The Benefits of Meditation

I’m a big fan of meditation. It helps me a lot with the pain and with stress. When I was at my worst, I’d forgotten how to breath. Now, meditation is one of my best tools to manage my fibromyalgia. I came across this post on meditation and fibromyalgia and loved it. It’s a great introducation to meditation and how it can helps people suffering from chronic pain and fibromyalgia.

 

If you have fibromyalgia, you know how difficult it can be to deal with. Fibromyalgia symptoms such as chronic pain and fatigue often make it difficult to go on with your daily routine. These symptoms can sometimes have disastrous effects on your mood, leaving you feeling hopeless or even depressed. If you are feeling especially stressed out by your fibromyalgia, you may find that meditation can help you restore calmness and vitality to your life.

What is Meditation?

Meditation techniques are increasingly being used by those with fibromyalgia to manage their fibromyalgia symptoms and lift their mood. Through meditation, people can quiet their minds, reduce stress, and eliminate worries from their life, at least for a short amount of time.

Meditation usually consists of focusing on the breath or a certain word, sound, or object in order to enter into an altered state of consciousness. Meditation produces feelings of relaxation and rest, and can help people learn how to focus their minds on things other than the trials and tribulations of daily life. Meditation has been used for thousands of years by many different cultures. It is not known exactly where meditation began, though early practices can be traced to India and the Eastern World.

There are numerous different types of meditation, including mindfulness meditation, concentration meditation, and transcendental meditation. Most types of meditation have the same goal – to allow a person to achieve mental clarity and a state of extreme calm. Meditation is sometimes used to promote spiritual healing. Benefits of Meditation When practiced regularly, all types of meditation can offer numerous physical and mental benefits.

Physical benefits include:

•Reduced heart rate

•Decreased pulse

•Lowered blood pressure

•Reduced nervous system activity

Mental benefits of meditation include:

•Fewer mood swings

•Decreased feelings of depression

•Feelings of vigor and vitality

•Increased memory

•Decreased levels of anxiety

How Meditation Helps Fibromyalgia Sufferers:

Meditation has recently been shown to be very effective in reducing the stress levels and symptoms associated with fibromyalgia syndrome. If you have fibromyalgia, techniques of meditation can help to improve your sleep patterns and reduce your fatigue.

Meditation techniques can also help to reduce your pain levels, as it decreases the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in your body. In a 1993 study involving 77 fibromyalgia patients, it was found that daily meditation improved most fibromyalgia symptoms. 51% of participants reported moderate to marked improvement in their symptoms. In 1998, a study on meditation and fibromyalgia found that meditative practices lessened the achiness, sleeplessness, muscle pain, and depression experienced by fibromyalgia patients.

From the The Benefits of Fibro Meditation.

Thankful Thursdays

I know I’ve missed some Thursdays. It’s been a very stressful couple of weeks at work, and I’ve spent my evenings recovering from my days and haven’t felt like getting on a computer to post something.

This Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for:

1. That my family all made it through Hurricane Sandy okay and unharmed. My mom got 8 inches of snow and my brother had wind damage in his area of NYC. He also had to walk to work yesterday and it was a long walk!
2. Chocolate. Enough said.
3. That my company offers a 30 hour work week. I could not have worked full time the last couple of weeks. Working 6 hour days, and staying late a few days too, was all I could do. I’m exhausted, but I’m not miserable like I would be if I was working full time.
4. My new Lazy-boy recliner. Thanks Mom! It’s so comfortable and helps my back and neck relax.  I relax in it on my heating pad and veg out in front of the TV. Sunday I even had a long nap in the chair. It was great.
5. My husband who made my birthday great this week.  He cooked me dinner! It was wonderful to  relax while he cooked and then we had a fantastic meal together.  He’s a great cook! And he baked me a gluten free chocolate birthday cake! He’s amazing.

 

 

Getting through a Long Day of Work with Fibromyalgia

When I got to work this morning, my boss asked me if I was ready for the deadline we had by end of day today for the proposal I’m working on.  I was like “What deadline?”  I’m in marketing and we send out two drafts of each proposal for review/comment before submitting it to a prospective client.  This proposal only had a 2-week deadline versus our usual 4 to 6 week deadline, so I figured we’d only do one review.  Well, I figured wrong. So I had to scramble to get the work done in a rough draft form.  I had to work through lunch.  I didn’t stretch as much as I needed to.

Looking back, I did pretty well until about noon today.  I usually react very poorly to surprises thanks to my fibromyalgia.   My husband can attest to me going completely nuts for a bit when something surprises me or I can’t follow my usual habits for some unexpected reason.  I manage my pain best when I can control as much of my surroundings and my day as possible.  When that control is yanked out from under my feet, I usually lose my head for a bit.  So today, in that regard, I did pretty good.  I made myself of list of the things that HAD to get done today and a focused on doing each item and then moving onto the next.

By noon though I was exhausted.  I didn’t sleep well last night. Pain in my back and neck work me up several times last night.  I’m not sure what I did to my back but it is VERY angry right now.  I had a really hard time getting out of bed to get myself ready for work today.  So today’s surprise was poorly timed.  By noon, it hurt to breathe.  My back and ribs were killing me.  Hot, spiking pain would shoot from my ribcage around to my back with every breath.  So I reverted to my old, unhealthy habits to make it through the day.  I blocked out every signal my body was sending me from the head down.  I didn’t even think about doing it or make a conscious decision to make this change.  My mind just did it itself.  I must have kicked into fight or flight mode and those primal instincts took over.  My mind blocked out the pain so I could survive the day.  I didn’t eat lunch until 1:30 when normally I eat before noon.  I couldn’t tell that I was hungry.  If I hadn’t set an alarm on my phone to remind me to take my pain medicine, I know I would’ve forgotten to do that too.

As I write this, I feel the pain slowly returning.  My adrenaline must have kicked back off because I know that’s the only way I made it through the last 4 hours.  I feel what little bit of energy I’ve had in the last few hours leaving me. My hands are shaking and it’s making it hard to type.  Thank God for spell check!  I wonder how bad a price I’m going to have to pay for letting my instincts take over and reverting to my old habits to survive the workday?  The pain usually comes back with a vengeance whenever I block it out like I did today.  We’ll see I guess.  Maybe it won’t be as bad since at least I’m aware of what I did to get through the day today.  Before, I wasn’t even aware of it.  I didn’t understand why the pain was so worse once I got home.  It’s because the wall I throw up to block out the pain signals falls when I get home, the adrenaline surge passes, and my conscious mind becomes aware of the pain and fatigue again.

By 3:30, I was done.  only a few final things were left to do and my coworker said she could do it. So I headed home.

I’m going to go lay down and listen to the music that helps to calm and relax me.  I’m going to take my heavy duty, emergency only pain medicine because I can feel the pain coming back in spades.  I’m going to need chemical help to get through this evening thanks to my survival instincts taking over at work today.

I get asked a lot how I’m able to work with fibromyalgia.  Usually, I say I’m very lucky to work somewhere that offers a 30-hour work week option. It’s not as bad working 6 hour days. Today was tough but tomorrow is a new day.

Wishing everyone a nice and as pain-free weekend as possible! Soft hugs!