Cantissimo Senior Living Blog

Pain is the body’s way of communicating to us that something is unbalanced. Yet, the places we often experience pain are not necessarily at the location of the movement limitation. 

Let’s consider the body and muscles as an elaborate system. When one area of the body is stuck short and tight, it is plausible that this area of tightness can tug, pull, or restrict movement, which inhibits proper functioning in other parts of the body.

Somatics explains that muscles become habituated tight and short in response to repetitive strain, injury, and stress. Muscles essentially fail to function properly - which means they stop fully contracting and stop fully releasing. This is known as Sensory Motor Amnesia - loss of the brain’s voluntary control over the muscles.

Do you ever experience prolonged fatigue lasting more than two days after exercising or playing a game of golf? Do your muscles fatigue quickly? Do you want to improve efficiency in your muscles and move and feel better in your body?

When muscles are not performing optimally and efficiently, they often feel weak, tight, or are limited in their range of motion.

The reason for the weakness, tightness, or lack of range of motion is often met with forced stretching and strength training which can prove ineffective when the cause is neuromuscular. 

There is a great misconception in the movement rehabilitation industry that we need to strengthen our muscles constantly. Truthfully, however, our ability to contract and release our muscles comes from messages sent down from the brain. We need to ensure that our muscles are getting the right messages to stay functional and efficient. Our muscles need a regular “reboot” to stay working well, particularly as we age.

Have you had this experience? You keep working harder and trying to improve your strength, but you do not feel like you are getting stronger?

The latest research shows that rates of stress have skyrocketed since the start of the pandemic, and it is starting to affect our health. A big part of this is isolation, working from home, and disrupting our usual social activities, leaving us feeling disconnected and tired. 

An online article published in Healthline on February 5, 2021, interviewed the service chief of a psychiatric hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Michael Young. In the interview, he stated, “Social connection is a fundamental source of well-being and renewal for most people, and the ongoing social restrictions from the pandemic continue to disrupt many of the well-established social routines.”

We, as humans, are social beings. We require interaction with others. The inability to do so increases the body’s natural stress response, amping up our nervous systems, leaving us feeling more vulnerable, increasing our pain.

Believe it or not, we all have pain. It is inevitable that we will cycle into and out of pain – what matters the most is what we do about it.

Even Pain Resolution Therapists experience pain. One more time, let me stress that it is what you do about it that counts. Do you mask it with drugs for temporary relief, or are you willing to correct the imbalance and dive into the root cause?

Tightening your abdominal muscles to strengthen your core does not relieve chronic back pain. It is possible that this approach will even make things worse!

When you take the approach of strengthening or tightening the abdominal muscles in order to counterbalance tight back muscles, you are working against your body. It results in a co-contraction of both the front and back body muscles. This then creates a braced-liked situation that creates more layers of problems than solutions.

The breath grounds, connects, and heals the nervous system, which is why nose breathing is essential.

Did you know that right nostril breathing (RNB) has a very different and distinct effect on the nervous system compared to left nostril breathing (LNB)?

The right nostril is the energizing and heating component of the breath. It supports a sympathetic “fight or flight” nervous system response (SNS) in the body. Conversely, the left nostril is the cooling component of the breath. It supports a parasympathetic “rest and digestion” nervous system (PNS) response in the body.

When we are in a state of balance and good health, the dominant nostril that we breathe through changes every 90-120 minutes, this is known as our nasal cycle. This cycle is under the control of our Autonomic Nervous system. It regulates the balancing of the PNS and SNS in the body. When we are out of balance, this nasal rhythm becomes out of balance, which has adverse effects on our mental, physical and emotional health and well-being.

We’d love to share with you six pillars of health that date back thousands of years and come from the world of Ayurveda known as the medicine of yoga. 

The Six Pillars are meant to be incorporated into your daily life to help you stay healthy, vibrant, and maintain your independence. After all, this is the time of life to travel, play with grandkids, volunteer in your community, and enjoy quality time with family and friends. 

The human body/mind has some pretty basic requirements to maintain energy, proper elimination, and stress resiliency. These practices are simple and easy and will support you to feel great!

Breath is life force and essential to supporting all the functions and systems in our bodies, thereby regulating health. As we age and go through the trials and tribulations of life, it is common that we adopt patterns of breathing that are not optimal. Some of those patterns include mouth breathing, erratic breathing, breath-holding, and even reverse breathing. 

All of these patterns affect how much the diaphragm, our primary breathing muscle, is able to contract and release, corresponding to vagus nerve stimulation, the brain-gut connection, and our body’s relaxation response.

The vagus nerve is the longest in the body, running from the brainstem to the gut. Simulating the vagus nerve activates the body’s relaxation response, reducing heart rate and blood pressure.

So, how do we stimulate the vagus nerve? By first bringing attention to our current breathing pattern, and then beginning to activate the diaphragm as we breathe, taking slow, deep breaths.

All movement should make you feel great during, after, and days later. You might feel that you have worked hard, but you really should not be in pain. Keeping your muscles strong is essential. Muscles are meant to be able to contract and release well to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. Does your workout routine create pain in your body?

Should we accept pain as a normal part of aging?

Chronic tension/pain has become an epidemic across North America and the industrialized world. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined. The question is, why?

Persistent or recurring pain is defined as pain lasting more than six months after the original tissue damage has healed. The research on chronic (persistent/recurring) pain is compelling. The annual cost to industrialized countries in health care resources and lost productivity is increasing every year. In 2017, the University of Michigan Health reported that the annual cost of treatment and lost productivity due to chronic pain in the USA was $635 billion.