Waking Up In Pain

​Waking up in pain, what does it mean? It could indicate many different things, but sometimes the reason we are waking up is because of a stressful dream. It could be the mind's way of protecting us from a disturbing situation. The dream world can sometimes be a scary place, and might even be a more scary place than the real world for many of us at times. 
Perhaps when you wake up the middle of the night, you find that you have low-back pain, which you might not have had when you went to bed, but suddenly you feel that ache or stabbing pain. It may be that you are experiencing other types of pain; such as in your shoulder, neck, leg, or maybe it is sciatic pain. Pain experienced in this manner is often simply Tension-Based Pain (TBP).
You find yourself wide-awake, with low-back pain, and when you are so uncomfortable it is really difficult to fall back to sleep. One method to help you get back to sleep is to completely relax your low-back muscles.
Follow these steps outlined in the technique below. You will move from the top of your spine (your head) all the way to the base of the spine. Try this and you may be back to sleep before you know it.

Total Muscular Relaxation (TMR)

1. First: start with some very deep breathing to fill your lungs, and then fully let all of your breath out. Do this three or four times, and you should notice that your breathing will begin to slow at this point, which should relax the entire body.
2. Second: work on releasing your muscles starting with the very top of your head and letting your muscles relax throughout the different parts of your head. Completely relax your jaw, your closed eyes, and your scalp. You may be carrying a lot of tension in your ears, so just let them completely drop-down and release them. Many of us hold tension in our jaw, and that can cause TMJ. This may sound strange but sometimes we keep a lot of tension in our tongue, but try to completely let your tongue muscles go, and let it completely flatten, and relax.
3. Third: from the top of your neck, and down into your back, drop, release, flatten every muscle section down all the way through the back of your body. Continue to work lower into the the base of the spine, relaxing the sacrum which is the triangular portion of your lower spine, then down even further into your coccyx (tailbone) at the bottom of your spine.

Once all of these muscles have been released, flattened, and loosened, you'll find you are feeling very relaxed and ready to sleep. If not, repeat the steps above.

​Hopefully, you will soon drift off, and have a restful night of sleep.

PEACE...

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