“They think I can’t walk normally. They don’t realize I’m just always dancing.” – anonymous performer with cerebral palsy

So you think you can’t dance? Think again! You can dance if you’ve never danced a day in your life. You can dance if your doctor has looked at you sternly while declaring you physically unfit. You can dance if you have two left feet. Hell, you can dance if you have three. Or none.

You can dance if you’re in a wheelchair or bedridden, obese or waif thin, a sexpot or a prude. (Remember Church Lady?) You can dance in your bed or in your imagination, wearing pajamas or the finest birthday suit. You can dance alone or with friends, indoors or out, to the grooves of hip hop, religious hymns, or punk rock. If you’re the adventurous type, you even can dance to all three at once!

And you can dance with pain. In fact, you can dance to heal pain. Which all goes to say, the only thing standing between dance and you is yourself. So get out of the way! I know, I know, it sounds outlandish. Fanciful. But so did the idea of airplanes, electricity, hygiene, female scholars, and the notion that the earth is round.

If you’ve been living with pain for months or years, chances are you’ve been told there’s nothing you can do. It’s permanent, doctors have said. Learn to live with it. In addition, chances are that to date, you’ve done everything short of chopping off a limb to find a remedy for your pain, at great cost to you and with little or no results, so you’ve skeptical about trying something new. What if it hurts. What if depletes the energy you need to make it to the bathroom.

As someone who suffered from chronic pain and bounced from practitioner to practitioner for well over a decade, I understand and validate your wariness. But here’s the thing: What if it works. It did for me and numerous others who spent years in chronic pain hell, just like you. Are you willing to pass up the opportunity to heal, just because you’re so damn exhausted from trying?

OK Miss Smarty Pants, you reply, let’s assume dance has some healing properties and maybe will work for me. Still, how the heck am I supposed to dance, when I’m strapped to this here bed, doped up on Percoset, Vicodin, and other pretty little pills controlling the side effects of aforementioned meds?

I readily acknowledge that dancing for pain relief is counterintuitive. Pain patients who love dance specifically have stopped dancing because it hurts – as I did for years. Other pain patients have gone to great lengths to avoid any kind of movement at all, so as not to exacerbate pain.

In addition, when we think of dance, we typically think of athletic prowess, stage performance, and romantic courtship. We think of hard bodies, a musical ear, and sex appeal. We don’t think of disheveled people in ratty-tatty pajamas, hobbling around, barely able to function because their nerves are screaming.

So it’s no surprise that when most pain patients are introduced to the idea of dance for pain relief, their initial reaction is, “Oh I can’t dance, because of pain.”

In addition, we are conditioned to think that if the big guns haven’t worked (pharmaceuticals or surgery), then something simple can’t possibly work (dance). What’s more, considering that pain patients typically have endured years of false promises for this cure or that, leaving us with empty pockets and possibly in worse shape than before, we are understandably cynical about trying something new.

For all these reasons, the first step to dancing with pain is addressing psychological resistance to it – dissolving the mental barrier between pain patients and dance. So let’s break this down:

For starters, I validate the hard-earned skepticism that pain patients are apt to feel about yet another method promising a cure. I do not and never will promise a cure through dance. I was promised sure-fire pain-relief cures to the tune of, oh, a brand new house in a nice little neighborhood somewhere. I’m not going to turn around and pull that bullshit on anyone else. I will, however, offer this dance method as another handy tool to add into your sequined chronic pain toolbox, which hopefully has copious amounts of butterflies painted on it.

Maybe it will prove to be your portal to wellness, as it was for me and others. Maybe it simply will offer a distraction from the movies you’ve viewed nine times each, from your BedQuarters screening room.

Regardless, it may be helpful to know that the Dancing with Pain® method was developed by a feisty-ass chronic pain patient (me) healing from her own damn pain (mine). It is tailored to the body, mind, and spirit of pain patients who are fed up with our sickcare system — um, I mean “healthcare” system. It is doable from the comfort of your bed, and once you learn the method, it’s free of charge, becuase you can do it by yourself, for yourself.

