Meditation / Anxiety Reduction

Stress reduction is an area that most often gets overlooked. The first time someone mentioned meditation, I felt like punching them.   Practicing mindfulness or meditation was not intuitive at all. Meditation or relaxation and stress management doesn't actually fix the underlying nerve damage, but it totally affects how my brain and nervous system process and feel that pain. 

The continuing stress/pain  response basically turns the volume way up in my nervous system. This makes those burning, tingling, or shooting pains feel way more intense. When I use stress-relief techniques like meditation or deep breathing, it's like a wash over the pain. Calming my body down helps dial back the nervous system overactivation, which eases the nerve discomfort, breaks the pain cycle and finally lets me get some time that isn’t focused on my feet..

Following are some of the meditation techniques that I use with success:

• Gratitude list 

• Mindfulness 

• Guided Meditation 

• Focused meditation 

• Muscle relaxation /body scan 

• Kindness meditation

• Music therapy

Combine meditation with air cuffs, foot massager, or ice boots and it can be very effective. Just like most other interventions the relief is short term. I find that when I am in the upper half of the pain cycle that I can usually bring it down to a more manageable situation with meditation. I have put a link in the photo above that direct you to some free meditation resources.

If you decide to give this a shot just remember that effective meditation takes practice. I wish you the best of luck!