Chronic pain clients seek relief at your spa, where you likely help them control stress through exercise, nutrition counseling and soothing therapies like massages and reiki. Unfortunately, stress and pain often reappear for many as soon as they depart for home.
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Chronic pain clients seek relief at your spa, where you likely help them control stress through exercise, nutrition counseling and soothing therapies like massages and reiki. Unfortunately, stress and pain often reappear for many as soon as they depart for home.
What your customers need is confidence that they can carry the right stress relief tools with them, so that their last memory of your spa is a breath of lingering calm rather than a too-short respite from a tornado of symptoms.
Pain as a Symptom of Stress
Stress performs a real service in acute danger. It primes you with oxygen, glucose and extra immunity when you need a surge of energy (“Watch out for that cliff!”).
However, an overload of stress reacts, produces and destroys too much for too long. Stress-induced tissue damage inflammation and an out-of-control repair system can trigger illness and pain. Stress even changes the way you interpret pain: The more stress you feel, the more aware you are of pain.
When guests come to your spa complaining of stress, they also likely feel physical pain even if they don’t always make that connection. Perhaps they are suffering digestive symptoms because stress disrupts healthy gut function, or perhaps stress has caused them to tighten muscles in their jaw, neck and lower back, causing pain in those areas. Stress also triggers cytokines that influence the immune response to many painful conditions.
As wellness professionals, it’s important to help clients understand that addressing stress is critical to managing their pain. This gives them confidence to play a greater role in their well-being—and more reasons to return to your spa!
I recommend four techniques that reduce stress: distraction (such as exercise), meditation, visualization and talking to a trusted advisor (coaching). You can easily incorporate these techniques into spa experiences and educate guests about how they can continue the habits at home, reminding them of the helpful, stress-free environment they left behind and that they hope to experience again.
Calming Notes
Bob Marley once said: “One good thing about music—when it hits you, you feel no pain.” His reaction is in line with research showing that music speeds up the recovery from stress. In one study of both men and women, stress caused a rise in blood pressure and heart rate; both reactions plummeted when music was played.
Although your clients’ preferences may dictate a different selection, classical music repeatedly demonstrates the greatest calming effects. If guests resist the spa’s musical selection, research has also shown that the sounds of rippling water are equally effective, both before and after stressful events. Nature is a calming influence, even recorded nature.
Brain waves respond to the music’s movement of the rippling water, increasing alpha and theta waves, which stimulate positive mood changes. In addition, calming sounds release more dopamine, endorphin and serotonin—all hormones that help guests feel pleasure and relaxation rather than anxiety and pain.
Spas perform a valuable service to guests when music is both played in the spa environment and available to take home, where clients may listen to it and re-create those feelings of peace and calm. Teach guests to notice the effects for themselves by asking them how listening to the music affects their mood, pain symptoms, breathing and thoughts.
Breathe Deep
Mindful breathing exercises divert the mind from stress and pain, and the effects of deep breathing (also called diaphragmatic breathing) go beyond mere diversion.
According to the American Institute of Stress, “Deep breathing increases the supply of oxygen to your brain and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes a state of calmness.” It relaxes the muscles that clench during pain and raises the threshold for detecting and experiencing pain.
One of the easiest deep breathing exercises is to count each inhalation and exhalation, aiming for a count of five (or about six deep breaths per minute). Teach guests the following steps:
1. Sit or lie down with eyes fully or partially closed.
2. Place your left hand on your belly and your right hand over your heart.
3. Breathe in for the count of five and feel your belly rise.
4. Breathe out for the count of five.
5. Repeat several times.
Deep breathing is a technique that your clients can take with them and apply in any situation that causes stress, pain or the anticipation of pain. They can even try it at the dentist! By giving them this tool, you confirm your spa’s status as a place where guests improve their lives with supportive stress and pain reduction.
A Good Coach
Coaching helps relieve stress and manage pain. The best self-care is supported by coaching that provides education, emphasizes positive steps and avoids criticizing the individual’s relationship to stress and pain.
The International Association for the Study of Pain defines chronic pain as “persistent or recurring pain lasting longer than three months.” Stress can easily evolve into chronic pain because the same situations that cause stress (like overwork, caretaking and major life changes) also cause a person to delay treatment or self-medicate.
A study in 2020 found that coaching via video conferencing was just as effective as in-person coaching when it came to maintaining positive improvements in stress and pain. An earlier study found that pain scores dropped from as much as 74% to a low of 10% following coaching.
Effective individual or group coaching requires professionals trained in the science and psychology of stress and pain, as well as coaching for behavior change. This can be provided on-site or virtually between visits to nurture a lasting relationship with clients.
The support and tools that coaches impart can be carried home by your guests, just as surely as music and breathing, and will lead to enthusiastic recommendations by those guests when they talk with family and friends.
With her unique background in medicine, neuropsychology, leadership development and coaching, Cynthia Ackrill, MD, PCC, FAIS, brings compassion and science to stress management. A certified leader in the field for more than 25 years, Dr. Ackrill understands the challenges and metrics unique to the spa and wellness industries.