And it boasts negligible risk, if any, because you’re the boss in each dance session: There are no “dance moves.” There is no choreography. The dance is simply about finding your comfort zones (even if only in your mind) and optimizing the sense of comfort and pleasure you have in there. For some people, a dance session involves lying on the floor for an hour, doing a little wiggle-jiggle with the wobbly bits. For others, it involves sitting on a chair and visualizing dance in the mind.

Which brings me to my final point about dance: We have limited, conventional notions of dance as performance, but there are historical and contemporary precedents for dance as medicine. Dance is comprehensive and inclusive – something far beyond leaps, twirls, and fancy footwork. It is a primal connection to the creative life force. It is the healing unification of mind, body, and spirit.

Did you know that across America, there are professional dancers who use wheelchairs and prosthetics? I once danced with a group of them, in a summer intensive. My performance partner, another non-professional dancer, had no arms or legs; but she bounced around the room, putting to shame plenty of able-bodied people I’ve seen shaking their groove thang at nightclubs. And if she can dance, so can you.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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Is your life exacerbating your pain? Many of us bounce from doctor to doctor and test to test, looking for the cause of our pain. While pain can be rooted in many different sources, it also can be exacerbated or relieved from many different sources that seemingly have nothing to do with the pain – relationships, living space, work environment, dietary habits, and so on. For this reason, natural pain relief begins with your life.

In other words, does your life support a pain-free reality? Are you constantly eating junk food that jacks up your inflammation, or to the contrary, are you eating tons of green leafy vegetables, which reduce your inflammation and promotes the overall health of your immune system?

Are you a couch potato, sedentary slave to your pain, thereby compromising your body’s production of pain-busting chemicals, or are you doing as much activity as you can (ie, without exacerbating your pain), thereby improving your circulation and the production of endorphins in your body?

Natural pain relief doesn’t just mean reaching for supplements instead of pharmaceuticals. It means taking an honest look at your life and figuring out what is promoting a healthy, happy body, and what is working against it. This week, take 10 minutes to reflect on your life. Write down two things that work well and two that need improvement. Then write down one step you can take in the next week, to tend to the part of your life that needs a little booster shot.

Remember: You have the power to impact your body and influence your health. And despite pain, you can do little tiny things that make a difference – one painless baby step at a time.

Order the “5 steps to Successful Chronic Pain Management” e-book on our natural pain relief store, for more tips on how to life your life pain-free!

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What we love about pharmaceuticals is that when they work, they do so without any effort on our part. We pop ‘em in, and they get busy relieving our pain. Natural pain relief, to the contrary, is a lifestyle habit. It’s not an easy-breezy, quick-fix response to pain.

The thing is, while effective pharmaceuticals are amazing for immediate, take-the-edge-off response to pain, they fail to eliminate the root cause of whatever condition is causing us pain. Meaning, we need to keep on taking those drugs, to keep on treating that pain.

There are a few problems with pill-popping over the long haul:

1. Pharmaceuticals are notorious for causing all kinds of side effects that further destabilize our bodies, meaning that we may end up on even more drugs, to treat the problems caused by the drugs we already are on.
2. Over time, many pharmaceuticals peter out. Like crack addicts, we end up needing to take higher and higher doses, to get the same pain-relief effect. Even then, we may not feel the level of relief we once felt.
3. Speaking of crack addicts, pharmaceuticals cause chemical dependencies that mirror addiction. They also straight-out cause addiction. Like we don’t have enough issues already when living with chronic pain.

Natural pain relief is a way of life that promotes overall health and wellness. In other words, it’s not just a lifestyle habit. It’s a life-saving habit:

By eating organic, nutritious food, especially vegan, we not only reduce or eliminate our pain, but we also reduce or eliminate toxins that are known to cause illnesses as potentially life-threatening as cancer. By engaging in mild to moderate exercise, we not only promote blood circulation and release endorphins that lower or eliminate pain (even if temporarily), but we also improve our overall cardiovascular health, in turn preventing diseases as potentially life threatening as heart attacks.

