Changing pain using your brain

I have been up to London recently for the annual Lightning Process conference, where as practitioners we were comparing some of the exciting work that we have done to change people's experience of chronic pain.

This 5 minute video is used by pain consultants working with clients in the NHS and shows how much of an overlap there now is between the medical profession's understanding of chronic pain and what the Lightning Process does.

Understanding pain, What to do about it in less than 5 minutes.

The video says that all pain is experienced in the brain, and that beyond 3 - 6 months it is no longer about tissue damage but more about the sensitivity of the nervous system. "To change it, you need to retrain the brain and the nervous system."

And retraining the brain and nervous system is exactly what the Lightning Process is so good at helping you to do, as this 2 minute video by Phil Parker about neuroplasticity shows very simply (neuroplasticity is the way in which the brain changes in response to what it experiences):

Neuroplasticity

The pain consultant who gave us the video about understanding pain, Dr Rajesh Munglani, watched a Lightning Process course. For his comments about it go to this page;

www.lightningprocess.com/FM-Chronic-Pain

If you want to read more detail about some of the research being done by the medical profession in this area, I would recomment this article from the Times:

"How you think about pain can have a major impact on how it feels. That's the intriguing conclusion neuroscientists are reaching as scanning technologies let them see how the brain processes pain."
Rewiring the Brain to Ease Pain

 

The placebo effect

I am fascinated by the placebo effect. It could be seen as the most tested thing in the world, since every drug in medicine is tested against a placebo (a pill etc with none of the drug in it). This is done because the medical profession want to know if the drug has an effect over and above the positive effect of people believing that a pill will work. On average 20 - 40% of all medical effects can be achieved with a placebo.

This video clip gives more fascinating details about
The strange powers of the placebo effect 

What the placebo effect shows us is that we can access our body's natural healing ability through the power of our expectations (of what we believe will happen). It also shows us that the medical profession knows this, otherwise there would be no need to test drugs in this way.

One way of describing the Lightning Process would be that it teaches you to use this influence between the brain and the body in order to access and harness your own natural healing ability.

Success with the Lightning Process

This inspiring little video that Phil Parker made recently brings together comments and stories from a number of clients that have done the Lightning Process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL1iksCzVO8


And for more stories, or to add your own story if you have done the Lightning Process already, try the forum:
www.lightningprocesshelpedme.com