pain relief techniques

Menstrual Cycle Rescue - 7 women standing in a row laughing - stress relief

How to clear stress from your body

27 February 2023

So it’s the end of another year. I don’t know about you, but I can still feel the 2022 stress hanging around in my body.

It shows up as tension and a mild aching below my ribs that I can’t quite let go, and feeling tired even in the mornings.

It’s essential to clear stress from our bodies so we can clear it from our minds, so I’m taking some time in this liminal ‘nothing’ week between the crazy Xmas and New Year intensities to release my pressure valve.

How?

First, I’m returning to my favourite book of the year, Burnout: solve your stress cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. I really can’t recommend it highly enough if you have stress stored in your body too…..which is, um, all of us nowadays!

Here are their recommendations for releasing stress:

  1. ANY physical activity is ‘the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle’. It’s ‘what tells your brain you have successfully survived’ whatever threats you’ve experienced. So walk, run, cycle, dance in your lounge room like nobody’s watching, or just shake your whole body for a couple of minutes like a deer that’s just out-run a lion. You’ll feel SO much better – do it daily, if you (like most people) get re-stressed everyday.
  2. Slow breathing – deep, slow breaths with a longer exhale helps your brain and body switch out of fight/flight/freeze and into rest/digest/restore, where all healing and recovery can happen.
  3. Positive social interaction – a brief, friendly chat with a cashier at the shops, your coffee barista, or a friendly neighbour helps to reassure your brain/body that the world is a safer place.
  4. Having a big belly laugh with someone – helps with social bonding and turns down the volume on the stress response, relaxing muscles and sending good vibes through body and brain.
  5. Affection – physical or not, with someone you love and trust who loves and trusts you. Try a 20 second hug, which can ” change your hormones, lower your blood pressure and heart rate and improve mood” and even increase oxytocin, the social-bonding hormone.
  6. Having a good cry – it might not solve problems but it completes the stress cycle in your body so you can recover physically. Turn on your favourite ten-tissue movie to get your tears flowing! 
  7. Creative expression – doing anything creative can be a great way to express and release big emotions in a socially acceptable way.

Deep Rest in 15 Minutes

And my other go-to technique for releasing stress from my body is something I call the Deep Rest technique – try it today:

Lie on your back on the floor with your legs up on the couch (or on the bed with a pile of 4-5 pillows), rest your hands on your belly and breathe slowly and deeply for 15 minutes.

If you need help with more persistent tension and pain, book your appointment for an Ortho-Bionomy session here and start 2023 feeling great.

If you’d like to support my work with a regular or one-off contribution, head over here

nightmare period pain young woman sitting on a hill, head in her arms

How to get free from nightmare period pain

25 April 2024

This is a recent testimonial from a client, who brought her daughter to see me for her nightmare period pain. I’ll let her tell the story:

“My 15 yr old daughter suffered terribly when she got her period. She couldn’t walk, had unbearable pain and vomiting and she missed days of school – not to mention the mood swings.

She had 3 sessions with Janine and the first period after that was fantastic – almost no pain, no vomiting or nausea, the pain meds worked and she went to school as normal. Then she had another session a week before her next period and again had a great result – the period symptoms were gone. We didn’t see Janine before her third period yet she had the same result, an easy period – as she puts it “this is magic”.

My daughter has now had three periods since her first session with Janine and the results are amazing. Her periods were completely different, all her symptoms had disappeared. No vomiting, no cramps or pain and she was able to go to school. Her mood was completely positive because she had no pain to deal with.  Best move we ever made! Everyone was suggesting I should put her on the pill but I knew there was a better solution – and we found it.” – Annette

I had a similar experience in my teens and 20s. Unfortunately my doctor did put me on the Pill, which stopped my period pain and PMS but led to many other health problems including trouble conceiving when I was ready to have a family.

Yet this young woman’s experience shows how, with only a few sessions to balance her pelvic alignment, her body’s natural cycle was restored and those awful symptoms were gone. No diet change, no special exercises, no surgical or other interventions – and a LOT less pain meds.

How to get started

It doesn’t matter if your periods have just started or you’ve had them for years, you CAN get free of the pain and other symptoms.

If you or your daughter suffer with nightmare period pain, book an appointment to see me for in-person sessions. If you’re not in Melbourne (Australia) we can work together online with my Body Reset coaching package. 

Take the Period Quiz

You can find out if you have a pelvic imbalance by taking my Period Quiz – and be sure to sign up for my free Period First Aid Kit to start balancing your body right now.

