Wise Anderson Protocol - Paradoxical Relaxation Technique

When you have pelvic pain, it is sometimes called prostatitis/pelvic floor dysfunction/ prostatodynia/ levator ani syndrome / other. For reasons I will discuss, your nervous system tends to be aroused, which supports a self-feeding cycle of tension, anxiety, pain, and protective guarding. This is why pelvic pain syndromes tend to have a life of their own past whatever event appeared to initiate them. The reason why you can be anxious when you have pelvic pain is not hard to understand. Pelvic pain and dysfunction is very intimate, and very distressing all by its self. Furthermore, it would make most people anxious if their doctor did not have a solution for their condition. If they felt helpless to stop their pain and symptoms, and if they had pain that interfered with sexual activity, urination and defecation, sitting down, and other critical functions and activities in life. Because relaxation is central in treating pelvic pain in the way that we do it with the Wise Anderson Protocol the question arises, how do you relax when you are anxious and in pain?
The relaxation method of the Wise Anderson Protocol, which has been popularly called the Stanford Protocol for many years, is called paradoxical relaxation, because a paradox refers to two things that appear to be contradictory that on another level exist and are both true. The basic insights of paradoxical relaxation are paradoxical. The insights are that accepting tension relaxes it, and accepting anxiety reduces it. It turns out that when you practice paradoxical relaxation in combination with our physical therapy home program, muscle related pelvic pain and those symptoms associated with it are most likely to reduce or stop. What is unique about chronic muscle related pain, is that it is usually reversible. Many chronic pain syndromes appear not to be reversible, but muscle related pelvic pain is. The reason for this is that the source of the pain is found in the chronic contractions of the muscles and the release of this chronic contraction, under certain circumstances, is possible and essential to reducing or resolving the pain and dysfunction.
In our book A Headache in the Pelvis we discuss how pain becomes chronic, even after the initiating event is over. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can identify this event. Nevertheless, we propose that pelvic pain becomes chronic, because of tension-anxiety-pain-protective guarding cycle becomes established and becomes self-feeding with a life of its own.
Here is the cycle,
Pelvic pain causes you to tighten the muscles in your pelvis to guard against the pain, which instead of helping actually increases the pain and tension of the pelvis. This often triggers negative and catastrophic thinking about whether yore ever going to get better, and anxiety which actually causes a physical increase in the electrical activity of trigger points associated with the pain. All of this make the pain and symptoms worse.
So, tension feeds anxiety, which feeds pain, which feeds protective guarding, and continues to go around and around. It is a very difficult self-feeding cycle to break. The physical therapy part of our program focuses on breaking this cycle physically. In physical therapy you work with the muscles manually and directly to release them from their chronic contraction, spasm, and area of restriction and trigger points. Paradoxical relaxation helps break the cycle through the development of a discipline which can reduce or stop protective guarding, tension, pain, and anxiety.
When you have muscle related pelvic pain certain muscles inside and outside your pelvis tent to stay chronically tight and contracted in what you can think of as a charley horse or spasm. When you try to relax your pelvis and lower your level of anxiety there are major obstacles to deal with. The novice typically will be defeated in this attempt to relax, because he or she laments “I’m in pain, I feel afraid, I can hardly listen to the relaxation instructions, and I don’t know how to relax my body because my fear and pain are so distressing and distracting”. If you are in pain, and lay down and say “I want to relax this tension and pain in my pelvis”, you will see first hand that this is no easy matter. It may seem imposible to do so.
There is an ancient myth about Alexander the Great and the Gordian knot, in which a prophecy existed where any man that could untie an intricately tied knot would become king of Asia. Many men tried unsuccessfully to untie this knot. The myth has it that Alexander approached the knot, withdrew his sword, and cut the knot in half. This story has been used for centuries to describe a solution that solved a problem that had perennially defied conventional solution.
See the following link for more information about the book "Paradoxical Relaxation" at: pelvicpainhelp....