The Cycle of Pain
Excess muscle tension can come from three main sources: an injury, such as a car accident; stress, including the ordinary rigors of family life or financial troubles (even good things – planning a wedding, or having a baby – can bring stress); and alignment problems, such as scoliosis or just poor posture. Any one of these things may have caused your tension, or your suffering may have a combination of causes. No matter what the origin, your muscles respond to stress by activating a cycle of pain in your body. For instance, back pain may affect not only the muscles surrounding your spine, but those at your neck, hips, and other areas. It’s a vicious cycle.
You feel stress or experience an injury, say, so your muscles tighten, and when your muscles tighten the result is poor breathing habits, which results in higher stress levels, which cause your muscles to tighten further. The cycle is hard to break unless you can find a way to release the tension in your overworked muscles.
When muscles become tense and imbalanced, your body’s natural correct alignment system cannot work properly. Furthermore, muscles that remain tense for long periods lose the ability to relax at all, resulting in chronic pain. The best way to illustrate this is to imagine holding a tennis ball in your hand. Imagine gripping the tennis ball as tightly as you can for five hours – or even five days. Can you imagine how awful the pain would be? Can you imagine how much you would want to let go of it? But even if you did finally relax your hand, what would happen? It would remain curved in a claw shape for some time. It would probably take hours for the hand to relax into its normal state. Many of us are holding so much tension in our bodies that, despite intense pain, we are unable to relax the muscles. Our bodies have forgotten how.
There are many books on the market that are designed to help you alleviate stress and pain. Some require physical effort, such as stretching. Others suggest meditation or other mental techniques. My method is the simplest one I’ve found for relieving pain, reducing stress, and in the process, reshaping your body. It starts with what I call your body formula:
I have found that if you breath fully while allowing yourself to feel the weight of your body, you enable your muscles to relax and you experience immense relief.
Loosening your muscles enables your body to realign, and when your muscles are limber and your skeleton is properly aligned, you do not experience pain.
The actual method is simple. You place your weight on the balls and feel your body give in to them. You breathe fully to bring oxygen to your muscles, which in turn, restores feeling to them. Because most of us chronically breathe only with our upper chests, our muscles are stiff and as a result we hold ourselves rigidly. When muscles are ridged you have less feeling in them. You can’t move what you don’t feel, so when muscles are clenched and tight, they resist gravity. (For example, when you are stuck in traffic your shoulders clench upward toward your ears - as you tighten them, they rise and resist gravity.) In order to release those muscles you must be able to feel them first, which breathing will help you do, then feel their weight. The body is supported by the ball, the muscles release their tension, and the pain disappears. This may happen immediately or it may come gradually over time; each person’s experience is unique. But every person who has followed my method has experienced immense relief.
You simply cannot help but get results when you reduce your muscle tension.
In addition to pain relief, my program has two important side effects: relief from anxiety and the reshaping of your entire body. It is difficult to feel stressed when the symptoms of stress clenched muscles and shallow breathing – are removed. And you may be surprised at the effect my method has on your figure. Tight muscles are thick and stiff; relaxed muscles are long and flexible. Would you rather have short, thick muscles or long, supple ones surrounding your waist, abdomen, and thighs?
In addition to delivering results, my method of ball therapy is easy to do – deceptively easy.
Visualization, meditation, biofeedback, and behavioral therapy all require too much effort for my liking. When I tried those and other mind-over-body methods, I always found that my mind was too active and that it was a struggle – and a contradiction in terms – to “try” to relax my mind. It was too much work for me. What I needed to relax, it seemed to me, was not my mind but my body. Now I don’t worry about what my mind is doing. I just get on the balls, breath, and let my body do the rest.
Elaine Petrone – The Miracle Ball Method
You feel stress or experience an injury, say, so your muscles tighten, and when your muscles tighten the result is poor breathing habits, which results in higher stress levels, which cause your muscles to tighten further. The cycle is hard to break unless you can find a way to release the tension in your overworked muscles.
When muscles become tense and imbalanced, your body’s natural correct alignment system cannot work properly. Furthermore, muscles that remain tense for long periods lose the ability to relax at all, resulting in chronic pain. The best way to illustrate this is to imagine holding a tennis ball in your hand. Imagine gripping the tennis ball as tightly as you can for five hours – or even five days. Can you imagine how awful the pain would be? Can you imagine how much you would want to let go of it? But even if you did finally relax your hand, what would happen? It would remain curved in a claw shape for some time. It would probably take hours for the hand to relax into its normal state. Many of us are holding so much tension in our bodies that, despite intense pain, we are unable to relax the muscles. Our bodies have forgotten how.
There are many books on the market that are designed to help you alleviate stress and pain. Some require physical effort, such as stretching. Others suggest meditation or other mental techniques. My method is the simplest one I’ve found for relieving pain, reducing stress, and in the process, reshaping your body. It starts with what I call your body formula:
I have found that if you breath fully while allowing yourself to feel the weight of your body, you enable your muscles to relax and you experience immense relief.
Loosening your muscles enables your body to realign, and when your muscles are limber and your skeleton is properly aligned, you do not experience pain.
The actual method is simple. You place your weight on the balls and feel your body give in to them. You breathe fully to bring oxygen to your muscles, which in turn, restores feeling to them. Because most of us chronically breathe only with our upper chests, our muscles are stiff and as a result we hold ourselves rigidly. When muscles are ridged you have less feeling in them. You can’t move what you don’t feel, so when muscles are clenched and tight, they resist gravity. (For example, when you are stuck in traffic your shoulders clench upward toward your ears - as you tighten them, they rise and resist gravity.) In order to release those muscles you must be able to feel them first, which breathing will help you do, then feel their weight. The body is supported by the ball, the muscles release their tension, and the pain disappears. This may happen immediately or it may come gradually over time; each person’s experience is unique. But every person who has followed my method has experienced immense relief.
You simply cannot help but get results when you reduce your muscle tension.
In addition to pain relief, my program has two important side effects: relief from anxiety and the reshaping of your entire body. It is difficult to feel stressed when the symptoms of stress clenched muscles and shallow breathing – are removed. And you may be surprised at the effect my method has on your figure. Tight muscles are thick and stiff; relaxed muscles are long and flexible. Would you rather have short, thick muscles or long, supple ones surrounding your waist, abdomen, and thighs?
In addition to delivering results, my method of ball therapy is easy to do – deceptively easy.
Visualization, meditation, biofeedback, and behavioral therapy all require too much effort for my liking. When I tried those and other mind-over-body methods, I always found that my mind was too active and that it was a struggle – and a contradiction in terms – to “try” to relax my mind. It was too much work for me. What I needed to relax, it seemed to me, was not my mind but my body. Now I don’t worry about what my mind is doing. I just get on the balls, breath, and let my body do the rest.
Elaine Petrone – The Miracle Ball Method