Photo credit: Kelli McClintock – Unsplash

shoulder pain - woman with bird tattoo on shoulder

How to relieve shoulder pain by doing nothing

25 October 2022

Shoulder pain seems so common in our society. Because: stress – right? One US PubMed article states that “shoulder pain affects 18-26% of adults at any point in time, making it one of the most common regional pain syndromes”. 

But hidden in these stats is the fact that women ‘shoulder’ most of the burdens of the world. Women suffer most from poverty and war. Outside of war and poverty, in most families women carry the larger portion of family care, family scheduling and housework while also working outside the home – and often working harder/longer than their male colleagues for less pay (it blows my mind that this is still true).

Many women have consulted with me for shoulder pain over the years. There are LOTS of suggestions out there for addressing shoulder pain, but a lot of them involve hard work and some could be painful. If you know me, you know that’s not my favourite thing when it comes to recovering from pain!

You may also know that I’m a BIG fan of any opportunity to choose slow over fast and doing less instead of more.

My favourite way to release the shoulder is all of those things I like – slow, soft, doing less. If you work with your arms all day long – say you’re a violinist, a window-cleaner or work on your computer for hours – it’s pretty much a given that you’ll have a lot of tension – and maybe pain – in your shoulders at day’s end.

One way to reduce or prevent this is to check in regularly through the day with where you’re holding your shoulders – are they up towards your ears? Hunched forward in front of your chest?

If so, don’t pull them back to correct it (like a drill sargeant might demand) as this will only create more tension in your upper back. Instead, think of letting your shoulder blades ‘melt’ down your back, allowing the shoulder muscles to soften and your bones to settle back into their natural alignment on top of your ribcage.

The good news is you don’t have to do a whole lot of strenuous shoulder exercises to get them to release. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of strenuous exercise, it’s just more effective – and feels better – when your muscles aren’t hurting and your joints move freely).

The technique I’ll show you here is so easy it feels like you’re doing nothing. And really, you are ‘doing nothing’. But your body is doing something – it’s softening your muscles, increasing circulation in the shoulder and arm and re-aligning your shoulder joint.

Try it now:

  1. Lie on your back on your bed or couch, close enough to the edge to allow your whole arm to hang down freely off the side of the bed. Allow the arm, shoulder and hand to soften and relax. If it feels comfortable and relieving, rest here for 1-5 minutes (or more if you wish).
  2. If it’s not completely comfortable and feels too stretchy or pulling, try bending your elbow and tucking your hand under your hip on the bed, to allow just the upper arm to hang down.

This can be surprisingly effective despite being so simple, especially if you use it often. It’s remarkable how your body knows just what to do to take care of you, when you can get out of its way.

Whenever you use these positional rest techniques you create a feeling of safety in your body and rewire your brain to choose ease instead of pain.

I hope this helps you feel better, even for a few minutes. If you’d like to share with me what you noticed, email me or connect with me on Instagram.

soothe the body - person sleeping

Soothe your body to calm your mind

30 May 2022

Because we’ve collectively experienced a lot of trauma over the past 2 years, many of us are currently feeling a deep sense of exhaustion, also known as burnout and even depression. This often comes with an intensification of our physical symptoms too; when our brains feel unsafe they sometimes amplify our tension or pain to make us reach out to someone for help.

Despite being cloistered at home so much in recent times we are simultaneously living outside of ourselves, desperately looking for signs from the external environment that things are ‘normal’, that the danger has passed. And when we’re looking outside of ourselves for things to make us feel better, we usually find something – often more than one thing – that makes us feel worse.

So what to do? How can you stop spiralling into burnout, feeling guilty about not being able to do anything about the big traumatic events happening in the world and ending up in a heap, unable to look after our families or ourselves or get out of bed each day?

Soothe the body to calm the mind

The best way I know to help yourself is to come home to your body. It’s the only thing that’s with you in every moment. It’s the only place where you can create a tangible, repeatable feeling of safety, a sense of being in control. It’s the only place where you can really take care of yourself. And taking care of yourself is the only way to start making a difference in the world, when everything else is out of your control.

