13/05/2025
When in pain, we tend to tense up when we should be moving and loosening up
Motion is Lotion !
Keep your fascia moving with facilitated bodywork or foam rolling and stretching
When it comes to working with pain, I believe the core of our clinical work is finding creative ways to help people find agency, strength and choice.
In my early work, I used to believe there was a stretch or a manipulation for every health challenge. Over time I became unsatisfied with the structural models and learned that pain is much more complex.
So I took a deep dive into pain, pain science and complex human systems. By appreciating our complexity, I actually found a new freedom and an array of new tools to work with the human condition, and especially with pain. My book, Pain is Really Strange was my first attempt to express very complex ideas about pain in simple ways.
One creative way to work with pain is to use better metaphors, ones that embrace our complexity.
When it comes to pain, the most limiting metaphors tend to be that we’re broken machines, and that the damage is permanent. Permanence and broken structure don’t work well, it’s better to focus on sensitivity, adaptability and journeys rather than battles, such as:
‘Motion is lotion, every time you move, you inject a bit of synovial fluid into the joint.’
‘Movement is nature’s best lubricant.’
‘You’re an organic garden, not a broken machine’.
These kind of metaphors help to turn down sensitivity and promote more adaptation, more health, less pain, and more flexibility in our responses.
