Do you have a movement that you can predict will cause pain? 

Do you have a part of the body that hurts even without movement that you believe is only due to the structure itself or its position?

Are you open to the idea that you can change any persistent pain or the pattern of it without needing to change the structure you believe to be at fault?

Read on if you are open to that and curious about approaching this process, not through an emotional lens but through logic.

Here are some words of encouragement after a call with a client. The themes might be relevant to others, so I'm sharing.......

You've had a tough time over the past 18 months and even before that, but what shines through is your ability to recover. You need to create the opportunity for that to happen again, and although you still have some current family stressors, if you could carve out some calmer moments for yourself, you'll see that recovery appears again.

Here’s an example of a frequently asked question about restarting movement when pain is still or has been strongly associated with that movement.

With persistent pain, an understandable but irrational fear can develop, as well as a predictable frustration in the person who has difficulty accessing what should be enjoyable, fun and healthy stress-relieving activities involving movement.

Returning to those activities is achievable but must be approached through a calm, conscious filter of rational safety.

As a patient started to recognise triggers to painful situations in her life, she was both fascinated and fearful about approaching this opportunity to address them. The opportunity itself can feel overwhelming when, for so long, there’s been no other option other than to live in the fearful unconscious reactions and the resultant pain that behaviour brings.

When seeking ways to recover from persistent pain, it is easy to forget how practical and straightforward it is to feel a sense of ease. For so long, the norm has been one of discomfort, pain, and doing something to relieve it, and if there are moments of relief, they become filled with nervous anticipation or fear of when that pain may return.

A patient’s question - Many somatic tracking exercises, meditations, etc., seem to ask you to be comfortable, relax, breathe deeply, focus on the pain, describe it, give it a colour, a shape - breathe into the pain, and show it a white light.

All good EXCEPT, what if you have no pain in a relaxed, non-weight-bearing state, and pain only happens when you’re moving and exercising? It's hard to do the breathing, relaxing thing then. So, are there things you can do when you’re on the move? Apologies if this has been asked a hundred times!

So, I’ve been improving steadily over the last year and slowly recovering from fourteen years of chronic and severe back pain. I totally ‘get’ the mind-body concepts, and while my improvement is slower than I would like, I have a lot of hope that all will be well one day.

This is how a patient described herself in terms of her intent to push through all things pain. For many, it is a shared perspective in persistent pain that can keep people stuck in a painful pattern. Discerning pain and understanding that having healthy alternatives to our default patterns can be a real game changer. Here are some suggestions presented in this case.

Someone described how the pattern of their persistent pain changed during a period of grief. Here is a breakdown of how I explained how to interpret the variation in pain they experienced.  

Pain is a concept that many people attempt to describe. Behavioural, philosophical and neuroscientific theories about pain arise, but one spiritual viewpoint of note comes from teacher Eckhart Tolle - Author of The Power of Now and A New Earth.