Traumatic and stressful events are emotionally – and physically – exhausting. Our recovery from them requires two things:

1. Complete the stress cycle

We must release the built-up charge from our bodies so that we don’t stay in the stress cycle. There are examples of this in Nature – when the deer outruns the lion it shakes all over and leaps about, discharging the excess adrenaline, sweating and releasing the intense energy from its muscles – and signalling safety throughout its nervous system. This is a great model for us too, because we, like deer, are animals in Nature (though we deny it to ourselves). The difference is that we live with constant daily stresses, so we must actively release the charge every day to complete the stress cycle and return to a calm baseline, allowing our bodies to repair, recover and restore. Some great ways to do this are

  • walking, running, cycling, swimming – any exercise that increases your heart rate
  • punching or screaming into a pillow
  • dancing (on a dancefloor or in the loungeroom)
  • laughing – with kids, with friends, at funny movies
  • rolling around on the ground outside – with kids or animals if you have them (with the added bonus of connecting with the immune system-supporting natural biome)

2. Deliberately, intentionally R E S T

Resting is one of our superpowers – one we vastly underestimate. We must rest as a matter of course every day. It should be scheduled in – it’s a non-negotiable basic daily need, like drinking water, moving and eating real food. Nature is always seeking to repair and restore balance and your body is the same. You don’t need to force it to repair itself, it happens naturally given the right conditions – one of which is rest.

Fortunately the Ortho-Bionomy self-care techniques offer a way to deliberately take your body into a deep resting state to soothe your body AND calm your mind. One of the ways we do this is by using the principle of exaggeration. It assumes your body knows best what it needs right now.

Test it now:

  1. Sitting where you are now, close your eyes and tune in to your sit bones – the two big bones under your butt. Is your weight evenly balanced on both sides, or do you feel more weight on one side?
  2. If it’s the latter, normally we would try to ‘fix’ it, to correct it by adding more weight on the lighter side to even it up. Instead, I want you to try exaggerating what is present by leaning slightly towards the side that feels heavier to add more weight to that side.
  3. Stay there for about 30 seconds, breathing slowly, then move back to the centre.
  4. Now notice again how the weight is distributed on your sit bones. Do you still have the same imbalance with more weight on one side, or has it changed?

When I use this with clients, they almost always notice the weight has at least changed – if not completely balanced. This happens because your exaggeration of the imbalance has acknowledged something your body needed – with gentleness, not force – and your brain has responded by restoring balance.

You can use this with any part of your body that feels tight or sore. Find a way to exaggerate the positioning or tension in that area – e.g. if your shoulders are held up towards your ears, position them up closer to your ears while lying down (so you don’t have to hold them up) and relax into the position, breathing slowly for up to a minute. Then slowly sit up and notice the changes and responses in your body (in your physical body and also in your breathing, emotions and thoughts).

This process brings you into a calmer state because it also brings your whole self – brain/nervous system/body/mind – into present time, into your body, into your breath. And it avoids re-traumatising you because you’re not talking about the things that are stressing you.

I hope this helps you feel better, even for a few minutes. If you’d like to share your experience with me, email me from the Contact page or send me a DM via Instagram.

Image credit: Shane – Unsplash

Jaw pain relief techniques

How to relieve jaw pain and save your teeth

25 October 2022

Do you suffer from jaw pain or clench your teeth while sleeping? Learn to prevent it and save your teeth.

I went to see my dentist recently. We (well, mostly she, because my mouth was occupied) chatted while she worked. I learned that the no.1 thing she did in 2020 was make mouth guards for her patients. The aim was to relieve jaw pain and help them stop grinding their teeth. She believed that the extra stress her patients were experiencing from COVID-19 was creating the increased jaw tension and pain they were reported.

I remembered when I used to clench my teeth during sleep, at a stressful time in my life. Happily I was able to stop it and save my teeth by using some simple Ortho-Bionomy techniques to reduce the tension and pain.

In case this helps you or someone you know, here’s how to do it:

General muscle tension release:

When you hold a lot of tension in your jaw it often feels really tight and possibly sore in the strong chewing muscles at either side of your face. These extend from your cheekbones just below your eyes down to the jaw bone below your lower teeth. It might also hurt around your jaw joints just in front of your ears.

To give these muscles a rest, first place your palms on your cheeks with fingers pointing upwards along the sides of your head. Support your jaw bone with the base of your palms and press very gently upwards to allow your cheeks to soften under your hands. Close your eyes and breathe slowly for a minute or more (this is a good stress-reliever too). Then try the steps below:

3-Step Release for Jaw Joint:

  1. First, hold your lower jaw bone lightly with your fingertips on both sides of your chin. Move your jaw slightly (using your fingertips) to one side and then the other, noting which side feels better, moves more easily or feels more comfortable. Then move it to the side that felt better and hold it there for 5-10 seconds before allowing it to return to a neutral position.
  2. Next, with your fingertips lightly on your jaw bone again, this time slide it slightly forwards (as if jutting your chin out), then back (towards your neck), again noting which feels better. Hold it gently in that preferred position for 5-10 seconds before letting it return to neutral.
  3. Now use your fingertips on the sides of your jaw bone to guide your mouth open a little way, then guide it closed, noting which felt better. Then hold it gently in that easier or better position for 5-10 seconds.

