because they mask the signals your body needs you to hear. Aside from the fact that they can be habit-forming and take over your life in other horrible ways, narcotics have no healing properties whatsoever.
  
  It’s one thing to mask pain so you can sleep immediately after surgery or an injury. Even the doc won’t want you on  pain medications for very longs.
  
  The better path is to tune in to your body and it’s signals -- not to tune them out with drugs. Do nothing, and nothing will happen. Feel nothing, and you won’t know how much you need to do.
  
  Medications that help control inflammation do play a role in healing. But there are nutritional ways to help your body manage inflammation, too. So you can also rely too heavily on medications that are known to cause damage to you liver and other organs.

So RESPOND to back and neck pain! You need to listen to and hear what your body is telling you!!