After more than 30 years, Andrea Bowen has learned the art of living with chronic pain. She knows her way of living with chronic pain may not work for everyone, but she is sharing her tools with others in a guided meditation CD and booklet she has written and produced. Andrea’s journey with pain began during her senior year in college in her early 20s. A disc in her back broke into many pieces and she underwent a laminectomy to remove the fragments. Later, a slip on a flight of stairs led to terrible scar tissue that spread and five more back surgeries.

Andrea eventually underwent decompression surgery and a fusion, during which surgeons moved a part of her fibula, a bone in her lower leg, up into her back. “The decade of my 20s was surgery. I had six spinal surgeries during that time,” Andrea says. She entered an “awful cycle of surgery, pain medications, and more surgery. I was so isolated. The only people I saw were medical professionals. Friends fell away, and I was no longer able to be athletic. To break out of that cycle, I had to try a lot of different things.”

Over many years, she tried everything to help her pain, including prescription pain medications, physical therapy, biofeedback, alternative therapies, and deep relaxation techniques. “I found ways to work with the pain. One day something might work, another day it wouldn’t work,” she explains, but eventually she reached a point where she needed more. Andrea met a woman who had had polio and led a meditation and healing group. The woman also was a therapist familiar with issues surrounding disability and with relaxed states of consciousness. “She led me through a process called guided imagery and music. It was the first time I experienced extremely deep relaxation,” Andrea says. “I discovered how to relax around, into and through the pain during this therapy work. I started to exercise, after having seen a physical therapist, and to walk more. I slowly began to feel better and rebuild my life. I was 37 years old.”

Journey Toward Wellness
Andrea’s ability to relax through her pain did not happen overnight, nor is her pain gone. “It’s been a real journey toward wellness,” she explains. “I looked at nutrition, therapeutic touch, and homeopathic remedies.” Andrea also worked on her emotional responses to stress and pain. “In my own family system, expressing emotion wasn’t the norm, and I internalized a lot of my emotional pain which became expressed as physical pain,” she says.

Interested in cognitive behavior and its effects on pain, she decided to get her master’s degree in psychology. Andrea was able to design a program exploring the psychological aspects of chronic pain. During her studies, she started thinking about creating a cassette about deep relaxation and guided imagery. According to Andrea, “deep relaxation worked for me because it changed how I perceive my pain. Trying to control the pain made me exhausted. I felt like I couldn’t get through the day. Only after I let my pain move freely through my body was I able to live with the pain,” she explains.

Andrea believes cognitive work is “really undervalued,” explaining that thoughts have a lot of power. “If you think your pain is harmful and if you have fear, it makes the pain worse.” Andrea began developing a meditation program for a cassette tape, which eventually became a CD entitled, The Art of Living with Chronic Pain. “Instead of having everyone re-invent this wheel, I thought I’d share it. I thought it was crazy that it took me years and years to discover it, and I didn’t want anyone else to go through that wait,” Andrea says. “The CD really gives meaning to my own experiences with pain.”

Learning the Skills of Relaxation
The Art of Living with Chronic Pain guides listeners through the stages of relaxation and teaches them how to let go. “Letting go is the key,” Andrea says, “because then your consciousness actually deepens so you can experience your body and sensations in a very different manner.”

The guided imagery she employs on the CD is designed to help people delve deeper into the pain. “That goes against your natural instinct, which is to shy away from the pain,” Andrea says. “It’s a very gentle process, though, because pain is individual and you don’t know the history of the listener. I encourage people to go at their own pace. Even if they only do a little bit at a time, that’s okay because it’s very dicey for people to move toward their pain,” she says. “It’s almost like there’s a boundary around the pain. The guided imagery on the CD isn’t to a peaceful place or peaceful setting. I’m guiding people into their pain in a different way, which allows them to balance the relationship between the pain and themselves.”

Andrea says it’s difficult to put into words, but uses her example to illustrate the process. “In the past, I let pain run my body. I gave all my power to the pain,” she explains. “Once I relaxed around the pain, the pain lessened. I experienced it from a different level of consciousness. With practice, you’re still able to let the pain run free in your body and you experience the pain differently.” Some people may not be ready for this type of imagery and relaxation. Andrea says, “It’s an investment that people have to be ready to make. It depends on what they’re ready for. People use something when they’re ready.”

When Andrea first started using these techniques, she only did it once a week for an hour. She progressed to once or twice a day until she learned how to do it without a CD. “It was a good six months before I really got it,” she says. “It takes time to learn to walk through life without tensing around the pain. Our instinct is to tense. You have to be able to invest the time because it’s hard work. There’s no magic here,” Andrea says. “For some people, after a week or so of achieving some degree of success, it’s like bingo, they’ve got it, but for others it takes time.” She says people in pain are such a vulnerable population that she doesn’t make any promises. It worked for her, so she shares it in the hopes that it will work for someone else.

