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October 22, 2019 Pain Relief

The Important Thing No One Is Telling You About Pain

One of the biggest misconceptions that I see in my office regularly is the belief that pain means you are somehow “broken” or wrong.

Of course, if you have an injury, then obviously your body needs to heal. If there is a disc in your spine impinging on a nerve, well, you might need surgery — or at least some solid physical therapy.

However…

The tendency is to focus on the mechanical source of pain as the “problem.”

Related:

It’s not the problem.

And when there is no “cause” of pain — i.e. nothing is showing up on your MRI as diagnosably wrong — then the pain really isn’t the problem.

You’ve heard the Einstein quote before that goes something like:

You cannot solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it.

This is basically what I’m saying when it comes to pain.

Because that mechanical cause — the bulging disc, the tight hip flexors, the rigid feet — those didn’t happen all of their own accord.

They’re a result of something. A pattern.

The pain that stems from the injury is a signal that the pattern is out of alignment for you. It’s not in your best interest.

We see pain as something that we really need to fix or change. We get laser focused on that problem.

But actually…

Pain is your greatest opportunity.

What I mean is that pain is the opportunity to see where things are out of alignment in your life. Because really what it means is that something you are doing is not working for you.

And it might be as simple as the way you’re holding your leg. Or that you’re sitting too much.

Those things might be out of alignment for you in your life.

But it could be even bigger than that.

It could be that you’re showing up to a job that you hate and you’re stressed out all the time. You’re in an unhappy relationship.

And you’re just not doing the things that feed your soul — your life’s isn’t where you want it to be.

The way that your body is communicating that to you is through physical tension and pain.

And yeah, it’s not a pleasant place to be when you’re in pain.

But look at it this way…

If your fire alarm is going off, you probably want to put the fire out. You don’t care so much about the alarm going off.

You’re not going to turn off the alarm and sit in your living room filled with smoke because you haven’t solved the real problem — that your walls are on fire.

And that’s what pain is doing — it’s alerting you to the fire in your life.

Like I said, it can be something really simple like holding onto tension from a broken leg you had fifteen years ago or guarding your neck after an invasive surgery.

Just simple shifts to your neuro-motor patterns. (Although if my clients are any indication, these shifts have big impacts on their lives.)

But sometimes it’s much more holistic than this. You have to stop hiding. Stop processing emotions for other people. Stop being the crutch everyone leans on. Stop showing up to a toxic work environment.

Stop being someone you’re not.

And I think this is why I see such huge transformations in my clients. As you let go of tension in your body it becomes more and more difficult to stay in a life that doesn’t align with how you’re feeling.

Curious about this? Want to go deeper? Head on over and join our free Facebook group Pain Free Naturally where we can talk, chat and interact. All questions welcome!

October 15, 2019 Healthy Aging

Why Stiff Muscles and Aching Joints Aren’t Just a Sign of “Getting Older”

*Affiliate links used wherever possible.

You know the drill. You wake up in the morning with a stiff back. Sitting up hurts. Walking makes you feel like you’re ninety. And you gimp across the kitchen to the coffee pot because with all these aches and pains, you’re just not sleeping like you used to.

You might assume you’re just getting older. Stiff, aching muscles are simply part of the aging process. However, muscle pain isn’t something to ignore. It can actually be a sign of underlying physiological imbalances which are dangerous to your health.

Magnesium Deficiency: The Underdiagnosed Epidemic

Muscle tension is a common complaint. But for as many people as it afflicts, it’s too often ignored or dismissed. If anything, your doctor might hand over a prescription for pain pills, physical therapy or maybe a massage if you’re lucky, alongside some vague advice to “stretch more.”

Few medical professionals address a surprisingly common mineral deficit in their aging patients. This mineral, in addition to affecting muscle pain and tension, plays a critical role in cardiovascular health, mood and sleep quality.

What is this magical mineral of which I speak?

Related:

Magnesium.

Magnesium deficiency is rampant. While caloric consumption is up, the nutrient content of our food is declining, making us overfed but nutritionally undernourished.

Even worse, magnesium deficiency can be difficult to test accurately. As a result, it’s drastically under-diagnosed.

In fact, according to cardiovascular research scientist and author Dr. James J. DiNicolantonio, magnesium deficiency is so dangerous that it should be considered a public health crisis.

Magnesium and Aging: Why Deficiency Shouldn’t Be Ignored

Magnesium is a naturally occurring mineral found in soil, plants, water, and animals — including us humans.

Your body requires magnesium to complete more than 300 different biochemical reactions — everything from building DNA to protein synthesis, energy creation, skeletal muscle contractions and nervous system regulation.