I’m not suggesting that you stop popping pills cold turkey. I am, however, suggesting that this week, you evaluate your lifestyle habits and figure out one little baby step you can take, to optimize your health and wellness.

Is there a toxic person in your life? Maybe this week, you can have a couple less phone calls with that person. Do you sleep poorly because of a less-than-ideal pillow? Maybe this week, you can splurge and get yourself a headrest that works better for you.

Yes, natural pain relief takes effort. And yes, you are worth it.

Order the “5 steps to Successful Chronic Pain Management” e-book on our natural pain relief store, for more tips on how to life your life pain-free!

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With hit shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing with the Stars,” America is having a love affair with the act of shaking our groove thing. But dance is more than great entertainment or a social pastime. Whether high- or low-impact, in the form of ballroom, salsa, or hip-hop, dance is also good medicine.

Integrative medicine experts cite the following health benefits of dance:

• stimulates immunity
• tones the nervous system
• releases endorphins that decrease pain
• conditions the heart and respiratory system
• improves cholesterol and blood sugar levels
• amplifies oxygen flow throughout the body
• increases strength and endurance
• promotes a sense of wellbeing and euphoria

A research study in the October, 2009 edition of the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity revealed that regular dancing can improve balance, agility, flexibility, aerobic capacity, and lower-body muscle endurance. It also indicated that dancing may increase lower-body bone and muscle strength, as well as reduce the risk of falls. In addition, in the June 19, 2003 issue of New England Journal of Medicine, the Einstein Aging Study reported that dance not only has a profound impact on the body, but also on the mind — helping prevent Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

“Some of the healthiest elderly people I encounter are those who dance regularly,” affirms integrative medicine specialist Andrew Weil, MD, author of Why Our Health Matters.

Gabrielle Roth, founder of the 5Rhythms freestyle dance method, even credits dance for saving her life from otherwise-fatal, stage-four lung cancer: In freestyle dance, she says, “we’re in the unknown and creating something.” Rather than learning routines and perfecting moves, she says, freestyle dancers practice deep inner listening and spontaneous movement. “As we move in freestyle, our entire being is engaged in this process,” she explains. “Today I’m sitting here cancer-free. I think a lot of the reason is that I was able to listen to my body as it said yes and no. It’s something we learn in freestyle dance…[The dance] was with me as I faced the exit sign and as I had to make life-and-death decisions.”

Those who are ill, elderly, or disabled may think they cannot dance. They can, doctors say, but those with limitations must be judicious about which dance methods they choose. A style like belly dancing, Weil notes, “can be less challenging on the joints.”

“As with any exercise, dance can be overdone,” cautions integrative medicine specialist Martin Rossman, MD, author of the forthcoming book, The Worry Solution.”You need to start slowly and work into increasing levels of exertion…High impact forms can be tough on the feet, knees, and back. Listen to your body, and do a bit less than you’d like,  until you are in shape to do more.

“Consider any previous injuries or limitations in joints or muscles,” Rossman continues, “and make sure the dance you choose doesn’t put inordinate strain there. If you are limited by injury or illness like arthritis, talk to a physical therapist or dance therapist to help you design a program that will help you, not hurt you. Take it slow and listen to your body as you do new movements.”

Lastly, Rossman concludes, “have fun!”

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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Most people in pain are victim to their pain or are actively engaged in “the war on pain.” But there is a third approach that is turning out to be more effective for those who try it: dancing with pain.

The Dancing with Pain® method organically and synergistically blends numerous techniques already known to be effective in natural pain relief — including breath work, meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and physical movement. It has proven to offer dramatic results in as little as a one-hour session; it is a technique that is available 24/7, free of charge, once you learn the technique; and it can be done anywhere — even in bed, and even if someone is significantly disabled from physical pain.

Want to learn how to dance with your pain? Be sure to check out the Dancing with Pain store, for the “Breakfast Mix,” the first in our series of downloadable audio classes.

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