… So I followed the clues my body gave me, and in June 1996, found myself sitting in an introductory course on autogenic training. I had signed up after my positive experiences with the relaxation and warmth I had felt when picturing a soft, light, enveloping blanket. I hoped that autogenic training would provide me with more inspiration for relaxing and warming exercises. Before they began the course, the instructor told me, “This doesn’t help with autoimmune diseases.” However, I didn’t let myself be discouraged and sat in my seat on time.
As we introduced ourselves, the instructor’s first note on my introduction was: “An autoimmune disease arises when the body attacks itself.” While the other participants gave me compassionate looks, I figured:
“But I am my body!”¹
So if “I” can attack myself, then I can also stop and get well!
“I can help myself!”
And I thought:
What does RA feel like? Like a ragged knife searing through tissue and joints, like the terrible version of a cramping calf or foot, for example, that keeps on going and going, continually driving up the pain.
“And what eliminates a cramp? – Relaxation! “
This wonderful idea accompanied my approach from then on, making me both marvel and happy, as it offered a new perspective, opened new possibilities, and gave me hope.
At the beginning of the course, we participants should enter conscious relaxation with the phrase “everything is heavy and warm“².
I learned that I wasn’t only able to feel and relax larger body regions (such as my hands, feet, arms, and legs), as instructed. Involuntarily, and in contrast to the other participants, I was adept at feeling into even much smaller areas, such as my finger and toe joints, for example, due to the terrible pain that regularly raged in them.
So I first exercised quietly. I had suffered from RA for so long that I wanted it all at once, right now and right here: my entire body pain-free.
But my attempts to consciously focus on simultaneously relaxing all painful regions failed. The relaxation I deliberately employed initially exacerbated the pain, and given that I had taken on all the painful areas at once, I felt overwhelmed and, at first, gave up trying at all. Opening myself up to feel more intently, using relaxation, all the sensations of my ill body had hit me with a force I wasn’t yet ready for.
And back at home, as usual, my chores were waiting for me, made no easier by the constant restrictions my RA entailed.
So the course became my haven, where neither the demands of my household nor my work could reach me. It became my safe space where I could simply sit in my chair and focus on myself. Taking on my entire body at once, I no longer tried. I found myself in a big circle with all the other participants busy, so I just sat by myself. No hustle, no stress.
My right thumb reported pain. My open hand calmly rested on my upper leg. I looked down at it and tried the first exercise I had put together on my own on my thumb and the heel of my thumb.
And it worked as soon as I combined conscious relaxation with mental images and followed my pain perception!
This way, I overcame the pain!
It faded away.
From then on, I repeated my exercise whenever I felt pain in the region between my thumb and the heel of my hand, gradually expanding it with growing success. By this time, I had combined my deliberate relaxation with my mental images (today’s HÜ! Level 1).
Using these HeilÜben exercises, I also mastered more intense pain and experienced the complete decay of the respective inflammation and later the entire chronic reaction chain.
Correctly put together, with a focus on clear and persistent visualising of the mental images, repeated and distinctly felt when it came to the deliberate use of sensations, my exercises developed their efficacy, and I increasingly developed a sense of myself as a system in which each part influences the whole, and the other parts individually.
My belief system changed from:
“Someday I will somehow heal.”,
into my tangible experience:
“I am healing right now.”
From this point on in my HeilÜben exercises, I directly applied my skills to address pain, inflammation, and my chronic condition. I could now detect tension by simply relying on my pain level as a hot-cold test (today’s HÜ! Lvel 2): when pain went up, I knew I could follow it to its source, when it went down, I had done my exercises right.
So over time, I gained experience in how my body felt
increasing pain – increasing tension,
decreasing pain – decreasing tension,
no pain, no inflammation – I am below my upper-overload limit.
From my experience, I could see
- how inflammation in my joints evolved due to overload stemming from excessive tension (partly caused by poor postures), and that I could influence this inflammation by purposeful relaxation,
- how, through relieving muscles and tendons using relaxation, I could reduce the inflammation in the joints connected to them until it ultimately stopped, and
- how overloading tension and the propensity for inflammation correspondingly decreased in general.
I learned to recognise my overloading tension in everyday situations as the cause of the inflammatory and painful process in my joints, and I taught myself to reduce it through deliberate relaxation. This allowed me to experience how my rheumatoid arthritis had developed, maintained, and spread during an overload on my joints caused by overloading small-scale tension of muscles and tendons during posture, movement planning, and execution.
Within the next few weeks, I managed to react to pain signals in my hands, arms and feet directly upon their onset.
So, I tried out whether and how the relaxation I deliberately used would help against inflammatory pain in various situations. I didn’t try to reach an undiscovered level of human capability for relaxation or do something complicated at all. It was simply about using my everyday skills deliberately and consistently. By simply trying, giving myself the necessary opportunities, time, and peace, I trained and grew better at relaxing more intensely than before.
I experienced that pain and inflammation in the area with which I practised subsided and eventually disappeared.
In the following time, my individual exercises lasted only a few minutes and became increasingly routine. The intervals between the sudden attacks of pain in any one part of my body also increased.
