Chronic Pain & The Central Nervous System…

At the NeurOPTIMAL Research Conference In Palm Springs (February 2014), there was a presentation about working with clients who have chronic pain.  I have had direct experience of clients benefitting this way, though interestingly, that was not our main objective in their training experience, not what they were expecting and so it was a happy surprise.  Often, a person coming in for a particular issue will see other things shift toward the better because we are training the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the CNS has a broad effect on all our internal systems.

Our Central Nervous System (or CNS) includes the brain and spinal chord which are essentially ‘command central’ for all survival and problem solving activity for our organism.  Our CNS as well can generate the experience of feeling in harmony with your life and world. Our CNS is actually a unity with the Cardio-Vascular System (heart, lungs, kidneys), the digestive system (all digestive organs including liver, pancreas, gall bladder, stomach, spleen, large and small intestine), the endocrine system (all hormones that produce moods and survival motivation, prior to thought), and the immune system. The immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease and is very complex and highly sophisticated.

So our CNS is a unity with these other major systems that function mostly below our conscious control.  When the brain begins to receive comprehensive feedback on its own imbalanced behavior, all these systems will be affected as the CNS begins to find more resilience and balance, begins to re-organize itself for more efficient energy usage essentially.  I had a woman who came in for improving concentration issues and she discovered happily that her inflammatory condition with chronic pain was helped considerably.  Makes sense; if the CNS improves its function, its partner systems will improve as well.

I have to share that my wife has had Lyme disease for many years and has suffered greatly over that time.  Not only depression and cognitive fog, but chronic pain.  I have been training her CNS neurofeeedback since 2007 and what we notice is that there is a significant reduction in depression and anxiety issues and chronic pain as well. It essentially allowed her to be functional where nothing else helped.  I also did Cranio-Sacral Therapy with her and because it works the the CNS as well, these two interventions have been significant in her daily life.

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