01/15/2022
Not all pain is triggered by external stimulus. Psychogenic pain is caused, increased, or prolonged by mental, emotional, or behavioral factors. Headache is sometimes diagnosed as psychogenic. The pain is as actual and hurtful as pain from any other source.
Likewise, long term pain can cause psychological upset, with elevated scores on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scales of hysteria, depression and hypochondria. When therapeutic intervention relieves the pain, the scores and anxiety drop, often to normal levels. Self-esteem, often low in chronic pain patients, also improves.
While targeting reflexes, reflexology is also a relaxation technique that can help negate the effects of stress and tension often associated with headaches and migraines. Regardless of what reflexes are being worked, reflexology helps:
• Relieve stress and tension
• Decrease heart rate and diastolic blood pressure
• Relax muscles
• Reduce pain
• Increase sense of well being
• Improve quality of sleep
When stress is alleviated, the body is more capable of defending against illness and repairing damage caused by injury. Improvement may then be seen elsewhere in the body as a result. Since the American Medical Association estimates that 75% of all disease is triggered by stress, the implications are broad for using reflexology for stress reduction.
