Section Two of Moskowitz’s book[1] goes beyond visualisation to the sense of touch. This is particularly helpful when the pain is long-running. Sometimes, I’ll do visualisation and that pain is gone by the end of it. Was it the visualisation that caused the pain to diminish? Impossible to say really. But when the pain doesn’t decrease, I’m using some of the techniques in Section Two as a way of flooding the brain with other input.
Some of the suggestions are very simple. Rub your thumb-pad with your forefinger to stimulate touch sensations in the brain that are not painful. He also advocates brushing the skin over a painful area very lightly with a finger, or a cold glass, or even things like feathers and shaving brushes! All to stimulate nerves in the area other than pain receptors. Some of these suggestions are more in the realms of traditional advice you’d receive from your friend. You have a back ache or a “crick in your neck”? Take a warm bath.
Gently rubbing an area where there has been almost constant pain is not a small deal. In fact, when I take two fingers and just rest them lightly on the skin in my left-hand-side clavicular fossa[4], I feel a high-pitched throbbing down the underside of my left arm, through my elbow into my little finger, and a circle on the top of my head and the orbit of my left eye both set up sympathetic aches. In this case, Moskowitz recommends placing your fingers just to the side of the painful area, as near as possible without firing off the nerve that is hypersensitised.
We are not taking a warm bath or rubbing a painful area to achieve temporary relief but in order to reduce the dominance of pain processing in our brain. The idea again is to approach it with the MIRROR acronym in mind:
The key is to stay Motivated. Have the Intention of changing your brain. Be Relentless in opposing any and every pain intrusion into your consciousness. Rely upon your brain’s ability to adapt and make considerable initial efforts automatic and seamless. Approach each pain intrusion as an Opportunity to hone and master this proactice and make it automatic and effortless. Expect your brain to Restore itself and work on these approaches until it does so.
Michael Moskowitz MD [2]
So we don’t need to be discouraged when the pain doesn’t go away, or returns immediately. We weren’t expecting any relief in the first place, necessarily. Just as in the visualisation we used imagery to “access” the pain centres and direct them to process other input, so now with the sense of touch we are starting to use the nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord (the peripheral nerves) to access the brain for the same purposes.
A further suggestion that Moskowitz makes is to receive regular gentle massage from a skilled therapist [3]. As a trained massage therapist myself, you’d think this would have been obvious!
[1] Moskowtiz, Michael MD and Golden, Marla. Neuroplastic Transformation Workbook.
[2] ibid, pg 1
[3] ibid, pg 21
[4] The supraclavicular fossa is roughly speaking the area where your neck joins your torso just above your collarbone.