“I want to run around and play with my kids in the backyard, but I have a bad back that flares up each time I do. I don’t want to have to worry about whether I am going to hurt myself if I play with my kids.”

“I love to go hiking and rock climbing, but my neck/shoulder keeps getting tweaked and takes me out of commission for a few months at a time. If friends invite me out, I don’t want to worry about whether I am going to hurt myself again.”

Are Pain or Injury holding you back from doing what you love?

Pain is complex and multifactoral, biological, psychological, and social contributors. Pain does not mean you have to cease all physical activity and if anything that could make it worse.

One lens that pain or discomfort can be viewed through is a communication tool for the nervous system. If you touch a hot stove with a bare hand, your nervous system will send a pain signal out to communicate to you that you should remove it from the stove ASAP in an attempt to protect you. If you have an acute injury, torn tissues, or just had surgery, I highly recommend working with a physical therapist through the recovery process. However in many cases, pain or discomfort can be your nervous systems way of trying to communicate with you. In these types of cases, our goal is to help you learn to understand what your nervous system is trying to communicate and how establish 2 way communication so you can “talk” back in response.

1. First we look at the activities or actions that either caused the injury in the first place, or trigger flare up for chronic pain issues. We need to first understand the mechanisms that are triggering your pain and begin to peel back the onion on the contributing factors (there could be many).

2. Refer out to physical therapists or other doctors as necessary. Sometimes pain that seems to be muscular in nature could end up being something very different. Always get multiple opinions, from different points of view.

3. Determine what you CAN DO. Most focus on what’s wrong and stop exercising completely to rest it which can be a big mistake. We need to remove the negatives that contribute to the issue, but the goal should be to adjust your exercise routine accordingly, so you can continue to make progress or at least maintain rather than regressing with complete rest.

4. Learn to listen to your body, and how to speak so you can have conversations with your body. Discomfort during an exercise doesn’t automatically mean you a broken. Use an assessment to “listen”, “speak” by trying out an exercise intervention, then “listen” again by retesting your assessment and see if anything has changed. This is a conversation and as such is iterative to really learn what’s going on and why. A single assessment won’t magically give you the silver bullet that solves all your problems, but it does give you a starting point for opening up the conversation that may lead you to answers.

Get back to doing what you love without apprehension! If you need help identifying the mechanisms of your pain, what you CAN DO, or learning how to establish communication between you and your nervous system, setup a free consultation with me.