The Way We Understand and Treat Chronic Pain is Changing

Ever wondered why certain people suffer from persistent pain, usually in the same area(s) of the body?

Perhaps you yourself experience recurrences of pain, get hit by unexplained symptoms or feel that your body is injured or damaged beyond repair.

The fact is, thousands of people suffer from some form of chronic or recurrent symptoms and find little relief through conventional treatments.

This used to be a baffling and discouraging fact, however, today we know why people don’t find relief through treatments that attempt to adjust or fix the body.

It’s because chronic pain has other underlying causes that go unnoticed, and most treatments treat just the ‘symptoms’ in isolation and not the actual causes!

Why understanding Neuroplastic (MindBody Syndrome) Pain makes all the difference

The interesting thing is, the large majority of chronic pain cases – from the common back pain, foot pain, sciatica and migraines, to the more debilitating symptoms of fibromyalgia, POTS and CRPS – have one thing in common.

Multiple studies have found strong correlations between various forms of chronic pain, stress and trauma, especially adverse childhood events (1).

A recent study found that 88.3% of participants with low back pain actually had what we call neuroplastic pain (2).

This refers to pain that is NOT due to structural damage, abnormalities, illness or injuries. Instead, this kind of pain is caused by the brain (especially those regions of the brain where intense emotions and memories are generated and stored!).

Here at MindBodyFood, we use the term MindBody Syndrome to refer to such symptoms, and we teach students how to identify them and how to overcome them.

Why would the brain cause such pain, you might ask?

The answers can be truly fascinating, and mostly have to do with our past traumas, programmed beliefs, the state of our nervous system, and our responses to triggers and day to day challenges.

Luckily, although the brain can learn to generate pain or symptoms, thanks to the power of neuroplasticity, it can also unlearn this response.

Chronic mindbody pain is not just in your head!

In case you’re wondering, MindBody Syndrome pain isn’t just ‘in your head’. It is very real, in the sense that your brain can generate real physiological responses.

Think of a situation when you were very nervous and you started to experience an elevated heart rate. In this case, it is very obvious that your heart rate did in fact increase (a heart rate monitor would have confirmed this). But the ‘trigger’ was your perception of the situation as being stressful or worrying!

It is the same in the case of mindbody pain, and yet the triggers behind it are often more subtle and complex compared to the above situation.

Mindbody symptoms often come up when we feel deeply threatened and distressed – especially if we are unconscious of the extent of this distress. It is a cry for help sent out by the body when we’ve been ignoring our deepest needs.

Luckily, today we have practices and knowledge to help us get out of this pain cycle.

In our MindBody Syndrome (TMS) Practitioner course, we teach you:

• How to differentiate between neuroplastic (mindbody) symptoms and other acute symptoms;
• How to identify the main triggers behind chronic symptoms
• How to speak to your inner self in order to explore, validate and release repressed emotions;
• How to switch off the brain’s ‘alarm system’ by changing your response to symptoms (pain reprocessing techniques)
• Other techniques and practices to help overcome chronic symptoms and resume all normal activity

Whether you’d like to eliminate your own chronic symptoms for good, or you’d like to support and guide others out of pain, this course will equip you with all the knowledge and tools needed to embark on this life-changing work.

Find out more about the MindBody Syndrome Practitioner Course here if you’d like to dive deeper into this powerful self-healing modality.

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” Rumi