Dr. Amy Novotny, On Breathing to Relieve Pain

Dr. Amy Novotny founded the PABR Institute™ with the mission to provide pain, stress and anxiety relief to those who seek a naturalistic form of treatment when other treatment methods have fallen short. Her unique approach comes from her experience treating in a variety of settings and with a wide range of patient populations over the past 10 years. Her background in orthopedics, sports, geriatrics, balance disorders, nerve injuries, and most recently, chronic pain; and influences from coursework at the Postural Restoration Institute gave her the foundation to develop this treatment method to address a wide variety of painful and restrictive conditions.   She customizes all treatment plans to the individual to help them achieve their goals, whether it is to pick up a child, get through a work day pain free or play a sport.  She co-authored a #1 Best-Selling book Don’t Quit: Stories of Persistence, Courage and Faith, which shares her journey on how and why she developed the PABR Method™.  Her ability to speak French and Spanish has allowed her to communicate with and help various clients from all around the world, including France, Mexico, Central America and South America.  She has a variety of interests including running 40+ marathons, running 10 ultra marathons (including two 100 milers), completing an Ironman triathlon, photographing wildlife and landscapes all over the world that has led to several of her images being chosen as Photos of the Day, most notably National Geographic Your Shot World Top Photo of the Day. In this episode, we talk about:How and why she founded PABR (Pain Awareness Breathing Relief) Institute.The principles of PABR.How she studied breathing to stop having pain and increase her running speed.How she has helped clients with PABR techniquesExamples of clients who have avoided surgery, decreased the use of medications, and diminished stress using PABR.She also leads us through a breathing exercise.Resources:You can find her at:Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-amy-novotny/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dramynovotnyInstagram: @anovotn, @pabrinstituteTwitter: @amynovotnyazMindful Minute -By Dr. Amy: “What we're going to do today is go through some of the basics of the breathing techniques that I teach. I encourage everyone to sit all the way back into the chair back and not try not sit on the edge of the chair. Don't arch your back. I want to let the low back relax into the chair back without any lumbar support, just naturally let it go back. And when you do that, let your tailbone curl under you a little bit. And then for your legs, we want the knees relatively close together, kind of in line with your hips, and then your feet flat on the floor so that your heels are brown. So the next thing I want you to do is to let your belly button out, let that gut hang out and let it relax. We're going to go through a four step breathing process that I do with everyone. I start off with a simple process. It gets more complicated than that. But we're going to start out very basic today. And just to get you into a rhythm, so the four steps are, I breathe in through my nose. I pause a second, I blow out through my mouth. And then I pause, hold my breath for three seconds. So I'm going to breathe in.  Pause, then I blow out through my mouth.And I pause, holding my breath, three seconds, and then I breathe in. (blows out) And then I breathe in. And blow out (blows out)” To see the full video, please go here.