Does this sound familiar?
You are cruising through your day, you have a lot on your plate, but you’re in a flow and happy. Suddenly, while walking down steps, you misjudge the step below and land hard on your foot and slightly twist it. It’s not terribly painful so you move your ankle around a few times and continue on your way.

The next day, you’re reaching into your back seat to retrieve an item and you feel a sharp tingling going up your arm. You move your arm around in a circle and everything seems ok so you continue on your way.

These are just a couple of examples of how your body is sending you pre-pain signals.

If you’ve struggled with ongoing aches and pains, then chances are you’ve tried various healing techniques and medications. You may be feeling frustrated, angry, disheartened, and hopeless.

I understand because I went through the exact same thing. Due to injuries experienced during my years training to be a dancer, as well as a few childhood falls, I developed chronic hip/low-back and psoas pain. I spent nearly 20 years in a loop, from practitioner to temporary relief then back to practitioner, 2-3 weeks later. I tried chiropractic, acupuncture, massage and cranio-sacral therapies. While all these therapies can be helpful and necessary, they were not giving me long-term relief. I was feeling frustrated, angry, disheartened, and hopeless.

Once I shifted my attention away from looking for the answer outside of me—through a practitioner or medication—and learned how to listen to and work with my body’s own self-repair systems, I began to experience lasting relief.

You know your body better than any practitioner. You spend more time with your body than any practitioner. You must learn to hear and interpret the subtle, or not so subtle, messages that your body is sending in order to really get that long-term relief from pain.

My training has informed me that pain is a messenger. You see, your body is a sophisticated system that sends you warning signals when something is off.

One of the main messages of pain is to SLOW DOWN. When your body sends you a pain signal, it’s telling you to step off the merry-go-round and allow your body’s own healing system to do its job before your minor aches become bigger, lasting pains.

To do that, you have to learn how to tune into your body, so you can recognize the signals your body is sending.

Here are six common signals your body sends to warn you of oncoming pain:

• Frequent falls/accidents
• Frequent headaches
• When you stand, you lean on one leg or lean into a counter for support
• Numbness/tingling in the hands, feet, or legs
• Heaviness in your muscles when you exercise
• Sleep disturbances

If you are wondering HOW you actually tune in and listen to your body, it is as simple as pushing the “pause” button several times a day in the middle of doing something. Close your eyes and scan your body, head to toe, for tightness. Notice whether you’re breathing with your whole torso or just your upper chest. It only takes 30 seconds to do this but it can save you hours of time and lots of money by keeping you out of some body-workers office.

The body scan as part of the MELT® Method is designed for exactly this reason, to teach us how to notice the stress in our body. Your body deserves your attention!

Hope to see you at one of my classes. I want to help you move better, feel free, and age with ease!

Beginning February 2, 2019, take a Melt Method class at Pilates Studio City on the first Saturday of each month (except in March, when it will take place the second Saturday of the month)! Visit KrisHaley.com for more information and/or to register.

Contributed by Kris Haley, Advanced MELT Method® and Pilates instructor.