Forever Painless: End Chronic Pain and Reclaim Your Life in 30 Minutes a Day

by Miranda Esmonde-White

Overview

End chronic pain—for good—with this practical guide from the PBS personality behind Classical Stretch and author of the New York Times bestseller Aging Backwards.

Chronic pain is the most common cause of long-term disability in the United States. Twenty percent of American adults accept back spasms, throbbing joints, arthritis aches, and other physical pain as an inevitable consequence of aging, illness, or injury. But the human body is not meant to endure chronic pain. Miranda Esmonde-White has spent decades helping professional athletes, ballet dancers, and Olympians overcome potentially career-ending injuries and guiding MS patients and cancer survivors toward pain-free mobility. Now, in Forever Painless, she shows everyone how to heal their aching bodies and live pain free.

The root of nearly all pain is movement—or lack thereof. We need to move our bodies to refresh, nourish, and revitalize our cells. Without physical activity, our cells become stagnant and decay, accelerating the aging process and causing pain. People who suffer chronic pain often become sedentary, afraid that movement and activity will make things worse, when just the opposite is true: movement is essential to healing. In Forever Painless, Miranda provides detailed instructions for gentle exercise designed to ease discomfort in the feet and ankles, knees, hips, back, and neck—allowing anyone to live happier, healthier, and pain-free no matter their age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062448668
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Series:	Aging Backwards , #2
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	376,502
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Miranda Esmonde-White is a New York Times bestselling author and one of America’s greatest advocates and educators of healthy aging. Following her career as a professional ballerina, Miranda developed her own fitness technique, Essentrics® in 1997, and became the flexibility trainer to numerous professional and Olympic athletes and celebrities. Her top-rated fitness TV show, Classical Stretch has been airing on PBS and Public Television since 1999, with workouts are available on DVD and streaming; and she offers fitness holidays and live teacher trainings at locations across the globe.

Esmonde-White’s award-winning PBS documentaries, Aging Backwards, Aging Backwards 2, and Forever Painless  are revolutionizing the way we understand the role that fitness plays in slowing down the aging process while keeping our bodies feeling young, strong and healthy. She is also the author of Forever Painless: End Chronic Pain and Reclaim Your Life in Just 30 Minutes a Day, which was the recipient of a silver prize Nautilus Award.

Table of Contents

Foreword Helene M. Langevin, MD ix

Introduction xi

Part 1 When the Pain Doesn't Go Away

Chapter 1 Our Modern Epidemic of Pain 3

Chapter 2 Our Living Matrix of Tissue-and How It Can Heal Us 15

Chapter 3 When the Matrix Gets Disrupted 23

Chapter 4 Using the Essentrics Method to Become Forever Painless 47

Part 2 The Forever Painless Program

Chapter 5 The Basic Warm-Up 61

Chapter 6 The Foot and Ankle Workout 75

Chapter 7 The Knee Workout 95

Chapter 8 The Hip Workout 119

Chapter 9 The Back Workout 139

Chapter 10 The Upper Back and Shoulder Workout 161

Chapter 11 The Connective Tissue Workout 181

Chapter 12 The Immune System Workout 203

Chapter 13 The Arthritis Workout 229

Chapter 14 The Stress Workout 253

Conclusion 271

Acknowledgements 275

Appendix: Complementary and Alternative Treatments for Pain Relief 279

Notes 285

Index 287