But still, the following situations were painful exceptions:
- when more than one body part would hurt simultaneously;
- when I was still asleep and therefore not conscious, my body would still “function” in its habitual, harmful manner;
- when some situations that needed my full attention stopped me from exercising;
- when my back and shoulders would sometimes hurt during the night or shortly after I woke up. I then assumed I had been poorly bent in my sleep and sought to address the issue with various mattresses and pillows. It was not until months later that I realised, in shock, that these pains could also have occurred due to rheumatism and could have been symptoms indicating the onset of rheumatic spinal inflammation.
- When I first couldn’t think of any knee- or elbow exercises.
From late 1996 until late 1998:
While I still tried, tested, and reflected on what I could adjust and do better, my back, shoulders, and knees already benefited from the significantly reduced overall inflammatory tendency. My lower-and-upper-arm exercise trained my elbows, and there were rarely any pain attacks in different body parts at once.
I became increasingly adept at noticing overloading tension in everyday situations as I continued to relate my thoughts and emotions to my posture and movement. I began with my hands, for one, because they were in my direct line of sight the most and because my RA had started in them as well.
Our hands help us navigate and coordinate. They play a key role in our body language, a vital expression of emotion and will. We take our lives into our own hands, reflecting in our desire to shape the world around us and assert and communicate ourselves.
Our body language influences the position of our arms, legs, hands, and feet in relation to each other.
My harmful habit of regulating my bodily expression through tensing still spontaneously occurred when I encountered uncomfortable sensations or emotions. In today’s HÜ! Level 3, I deliberately and repeatedly dismantled this habit by instead using relaxation.
Thus, I could reduce tension permanently below my upper-overload limit.
Like all exercises, the HeilÜben exercises require sufficient understanding and thorough practice: If one understands less about them than necessary, the results will not be satisfying. So I rolled up my sleeves and learned how to manage overload-induced rheumatoid arthritis.
Body awareness, my psyche, and rationality helped me develop a finer understanding of my body (this feels uncomfortable), my soul (I feel sad, disappointed, angry, humiliated), and my rational mind (where are the correlations and causalities?). Uniting those three perspectives made it possible to find what could help me in each moment.
Sometimes the needed insights came up later, and I discovered that where I had been sure I knew the cause of this or that problem, things turned out to be a little different after all. And I continued to find more and more accurate explanations and insights into the tension within myself. More insights mean greater freedom of choice: I could differentiate and decide between what I used to do and what was best for me.
As a result, I noticed I could trace and understand the overload on my body increasingly well.
My HeilÜben exercises made my overload-induced rheumatoid arthritis understandable and allowed me to put it into context.
Getting a grasp on the disease that weighed so heavily on my life relieved me of the burden autoimmune diseases often impose upon the sufferer: the anxiousness in the face of the (seemingly) inexplicable and uncontrollable.
- Each time I had understood individual connections and used them correctly, I could observe an immediate reduction in pain.
- I measured success with my HeilÜben exercises in the vanishing of the inflammatory pain.
- The less pain I felt and the shorter the attacks became, the less inflammation and destruction occurred.
- So: no inflammatory pain meant no inflammation.
- And no inflammation meant that the destruction of my joints had halted, at least until the next overload.
Besides, during the HeilÜben exercises, my disease-sustaining tension habit —the chronic course —was reduced.
I continued along the lines I had now recognised until I healed: I felt the inflammatory pain and used my HeilÜben exercises, working on improving their elements where necessary.
I gained experience and became more confident as I became convinced that I was doing something right and effective. So I was able to react sooner, more quickly, and more purposefully. And this after a while of exercise, even if, for example, I was distracted or still half asleep.
My body would tell me:
no pain – done right
pain – there is still a problem there
In this manner, I could detect overload, tension, and stress factors and relieve them gradually.
With my approach, I simultaneously relieved musculature and connective tissues and, consequently, my joints. According to the degree of that relief, the inflammatory and destructive process declined.
With the now-expanded exercises, I learned to divide my attention so that, for example, I could practice imperceptibly amid a lively conversation.
I had ingrained the habit of meeting uncomfortable emotions and sensations with tension for so long. So I steadily continued practising to prevent, end, or handle unfavourable circumstances, aiming to regularise my emotional response and reduce strain. I found my inner peace once the stressful situation was over. Even if a specific event —something I found unpleasant, stressful, annoying, or scary —did not change, my reaction now could. When I relieve my tension, I feel relieved overall. Even my emotions and sensations become less uncomfortable, and I lose less energy while staying healthier (today’s HÜ! Level 3).
I got to know the effect of tension, which either influenced me for a long time or fast and excessively, as a trigger and maintainer of my RA.
My HeilÜben exercises now fulfilled the purpose of detraining my previously habitual tension reaction to unpleasant emotions and sensations, which had caused my disease for as long as it went unnoticed and unresolved.
Over the following months, my Heilüben exercises evolved alongside my findings, becoming a more vigorous, healthier habit that eventually allowed me to sleep without inflammation.
Pain and movement restrictions decreased gradually. My hands, arms and feet became slim and agile again. My rheumatoid arthritis healed.
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