Practical Investigation of Movement Patterns and How They Change Adapting to Chronic Pain
“Being disabled by an experience not visible to others”
Chronic pain is a very common condition, yet not the most noticeable or understood. Because chronic pain is mostly an internal experience which can be hard to recognise from the outside, it results in people who are living with it often feeling limited and isolated. Although there are no strong signals of pain looking at the body externally, many diverse changes are happening internally - both physically and mentally in order to adapt to pain.
After looking into what kind of processes are happening when the body is adapting to pain, I decided to take it to the studio and investigate the subtle or sometimes more externally noticeable adjustments and changes that are taking place when I am experiencing pain.
Standing
I started with an exercise of mindful standing. I stood in one spot, in a parallel position with my feet under my sitting bones. I could feel the pain radiating from my sacral era to my left thigh. The more I could feel the pain, the more breath I allowed in. I could feel how my body is interacting with gravity, the small shifts in makes in relation to weight to the floor. I noticed that I naturally bear more weight on my right foot compared to my left. I believe that is to do with the fear of pain and the protection from it. I do not try to correct it. I do not try to resist the image of pain and the exact location of it in my head. I can feel my pelvis tilted towards the right side. There is a persistent urge to move, to start shifting weight. I take a step.
Walking
As I take a step with my right foot, I can feel the ease of pain in my back, followed by an intense blockage of movement in my left hip. As I transfer my weight to the left foot, I can feel pain radiating more intensely. My movement is not fluid, it is uneven and sudden. I can feel my pelvis tilting with every step I take on the right foot. My back feels stiff and my whole body tenses. I try to breathe and ease my walking pattern. I can feel the reflex that the movement fear causes. I don't want to step on my left leg. I can feel how my spine is making a "C" curve looking at it from the back. I am making unvolunteered adjustments to protect myself from pain. It happens so naturally. I can't fight it and bring myself back to the right posture.
Cunningham technique - Exercise on six
I try to perform the exercise that I do in my weekly Cunningham classes. I find this exercise to be a very intense experience for my lower back. It consists of many curves and arches as well as twists in the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, and even sacral parts of the spine. I do have a recording of me performing this exercise pain-free which I will use in comparison with my current video documentation.
The felt sensation of performing the exercise is very intense but not nearly as painful as an improvised movement. I believe that it is to do with the control that the movement sequence requires. To my body, free and uncertain movement is much more painful than set and controlled one. As start the combination, I can feel how uneven my body feels. The first movement is a plie with a twist to the right. I can feel my body bearing more weight on the right side and avoiding giving it to the left. When I perform the following curve I can feel a stretch in my lower back, but as I bring the curve out of twist towards, my muscles immediately clench because of the changed pelvic alignment. Similar sensations follow throughout the exercise, with some positions feeling more painful than others.
When I take two videos of me doing the sequence in pain and without it, I can spot a number of differences:
- The first thing I can see is the hesitation of movement that happens when my body is in pain. I can visually see the fear of it and the forced positions. My muscles resist rather than flow
- The second thing is perhaps the most visually noticeable one - my amplitude of movement. It is clear that when practicing with pain, the range of movement gets significantly smaller. My body does not twist, curve and arch as far as it's able to. The difference is felt in my legs as well. The plies are not as deep and voluminous.
- The third thing is the continuity of the sequence. In the healthy version, I can see how one movement flows into another without much interruption. In the second version, I can see the effort that my body makes to reach the positions and the uneven rhythms and pauses in traveling between positions.
I do acknowledge that these changes might also be due to many other factors such as a class that I have done before the filming, the efficiency of the prior performed warm-up, and the general state of the body's health, control, and flexibility of that day.
Improvisation
I have also explored the movement patterns and how they change reacting to chronic pain using improvisation. As mentioned before. I find improvised movement to be the most difficult one for my body to cope with. Since it is often fast and less controlled, I feel pain much more suddenly and intensely. Nevertheless, I find the improvised movement a very sensory interesting experience. It creates space for me to sense my body's adaptation to pain more intensely and directly. I can see my preferences of certain movement patterns and avoidance of others. I have documented my improvisation by videotaping it. I have also compared it to an older, pain-free video of me improvising movement. The is a very clear difference in my usage of space and dynamics. The current movement is much more content and has steadier rhythms compared to the previous video. My relation to the floor also changes - I am much more careful when leaving the ground and when landing. The is less variety of space levels, as the high level is much preferred. The usage of the left leg has a quite interesting quality. It is more functional than decorative. Movement with pain unlocks completely new patterns and abilities. The concentration of the mind is occupied with the constant sensory response. The improvisation becomes informed and influenced by the processes of the nerves that are happening within. It is interesting to see how the body responds and adapts to such circumstances.
- Resistance
- Effort
- Uneven movement in terms of alignment
- Content
- Straight spine
- Curves in the lower body
- Upper limb movement
- Slow transitions in between space levels
- Tilted pelvis
- Less control across the body
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