The Importance of Exercise

Chronic soft tissue pain can be the result of many different factors which may or may not be within your ability to control. Chronic muscle pain may be the result of permanent damage to the soft tissue or it may be that the pain site is caught in a pain cycle due to factors very much within your ability to change. Whatever the source of the pain, you may be experiencing feelings of hopelessness. But there are healing and preventative steps that you can and must take if you want to achieve pain free balance in your life.

“Tension or lack of flexibility is responsible for more attacks of back pain than any other single cause. Even if you are physically strong, you can be struck with a bad back, caused by tension that will render you helpless. If you are over irritated, over stimulated or even overeager, your tense mental state will be reflected in your muscles and unless you exercise properly, the tension will accumulate. So what can you do to help yourself? You can exercise.” That doesn’t mean joining the local gym and running and lifting weights because that’s what everyone else is doing. “It means finding out what is wrong with your key posture muscles and designing an exercise program to address your own personal deficiencies.

But exercise alone is not the answer. Proper exercise is an important key to good health but it is only one of several keys. If you take the proper approach, you can stop the effect of tension before it ever starts.” There is an athletic pursuit appropriate for every person. Finding out what that pursuit is “means understanding yourself, your mind, your daily routine, your work and living habits and your emotional attitudes as well as your body. Find out where you are physically weak or strong, but also try to learn what actually prompts tension or pain. You must try to find out about yourself. Once you do, you can approach your problems with a sense of purposeful direction” (Quotations are taken from Backache: Stress and Tension, By Hans Kraus, MD pgs.26-32, 1965 Simon & Schuster).

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