Be gentle!

Your jaw muscles are super strong and work really hard. Plus we often hold tension there when we’re stressed, angry or tired. So it’s really important to work gently here – if you push too hard in the movements shown above, it can just overwork these muscles even more. If you go gently and breathe slowly, you’ll notice your whole body relaxing.

Use these as often as you like. They’re especially useful first thing in the morning if you wake with jaw pain or tension, and again before you go to sleep at night to reduce the build-up of tension. You can also reduce jaw tension by releasing neck tension – I’ll be covering this in an upcoming newsletter and blog post. 

Sign up here to receive my newsletter each week with my latest post about ways you can relieve pain, tension and stress for yourself.

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Did this help you? Let me know in the comments below.

Image credit: Houcine Nib – Unsplash

working from home - woman looking at laptop on kitchen counter

How to avoid pain working from home

25 October 2022

Are you one of the billions of people working from home globally right now?

In theory it sounds easy – just get the technology hooked up and you can work anywhere, right?

That’s right – but our bodies are being left out of the picture.

Since our homes aren’t designed for us to spend long hours at the computer, I know some of you are experiencing increased pain and tension from this temporary(?) situation. So how can you avoid pain working from home?

First: Sit right

Nowadays most chairs aren’t designed for sustainable, comfortable sitting because they have a ‘dip’ down towards the back of the seat. This looks comfortable but actually doesn’t support our natural sitting posture. It encourages us to slump back towards the tailbone (coccyx) instead of sitting right over our ‘sitting bones’ – the big bone in each buttock at the base of our pelvis.

Which chair?

Ideally the seat of your chair should be flat (like the stool shown in the photo) or slightly sloping down at the front (not the back). If it’s not, just fill up the dip by placing a cushion or a rolled/folded towel on the dip.

You’ll notice you can instantly sit up ‘straight’ more naturally just by doing this, because your pelvis is providing a good foundation for your whole spine. You can even put a few books on the seat like I did with the library chair I used in the photo below (they were my own books ;). 

Fill the dip in your chair for better posture support
Flat seat supports natural posture

I have lots more to share including some simple but powerful pain-relief techniques, so I’ve packed the rest into a detailed guide – fill in the form below to get your copy today.

Image credit: LinkedIn – Unsplash

How to get relief for pelvic pain

5 May 2021

Do you suffer from “pelvic girdle pain”? Many women suffer intense pelvic pain both during pregnancy and post-natally, making walking, standing and even sitting extremely uncomfortable. Conventional medicine offers pain-relief medication and not much else. But Ortho-Bionomy helps reduce this pain dramatically by assisting the body to regain its natural pelvic alignment, relieving tension and pain and allowing comfortable movement to return.

One of my clients suffered from this condition after the birth of her baby, along with a partial prolapse, diagnosed by her obstetrician. She couldn’t stand or walk for more than 10 minutes without intense pain. She followed the physiotherapist’s advice for some exercises but after 7 weeks had minimal improvement. She wanted to walk to help her body recover from the pregnancy and birth, but she couldn’t even walk around the house much. Her frustration level was pretty high! She visited me for Ortho-Bionomy and noticed a reduction of pain the same day. I gently worked to encourage her pelvis to remember its natural alignment, and she found the work comfortable and relaxing. It took only 2 sessions of Ortho-Bionomy for her to be virtually pain-free. She is now able to go for daily walks with her baby in the pram and her prolapse has resolved. That’s better for her mental health and her baby as well as her body. Lee wrote “I would not have recovered so well and so quickly without you. Thank you for everything, you’ll see me again!”