Life is an Art Form
Andrea says her pain is “so invisible now that a lot of people don’t know I have chronic pain,” but she has to be careful and she works to manage her pain every day. “Deep relaxation is only one component of managing my pain,” she says. “I have to do exercises for my back every day. The pain will reach a certain level and remind me to get up and move around.” Her left leg sometimes gets tired so she must concentrate on walking or she will trip. She also uses heat and ice, and stretches every day so her joints are flexible. She wears good shoes and goes to her physical therapist as needed. “I get plenty of rest. I make sure I move properly and hold myself in a proper position,” Andrea says. She changes her activities so that she’s not doing any one thing too much and makes sure to ask for help when she needs it. “Even if I think ‘I could lift this heavy box,’ I don’t. Old ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ get me into trouble,” Andrea says. She’s struggled with letting go of the athlete inside her and at times still gets angry about her limitations, but then she focuses on the things she can do. “I can’t go canoeing anymore, but I can row a boat. I had to discover activities that used a balance of muscles on each side of my body,” she says. “My training as an athlete helped me recover from all of those surgeries and push myself physically toward health.”

Another technique Andrea uses is touching the area on her body where she’s experiencing pain. “One of the things I discovered was that I rejected people and didn’t let them touch me,” she explains. “I just couldn’t’ take any more input. It was a sort of overload. Pain was preventing me from experiencing the intimacy of touch and isolated me from the human experience. It’s just another layer of the pain being in control of the relationship.” Andrea says she makes sure she puts her “hand on the pain” so that the pain does not control that aspect of her life.

Andrea’s journey into wellness continues everyday. She says she feels very lucky. “All of my doctors stuck by me. I know I’m not the norm. So many people have doctors who desert them and don’t understand how dependent we are on that relationship for support and comfort.”

Fifteen years ago, Andrea moved to Maine, and got a job as an educational aide, working with a child with Down’s syndrome. “It got my feet on the ground. It was totally exhausting, but it helped me build my endurance.” She eventually went back to school to become a counselor in an elementary school. She works full time, which is something she thought she’d never be able to do. Andrea says it’s a great job with a great group of people and it helps her to give back to the community. Her job allows her to move from project to project, using different muscles so that she can get a lot done. It also allows her to share her experiences with others and make a difference. “I feel it’s important to give back. I share with the kids the lessons I’ve learned. That’s why I made the CD. It’s very gratifying to my experience and to my meaning to get a phone call from someone who has been helped by it,” she says. Andrea’s dream is to conduct seminars with doctors and interns, sharing her experiences as a person in pain so that they can understand what it is like to live with pain daily.

Andrea says she doesn’t suffer as much any more. “I still have the nerve damage and the burning on my fusion site, but I don’t have that searing, excruciating pain.” She tries not to get out of her routine of exercise and self-care, but she also tries not to beat herself up. “I try to live a gentle life. I don’t have that critical voice in my head anymore. I’m never going to be perfect at this because this is complicated. Pain is affected by your own state of mind, the health of your relationships with other people, the history of your pain, the physiological state of your body. So many things affect your pain that there’s no way to be perfect at it. It’s going to fluctuate,” she says. “For me right now, I’m able to live a good life with the pain, partly because I know the pain so well. I know that it’s not dangerous, so I can just keep going.”

Andrea also makes sure she laughs every day. “Laughter helps because I could get too serious. I’m making a choice to enjoy my day, even though life is certainly different than I ever imagined it would be. I work very hard on a regular basis to keep this relationship with pain in balance. Sometimes I give in. Sometimes I need to lie down. But I try every day,” she explains. Andrea says part of what she’s learned is that life is an art form. “We’re not going to be perfect at it. We need to live our lives the best we can,” she says, and that’s what she’s trying to do.

To order a copy of the compact disc — The Art of Living with Chronic Pain — for $24.95, including shipping, contact:

Pooka Publishing
21 Maxwell Road
Weld, Maine 04285-9720
(207) 585-2222
www.pookapub.com
[email protected]

Editor’s note:
Many persons with chronic pain can relate to Andrea’s courageous journey from pain and suffering and its helplessness to personal restoration through healing relationships and her determination to take back control of her life. She did this by finding health providers who stayed with her, helping as much as they could; but most importantly, she succeeded by accepting the pain and moving ahead regardless — seeking, finding and acquiring the personal pain management skills that work for her. These skills were embedded in motivation, a determination to achieve goals that she set for herself.

The power of the skills she mentions, such as deep relaxation and cognitive therapy, have now been demonstrated by brain imaging studies to actually reduce the activation of the pain centers in the brain — yes, these are REAL changes, for those readers who are doubters. Clinical studies demonstrate their effectiveness in improving pain control and coping with pain. Almost anyone who wants to can learn these skills through practice and repetition, just like any skill. Think of practicing your golf swing or any other skill. Practice makes perfect! When these skills become part of your motivation to achieve goals, they work even better.

Think about what may prevent you from learning these skills. For example, pain often causes depression, which saps the motivation to take control. Get your depression treated with appropriate medication and psychotherapy and then seek and learn the self-management skills that Andrea suggests. Seek a professional who understands pain and can really help guide you on this journey to personal restoration.