Meditate to Manage Your Lisfranc Injury Pain

Hey Everyone,

My last post was all about how to stay happy and healthy and keep the pain from your Lisfranc injury at a minimum, and I forgot to mention one strategy that was really important for me in confronting both physical and psychological pain during my recovery:

Meditation.

Your brain controls the pain that you feel, and intentional, focused breathing and mindfulness can have a real beneficial effect on how you feel pain. Neuroscientists and biologists have studied the effects of meditation on pain, and the results are unanimous: even a little bit of meditation as a regular part of your routine can reduce the pain you feel.

The basic principle behind the anesthetic power of meditation is that by guiding your mind toward parts of you that don’t hurt, and consciously influencing your own emotions through positive language and imagery, you can divert your brain’s resources away from the part that processes pain (the somatosensory cortex).

One of the most recommended and tested methods is called a “body scan.” To perform a body scan, you lie down in a calm, quiet place, and practice redirecting your attention along a path from one part of your body to another, ending with all your focus on a body part that is not in pain. By paying attention to the absence of pain, you give yourself a better perspective on your own situation, and you distract your conscious mind from the parts of your brain that perceive pain.

Here are a couple of news articles about meditation as a pain relief tool:

Meditation a Hit for Pain Management by Allison Aubrey for National Public Radio

Demystifying Meditation: Brain Imaging Illustrates How Meditation Reduces Pain on Science Daily News

Rewiring the Brain to Ease Pain by Melinda Beck for The Wall Street Journal

You don’t have to use all the stereotypical trappings of meditation to take advantage of its benefits as a pain reliever. A quiet, comfortable place to sit or lie down and a time to do so are the crucial elements. Here’s the meditation routine I used (and still use).

1. Sit quietly with legs crossed and eyes open for three or four minutes, looking straight ahead, smiling slightly, hands in my lap, palms up, with fingers interlaced. (I try to find a posture that keeps my back strait and erect, and is comfortable enough that I won’t feel like fidgeting for 20 minutes.)
2. Breathe in through my nose, slowly and evenly, counting to three in my head, then breathe out through my mouth, slowly and evenly, again counting to three. Concentrating this way on my breathing helps me free my mind from distractions. Breathing is what is happening right now, and gets my mind off the future, off the past, and off the pain.
3. With each inward breath, I acknowledge a part of my body that I am thankful for, and which is not in pain or discomfort right now. With each outward breath, I express thanks to that part of my body for working in the way it is meant to, and making my life easier.
4. I sometimes set an alarm, so I’ll know when my predetermined meditation time is finished. If I’m having a hard time in the middle of a session, I’ll take a break, open my eyes, look around, and let myself move around a little to shake off any discomfort, then start again.

My meditation practice is sort of a pieced together operation with various elements recommended by the buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn, and stuff I picked up from friends. There doesn’t have to be a religious or spiritual element to meditation. The practice of mindfulness is not spiritual in itself.

So you can use the steps I outlined above, and read the articles I linked to get ideas for your own meditation routine, but definitely give it a try if you’re experiencing pain from a Lisfranc injury (or any other pain, really.)

Cheers, and always remember, the pain you are feeling and the limitations on your movement and your life might feel permanent, but they are not. Even the worst lisfranc injuries have the potential to get better. I was on crutches for six months, and feeling intense pain quite a bit of that time, and I have made essentially a 100% recovery. I ride bikes and unicycles all the time and I can walk and run pain-free, and I still regularly do exercises to maintain the flexibility of my lisfranc’d foot and delay the potential onset of arthritic pain.

It has been a long journey, and it isn’t over, but the one thing I know for sure is that it gets better!