Another client experienced severe low back and hip pain during the late stages of her pregnancy. She describes her experience here:

“At 35 weeks of pregnancy I came to Janine for help with excruciating sciatica & lower back pain. As this had been a recurring condition for the past 10+ years it did not surprise me that it had returned at a time when the body is under such pressure, but the intensity was like I had never experienced before. Shooting pains down to the calf, I could not walk further than the mailbox and spent the majority of the day on hands & knees, it was pretty bad! It took a couple of sessions to feel some results, as everything was so jammed up and tight. [In fact, Alicia had improved enough after 2 sessions to walk to my clinic for her third visit. – Janine] However, slowly & gently, after 4 sessions and with practice at home all symptoms had cleared up entirely; my back was actually better than at the start of the pregnancy. I really had not anticipated such a result, to say I was delighted to be pain free is an understatement. The treatment is very gentle, I felt completely safe at all times, my body felt wonderfully light at the end of each session. I would not hesitate to recommend Janine to anyone experiencing similar symptoms.” Alicia visited me 4 weeks after her baby was born because her back was uncomfortable with the new routines of feeding and carrying her baby, but her other conditions had not returned.

Because Ortho-Bionomy provides natural pain relief, it provides the perfect alternative to taking pharmaceutical drugs, especially when you want to avoid sharing those drugs with your baby through the placenta or your breast milk. Many women put up with this kind of pain during and after pregnancy because we believe we can’t do anything about it, but Ortho-Bionomy has a wonderful way of helping our bodies remember how to find comfort and return to balance, even through the most extreme experiences.  Don’t just put up with this kind of pain, find an Ortho-Bionomy practitioner in your area; once the pain has gone you will be able to enjoy your pregnancy or your newborn baby, and every woman deserves that!

what is Ortho-Bionomy

What is Ortho-Bionomy?

8 September 2022

No pain, no gain – really?

In our society musculoskeletal pain management often focuses on stretching tight muscles, applying deep pressure to painful ‘trigger points’ and pushing through pain to gain a ‘release’. We’re told that if a manual therapy doesn’t hurt, it’s not ‘working’. But is this really true?

With Ortho-Bionomy we discover that the opposite is true – when we use positioning and movements that feel comfortable and easy, the body is able to relax and release tension and pain. When your body and brain sense comfort and ease it recognises the opportunity to switch out of the fight/flight state and into the rest/restore state. This is where all true healing happens.

Should I stretch my tight muscles?

Your muscles contract to protect themselves from tearing when they have been overstretched.  So trying to stretch an already tight and contracted muscle only encourages it to contract further, sensing it is not yet safe to relax.  The comfortable positions and gentle compression used in Ortho-Bionomy let the muscles know that the danger has passed and it’s time to relax, thereby triggering the automatic release reflex present in all our muscles. So if the stretches you’ve been diligently using aren’t helping your sore, tight hamstrings, this could be the answer. 

Next time you exercise, try a few star jumps or jogging on the spot to warm your muscles up instead of stretching – and then do some gentle stretching after your walk, run or workout. 

Why Ortho-Bionomy?

Ortho-Bionomy promotes your body’s natural ability to heal. Rather than ‘healing’ you, the practitioner facilitates and harnesses that self-healing capacity that we all have. Ortho-Bionomy isn’t something done ‘to’ your body but in partnership with you. Using non-invasive positioning and subtle movements we engage your self-corrective reflexes, carefully releasing sore, tense muscles to allow your joints to realign themselves. Above all, Ortho-Bionomy movements are never painful. Instead, the gentle techniques teach your brain and your body to look for comfort and ease instead of pain.

Long-lasting results from just a few sessions make Ortho-Bionomy a cost and time effective healthcare choice. It’s an ideal therapy for:

  • Speeding up your recovery from injuries, surgery, muscle sprains, broken bones
  • Relieve constant pain in your back, neck, shoulders (eg ‘frozen shoulder’, chronic back pain)
  • Restore comfort and flexibility to your stiff, worn-out knees and elbows
  • Improve your posture or other structural problems (eg scoliosis, ‘hunched’ posture)
  • Enhance your recovery from stress or trauma, calming your nervous system and restoring a sense of wellbeing

A partnership

A major focus of Ortho-Bionomy sessions is self-care. I’ll provide you with a tailored ‘toolkit’ of techniques to enhance relaxation and relieve pain, as well as new ways to use your body that improve function, mobility and posture. This means you get to participate fully in your recovery process instead of becoming dependent on endless treatments for ‘maintenance’.
 
Ortho-Bionomy is especially suited to those who are looking for a new approach to pain management that doesn’t create further discomfort, use pain medication that masks the cause or involve long-term treatment plans.  If you’re ready to take the journey within and learn to help yourself, you’re ready to benefit from Ortho-Bionomy’s approach to self-discovery and self-care.