Phantom Pain and Energy Medicine – My Experience
For a full
description of phantom pain, its causes, mainstream and alternative treatments,
click here.
A brief summary:
People who have lost a limb often describe sensations that feel as if
the limb is still there. For example, tingling toes, itchy elbows, pulsing pain
in a finger. The sensations range from mild and infrequent to severe and
chronic. Medications and surgical treatments have limited benefits compared to
their related side effects. Comfort techniques range in effectiveness.
My experience: My leg was amputated in 1982, when I
was a teenager diagnosed with bone cancer.
I still have an
energetic limb. When I think about, talk about, or write about my leg, I feel
tingling sensations all along it. I have minimal pain a couple times a week.
But about once every three or four months, I have significant pain that makes
it difficult for me to concentrate on tasks, or to sleep.
Acupuncture / acupressure. About five years ago, I began having
acupuncture, and found that it had an immediate effect on reducing phantom
sensation, and seemed to help prevent the phantom pain from returning for a longer
period. My acupuncturist also showed me some acupressure tricks. For example,
if my “big toe” was hurting, I could apply acupressure to the same point on big
toe on the other foot (the “real” one), and that might relieve it. Also,
putting acupressure on a similar point on my thumb could help.
As I studied
a little more about qi energy flows, I started noticing that when my phantom
pain flared, it was always focused somewhere on my “phantom right leg”. Some
days, it would be in my “tingling, and prickling in my big toe, right at the
tip,” sometimes it would be “stabbing pain on the outside of my ankle, right
between the ankle bone and the Achilles tendon”, or wherever. So, I got charts
and diagrams that showed where the Chinese meridians (energy pathways) ran.
Sure enough, my pain was always along a meridian line, and I could pick other
points along that meridian line where acupressure would work to reduce my pain.
Interestingly,
many western minds have a hard time believing in the Chinese meridians because
they don’t seem to have a physical manifestation: when we do autopsies on
people after death, we can’t find any tissue or cell structure that would be
the meridian. So, from that viewpoint, meridians and qi are not “real” My right
limb is also no longer “real”, but it’s definitely still “there” where I can
feel it, and effect it. It is a fully energetic limb that’s not weighed down by
physical cellular structure.
Energy Medicine
As I studied
energy medicine, I began to apply some of the principles to my phantom pain,
and have had good luck with that.
For a full
review of energy healing, and practitioners of various forms of energy healing,
see my energy medicine website.
For energy medicine
a friend or partner could use on you, check out Quantum Touch by Richard
Gordon. It is a simple, yet powerful technique
where the healer uses specific breathing techniques to gather energy, then lays
hands on the heal-ee, and visualizes healing energy flowing into them. This is
a book you could check out from the library, learn the techniques and return
it.
For energy
medicine practices you can use on yourself, the best resource for an amputee to
buy would be Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine. She describes some very
simple techniques, including massage of specific points on the body; the book
is necessary to have, since it has the diagrams of these points.
Note that the
book has so many ideas in it, it can be overwhelming to read from front
to back! Think of it more like a cookbook where you look up only a few ideas
and use them repeatedly. You can use her meridian charts (page 101 – 110) to
figure out what meridian is bothering you. Then use these techniques to clear
it: “flushing the meridians” (found on page 117-118; takes about 30 seconds and
almost no effort!), massaging neurolymphatic reflex points (84 – 85), and
light pressure on neurovascular points on the face (274 – 5).
Re-thinking “Phantom Pain” in terms of
Energy Medicine.
Through
studying energy medicine, I also began to re-define my experience of “phantom
pain.” I now view the phantom sensations as energy flow. I find that if I am
having some intense sensation somewhere, I can track what meridian it’s on,
then look at what that’s telling me about how the energy flow in my life is out
of balance. It may reveal physical imbalances, or emotional issues related to
that meridian (www.janelledurham.com/janelle/energy/centers.htm),
or nutritional issues, or seasonal issues that have caused that meridian to be
out of balance. In doing energy work to balance that meridian, not only do I
reduce the phantom pain, I also help to bring the rest of my system back into
balance. Thus, my phantom sensations aid in guiding me to improve my overall
well-being. Phantom pain becomes a guide to healing my whole mind, body,
spirit.
My
recommendations to new amputees, and older amputees who are still struggling
with phantom pain:
First,
re-think the meaning of “phantom pain”. Can you think of it as energy
flows, which are as much a part of you as the other energy flows in the rest of
your body? Strong sensations there, or pain there, is a sign of healing that is
ready to be guided. Energy medicine will help you on that healing path.
I have found
these energy medicine techniques very helpful. I encourage other amputees to
try them. They may help, or they may not, but one of the wonderful things about
energy medicine is that it won’t harm you; there are no known negative side
effects if the techniques are practiced as described.
For other
amputee hints and tips, see here.
Janelle
Durham, 2004