What you see affects your pain. And your senses–what you see, hear, feel, taste, and touch–contribute to your perceptions, including your perception of pain. The book, Pain and Perception, explains perception as an answer to the question: “What does it all mean?” Basically, it’s how the brain makes ...

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is quickly becoming a popular biometric to measure wellness, with several watches tracking this data and numerous apps analyzing it. But what is HRV?

Understanding HRV

HRV denotes the relationship and synchrony between the heart and the brain. It measures the “diffe...

Our emotional state impacts our chronic pain experience. Thus, feeling safe or threatened can increase, decrease, or completely eliminate the sensation of chronic pain. Essentially, how much something hurts is often dependent on our circumstances and whether we feel secure or in danger. To understan...

Today’s U.S. presidential election is a top stressor for Americans. An American Psychiatric Association survey conducted last month found that nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are anxious about the election results. With increased stress often comes increased pain, generally experienced as flare...

Wow what a trip! I am so thankful for the opportunity to ride in the Rural Outreach Tour in Australia and sincerely appreciate everyone in the Pain Free Athlete community that donated to the Pain Revolution. With your help I surpassed my fundraising goal. And it's not too late! You can donate to thi...

This is a question many of us ask ourselves and may struggle to answer. Put more simply, we might say, should I go out and [fill in the blank with your planned exercise/sport] today, or should I stay home and take it easy? Our response depends on the origin of the pain. Below is my answer, told thro...

Last month I mentioned one of my "strong professional yeses was a super cool adventure that combines a couple of my passions." This is it: the Pain Revolution Rural Outreach Tour! This is a cycling tour in Australia that’s meant to spread advanced pain science knowledge and skills to rural communiti...

As discussed in my last blog, being preoccupied with pain can be all-consuming. For several of my clients, pain is the first thing on their minds in the morning. As soon as they wake, these clients actively seek out their pain, scanning their body for it and, if/when it is found, judge the intensity...

Do you continually worry about and focus on your pain? Do you put pressure on yourself to figure out how to fix your pain and become frustrated or angry when the pain doesn’t go away? Do you degrade yourself because you’re still hurting? Do you fight against the pain and fear that it may last foreve...

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is a research-based treatment approach for healing neuroplastic pain. These techniques were found to be highly effective for chronic back pain in a 2022 study. Refer to my blog, New Research on Back Pain, for all the details. Earlier this month, I completed a certific...

A perfect storm, like chronic pain, emerges when numerous factors combine simultaneously. Merriam-Webster defines “perfect storm” as “a critical or disastrous situation created by a powerful concurrence of factors.” Let’s substitute chronic pain into this definition: chronic pain is created by a pow...

Chronic pain is a complex experience. I like to say that it is a whole person experience affecting many aspects of one's life that goes far beyond an unpleasant physical sensation. 

On my client intake form, I ask, “Do you have any ideas about what it is going to take for you to heal?” Often, I rec...