Can you feel your knees?
Feeling Your Knees: body maps and chronic pain
Feeling Your Knees
Years ago, I heard someone say, “You never want to feel your knees.” This person was referring to the fact that if you feel your knees, you’re feeling pain and discomfort. If you have healthy knees, you shouldn’t feel them at all. For some reason, this has stuck with me and I’ve pondered it from time to time, interested by the concept but not fully convinced by it.
I can finally determine that I don’t believe this is true, nor helpful.
We have a tendency to only think about our bodies when something hurts or doesn’t feel right. We take for granted the rest of the time that they function “appropriately,” bending to our will (literally and figuratively!) Those of you who’ve experienced a powerful yoga practice can attest to doing the opposite. In a good yoga class, you’re encouraged to notice parts of your body while calmly holding static positions. The result is that you start to pay attention to your body and all its physical sensations as a practice of inquiry rather than being drawn to it during moments of pain as a distracting nuisance.
If you were to close your eyes and bring your attention to your knees right now, could you feel them? You might feel warmth, coolness, pulsing, tingling, stretching, maybe you feel your clothes on the skin around them. If you don’t feel anything, that’s ok too – it just means that part of your body is not very present for you right now. You can rub them to get a sense of where they are in your mind’s eye. I can feel my knees right now as I type these words. And they don’t hurt nor do they feel uncomfortable in any way.
Your Body Map in Your Brain:
In your somatosensory cortex – the part of your brain that collects and interprets data about sensations in your body – there’s a “map” of your body. What does this map do? This map is a collection of data from your skin, joints, and muscles that helps your brain understand where your body is in space. In turn, your brain uses this map to help send commands back to your musculoskeletal system to perform a movement.
There’s a big catch. This map is your brain’s best depiction of your body – and it’s not inherently accurate. Some people’s body maps are more accurate than others.
What keeps our body maps from being accurate?
Some of the things that can distort our maps are:
psychological trauma
physical trauma (as in sexual or physical abuse)
acute injuries
surgeries
amputations
pregnancy
other extreme changes to the body like rapid weight loss or weight gain.
Anxiety, depression, and chronic pain can also distort our body maps. And if you re-read the first list, you'll see that many of those items are likely to cause anxiety, depression, and chronic pain makin body map distortion extemely likely. Distorted body maps can in turn feed into the same cycle. When your system experiences a constant mismatch between what it thinks should happen based on the map in your brain and what’s actually happening based on your body in reality, it’s a disruption to the homeostasis of your body and causes a state of distress. This distress can be experienced in many ways, but often with more anxiety, depression, and/or chronic pain -- hence a self perpetuating downward cycle that can be difficult to break and overcome.
How is this map updated and corrected?
When we pay attention to the sensations of our body, we’re confirming to our brain that the data our body is receiving is correct, and the brain updates its maps. Have you ever added a location onto Google Maps? If not, this is how it works:
When I opened my studio space three years ago, Google didn’t know about it. How would it know? It’s never been informed of its existence before (like a body part that’s never moved).
So I submitted the information to Google (I created some movement with the body part).
Google received the information but that’s not enough to update Google Maps as Google is constantly receiving loads of information (just like data is always coming in from various parts of our body but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s registered as an important part of our body map).
I had to verify the business listing with Google (like paying attention to the sensations of my body helps confirm to my brain that this is something worth noting and mapping)
Now Google Maps more accurately reflects what’s going on at 117 9th Street (my body map is more accurate).
This new location can now be seen, referenced, pinned, saved, visited, etc (my brain uses the information it has to create more refined movements with my body)
Why you might want to feel your knees
So, what’s the point of trying to feel your knees and other parts of your body on a regular basis? Because paying attention to the sensations in our bodies helps establish more accurate body maps, and more accurate maps can help break that cycle referenced above. Body scan meditations and mindful movement practices (moving while paying attention and being curious) are wonderful, often overlooked, tools to easing and mitigating the chronic pain cycle. Body scans can be easily found via a simple YouTube search as well as my favorite (free) meditation app Insight Timer.
Till next time, keep moving.