 It's time for therapy guys, mirror therapy. Mirror therapy can be very effective in treating phantom limb pain. What is phantom limb pain? Well if you're an amputee you're probably familiar with this. It's when you feel like you have pain in the limb that is no longer there, what has been amputated. My ghost foot if you will. I feel like I have someone stabbing my foot or like there's an electrical wire hooked up to my toes or like someone is peeling my skin. It's you know fun things like that. There aren't super effective methods for dealing with phantom pain which is a bummer. Generally speaking it dissipates over time but for some people it lasts for months or years. I'm about three and a half weeks in and I am dealing with it a lot especially in the evenings. So mirror therapy is one thing that has been proven effective. One thing to note is that it doesn't work immediately for most people. You have to work at it, you have to be consistent with it. I've been doing it every day ever since I got my cast off. Mirror therapy works by essentially tricking your brain into thinking that your amputated limb is still there and you're able to move it and work with it and loosen it up essentially. Your brain has a map of that limb that has been amputated and that doesn't go away overnight. So your brain still thinks that your foot or your hand or your leg or your arm is still there. So this is what we do for mirror therapy. Now I want to note real quick that I'm not a doctor, I'm not a physical therapist, I'm not an occupational therapist. I'm just an amputee who has learned a little bit about mirror therapy so I'm just sharing my experience. Let's dive in. The first thing you're going to want for mirror therapy is obviously a mirror. Now I'm going to show this for leg amputees but if you're an arm amputee or another limb amputee this can work for you you just have to modify it. I start by sitting on the floor with a mirror in between my legs and I put my head on the side of the mirror that my good limb, my intact limb, is on. Before we start one thing to remember is that I am practicing these motions with both sides of my body. I'm trying to mirror these movements and I am visualizing that side of my body as if it was fully there. So as I move my toes, as I move my ankle, I am trying to do so with the side of my body that has been amputated even though it's not there and I'm staring into the mirror at the side of my body that has been amputated and visualizing that it is still intact. So I'm going to begin by rocking my leg back and forth and you can honestly begin by any kind of motion that you want. As we continue on I might start moving my toe up and down and notice that the whole time I'm looking in the mirror at the other side at the reflection of my good leg and I am picturing the whole time that I have both legs. I may start making circles with my ankle, bigger circles, faster circles, slower circles, I might reverse the direction. Honestly you can do any motion you want here. Personally I found that it's helpful to work up to different motions so I kind of start off like I said by rocking back and forth and then I'm working up to bigger or faster movements. You can kind of get creative with the movements you do here but you want to make sure that everything you do is symmetrical so it's always back and forth or circular. You never want to picture anything in the mirror or do anything that doesn't match what your leg is doing what the reflection is doing. Now if you feel like your toes are stuck together you might want to move them apart and watch it move apart and picture that your amputated feet are actually moving, that that leg is moving, that those toes are moving. Now ideally I've heard that you want to practice this for about 15 minutes a day. So that's what mirror therapy looks like guys. It definitely feels like my leg is moving, it feels like both legs are moving at the same time and making those movements. It's gotten easier the longer that I've done it and occasionally it will help a little bit with pain. At first it didn't at all and so I feel like maybe it's starting to work but I've only done it for a week and a half now and I know sometimes I can take up to a month to set in so if you start doing mirror therapy I would say definitely don't get discouraged if you don't feel any relief in the first couple weeks because the relief I feel lasts for seconds, not hours but people say it takes a little while so keep with it. Make sure that you get instruction from your physical therapist or occupational therapist or doctor if they'll provide it for you as well. They'll definitely give you additional tips and I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one.