Last Updated on July 2, 2017 by melissanreynolds
If you have read through my blog a little, you will see I have found meditation to be immeasurably useful. Especially in my second pregnancy.
The thought of furthering my meditation practice was a highly appealing one. In addition, receiving some assistance after doing this (mostly) alone for most of my life, was a nice emotional boost.
Having a tool that can help my body and mind relax so thoroughly has been a lifesaver. I have spent many many hours miserable, exhausted, sore and wishing I could sleep. When Nu was small and I was desperate for sleep, my body still refused to nap. And when I lay down, exhausted, hoping I’d pass out, I’d not only not sleep but become upset that I couldn’t. Now I can lie down for 15, 20, 40 or 45 minutes, depending on the mediation I choose, and feel rested and calm. Sometimes I fall asleep for 10 minutes at the end. This is one tool I seek to utilise every day.
In addition to this, I have found, through biofeedback therapy that I am able to effect my central nervous system through my meditation. As a person with Fibromyalgia, a central nervous system disorder, my parasympathetic nervous system needs some support. The emerging research around heart-rate variability is shedding light on just how important teaching our parasympathetic to activate is.
My two plus years of practice has made a big difference. Through deep breathing, visualisation and meditation I am able to activate my parasympathetic system (rest and digest) which I believe leads to less pain and more energy. I am definitely in a better place than I was prior to beginning my meditation practice.
So when I was offered biofeedback therapy with a health psychologist at the pain clinic after a non-event follow up with a pain specialist, I jumped at the chance.
A biofeedback therapy session involves having a heart-rate monitor placed on your thumb that sends your heart-rate to a laptop. The newer systems have fancy graphs and many things to look at, at it’s simplest, it provides beeps to let you know how high or low your heart-rate is.
In two sessions I tried two types of guided meditations led by the health psychologist and employed deep breathing and visualisation on my own. I was able to conquer the medium setting on the machine (apparently they don’t usually tell people with chronic pain that there are higher settings than low because without practice it can be very difficult).
I do need to practice relaxing my shoulders and neck as my heart-rate obviously kicked up when we got to those parts in the relaxation meditation. This is unsurprising as these parts are tight and sore all day, every day. A physio can make them relax a little through neck tractions and acupuncture needles in key points, heat can help too, but nothing makes them feel nice. So this is my homework, I’ll keep working on visualising and relaxing these body parts.
Biofeedback therapy has provided a useful check in with how my meditation practice is going and provided some areas to work on. I feel so empowered to have a tool that can not only initiate short term relief, but has long term effects (which are only just starting to be researched).
Has anyone else had experience with biofeedback therapy? Does anyone else find meditation to be so helpful?
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