Imagine waking up, you feel stiff, a body part might even ache, but you have to get to work so you pop a couple ibuprofen just to get on with your day. Why must we rush to mask pain without trying to figure out what message the pain is intending to give us? Maybe its part of the productivity driven culture that doesn’t allow people to take a moment and notice, or maybe its because well pain sucks, so lets MAKE IT STOP!!!
First of all, I am not anti-pain medication. I feel that there is a definite space and time where medication is necessary and the best course of action. Sometimes a break from pain is a great way to jumpstart the healing process. I only wish that it wasn’t always the first strategy that comes to mind. Pain is our nervous system’s way of alerting us to many of the goings on in the body. It is a method of communication from body to brain and back again. Pain should be listened to before it’s stamped out! Then once it's heard the best course of action can be determined from a mindful and aware place. 
Imagine if rolling your feet out on a ball could relieve pain from plantar fasciitis as well as anything else, or if stretching your Psoas could relieve back pain, or if breathing with an awareness of the expansion of your ribs could help release shoulder tension and even make a headache go away. Oh wait… these are all strategies for pain relief, and even better they require no tax on the liver. What if movement was our first line of defense? What if we noticed a new ache, crick, strain, stress, and we turned to movement first and foremost? You can tell from this article that I don’t work for a pharmaceutical company…Maybe Advil wants me to stop typing right now, but I can’t I am officially on my soap box. Movement is better than ibuprofen. And I teach Pilates, so let’s just say it. Pilates…It’s better than ibuprofen. The other day I watched my client who, for a multitude of reasons, has spent much of her life in pain. This client has the ability to listen to her pain in ways that are quite admirable. In fact she does more than listen to her pain. She asks it questions; she asks her body what it needs, and then listens for an answer. I am not speaking rhetorically, in one session I witnessed her actually cradle her ankle in her hands and say, “oh you poor thing, what do you need from me.” Then as if nurturing a kitten she looked up at me and said, “Well I think we need to rollout our feet, and then maybe a calf stretch.” So then I got out the ball and as we were proceeding she looked at me and said, “It’s that *&#^$ing hip flexor reeking havoc again, I just know it.”
I could quote so many conversations that I have had with this client, and the most amazing thing is that as far as I can tell she has had no anatomy training at all. Yet, most of her insights, as steeped as they are in imagery, personification, and metaphor, are right on the mark. The myriad of reasons for her highly accurate and refined intuition could fill a dissertation, but for today I want to focus on her refusal of pain medication as a possible reason for her body’s brilliance. She is a problem solver, she loves to figure things out, to find solutions…She uses movement, she tries to find balance, she will not take pain medication because it takes away her power. She becomes a victim of her pain, as opposed to a leader of her body. It is this strength that combats her frailty and gives her the pistol of a personality that she has. We could all learn from her movement. Exploring movement with our body’s intellect keeps us strong and agile. Pain is a message, and sometimes its message is so strong that our bodies need a break, but sometimes it's merely a signal that we need to go inside and say, “You poor thing, what do you need from me?”
Katrina Hawley C.M.A. R.S.M.E
Co-owner
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