Each Monday this series of articles will feature pain management techniques to help you decrease and cope with pain.  It’s your at-home pain management class!

So far we’ve looked what stages you go through when you try to change a habit, and what can help you at each stage to be successful with your habit-change goal.  Today we’ll start to look at some pain management skills and exercises that can be helpful to use regularly.

The first skills that I teach patients are relaxed breathing exercises.  These help you reduce pain by helping you relax.  Here are 2 for you to try:

• Breathing #1
• Breathing #2

You can use these exercises in several ways:

• read through the exercise and then do it from memory (it doesn’t have to be done exactly as I’ve written it)
• tape record the exercise yourself, then play it back for yourself to do
• have someone else read or record the exercise for you

Your assignment:  Do at least 1 breathing exercise a day

Let me know how you do in the comments!

Next Monday, we’ll look at a basic relaxation exercise for pain relief.  Other articles in this series:

• How to change a habit, part 1
• How to change a habit, part 2
• Breathing exercises, part 1
• Relaxation exercise, part 1
• Breathing exercises, part 2
• Websites that help you stick with your new habit
• How are you doing with your new habit?
• Try 1/2 a habit
• Visualization
• Feedback on changing habits, part 1
• Feedback on changing habits, part 2
• Guided imagery, part 1
• Guided imagery, part 2
• Stress management, part 1
• Stress management, part 2

Reminder:  Send in your submissions for the How to Cope with Pain January Pain-Blog Carnival by this Friday, 1/23.  Thanks to Szlea for the photo.