Pain is a symptom and is not damaging in and of itself. This is one message that is given in this video. The idea being that we have control over our thoughts and we can decide how to approach our disorder and we do have the power to make our lives better. If we believe that pain is everything and that pain in and of itself can and will stop us from doing anything we want to do… basically if we give up… then Fibromyalgia wins.
Reducing stress, reduces pain (and vice versa).
As we’ve read and heard a million times, the best thing we can do to improve our situation with Fibromyalgia is to exercise. The main point they made is to “start low and go slow”. Do just a little to begin with and stop when you feel pain or feel tired. Even if you just do five minutes. Exercising reduces stress.
Reduce Stress. Our minds are overactive so we need to find ways to make it less active. Relax, meditate, spend time with friends, humor, etc are all ways to reduce stress.
The message I got from the video was to basically try anything and find what works for you.
“You can not say no to pain today but you can say no to the suffering”. I thought this was a great quote and idea from the video.
The video can be a little confusing in the way the menu is set up. I started at Chapter 1 and hit play. When it played out I went back and tried to watch Chapter 2 only to realize I’d already seen it. I was unsure if it had played through the whole video (as it seemed shorter than it should be). I went back and selected Chapter 3 and found that it had a sub-menu. Chapter 3 is the action plan and contains info on nutrition, meditation & yoga.
I was impressed by one part of the nutrition section in that the approach was to very specifically tell you about different foods and how they are good for you (or not good for you), in general. What I was not impressed with was that it seemed like this section was not specific to Fibromyalgia but just some generic bit that they probably include on all of their videos. If you’ve spent much time reading about Fibromyalgia, you know there are certain foods that we are told to avoid (Aspertame, caffeine, nightshade, etc) and these foods and how they can negatively affect Fibro patients were not addressed at all.
I enjoyed the meditation and yoga sections. The instructor was easy to watch/listen to and most importantly the yoga moves really seemed to be geared towards our limits. Reminders were given over and over to not push yourself further than you felt comfortable. There was only one yoga move that I didn’t feel like I could do and that is because of my neck pain due to TMJ not because of my Fibro issues. The yoga moves were more about stretching than about strengthening which is important in our situation. I actually wish I could just download those sections of this video (I’d rented it). I’m not sure I would buy the video just for these portions (about 20-30 minutes total), but I would definitely look for other yoga videos from Mayo Clinic or done by the instructor (Rodney Yee).
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