A deficiency in magnesium can do more than make your muscles stiff and sore. Studies suggest that magnesium deficiency promotes cellular deterioration and causes apoptosis — cell death — in cardiovascular tissue.

In short, not having enough magnesium in your body accelerates the aging process by making it harder for your body to repair itself.

However, increasing magnesium levels in your body is a simple and inexpensive way to combat this biological deterioration.

How Magnesium Alleviates Muscle Stiffness and Pain

While it’s true that your body undergoes biochemical changes with age, certain lifestyle interventions can impact muscle stiffness and pain.

Your muscles rely on a balance of calcium and magnesium to regulate muscle contractions. Two proteins — actin and myosin — in your muscle tissue shorten when a muscle contracts, and then lengthen when it relaxes. Calcium is the fuel that powers the contraction, while magnesium is the key that unlocks it once finished.

Basically, if your body is deficient in magnesium, it’s physiologically impossible for your muscles to relax.

Stretching, foam rolling and massage may give you temporary relief, but they have no effect on your body chemistry. Your muscles will remain tight until they get sufficient quantities of magnesium required for relaxation.

This is probably why people assume that muscle pain and stiffness are part and parcel with aging. Little benefit is seen from typical muscle relaxation practices, and so we all shrug and assume it’s an unavoidable aspect of getting older.

In addition to its muscle relaxing powers, magnesium is also anti-inflammatory. Aging, exposure to stress, free radicals, processed foods and environmental toxins can all increase inflammation in the body. Magnesium has been shown in animal studies to play an extensive role in inflammatory processes.

Even moderate magnesium deficiency over a long period can markedly increase inflammatory stress. Chronic inflammation causes muscle stiffness and joint pain as well as increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other autoimmune disorders.

Magnesium Helps Soothe The Nervous System and Calm Stress

Stress and magnesium deficiency are deeply correlated. Heightened stress actually causes your body to dump your magnesium reserves, excreting everything out through the urine.

Your body burns through magnesium faster than a ‘57 Chevy in stop and go traffic.

The reason stress results in magnesium wasting is due to the mineral’s critical role in brain function. When you’re in a survival situation, it’s important to have neurons firing on all cylinders. Usually life and death situations are fleeting, but in today’s world stress is often unrelenting.

This daily assault on your nervous system causes you to tear through your stores of magnesium rapidly. And since the typical modern diet supplies insufficient magnesium to replenish your body, your deficiency compounds over time.

According to board-certified neurologist Ilene Ruhoy, magnesium also boosts the function of GABA — a calming neurotransmitter — in your brain. Increased GABA helps you to handle stress more effectively with less of a negative impact on your health.

How to Get More Magnesium into Your Body

Since dietary magnesium is generally insufficient to raise your body’s levels to high normal, supplementation can be useful. However, it can be a little confusing.

Not only are there different types of magnesium, but there are also two different ways to get magnesium into your body.

Here’s what you need to know:

First, while magnesium is magnesium is magnesium, in order to stabilize it for consumption, it has to be bound to a carrier molecule, forming salts. That’s why you see all the different names for magnesium — glycinate, malate, citrate, etc. Those second words are the molecules to which the magnesium has been bound, and that molecule can affect absorption.

Second, you’ll notice that you can either take magnesium orally or rub it on your skin.

Oral supplements are generally capsules that you swallow, while topical magnesium comes in the form of a spray, gel, or lotion. You can also add magnesium salts to bathwater and absorb it that way.

Both have their pros and cons. Oral supplements can quickly boost deficient magnesium levels, but digestive issues such as IBS, celiac disease, leaky gut, SIBO or other digestive disorders can decrease absorption. Magnesium is also a natural laxative, so it can be hard on your gut.

This is why I’m a fan of topical or transdermal magnesium. Applying it to your skin bypasses any gut absorption issues. Plus, you can spot treat any stiff, sore muscles by rubbing it directly onto the area that hurts.

Over time, topical application of magnesium will still boost your body’s magnesium levels and you’ll reap all of the same benefits as oral supplementation without the negative digestive impact.

Conclusion

Stiff muscles and aching joints may be a common symptom amongst older people, but that doesn’t mean you should just put up with the pain. Your body may be trying to tell you that you are deficient in magnesium — a surprisingly common condition.

Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxer as well as having an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. It’s also critical for cardiovascular health, optimal brain function, mood, and sleep.

There are two different ways to get more magnesium into your body. Oral supplementation delivers large quantities of the nutrient, but absorption can be impacted by poor digestive health.

Topical or transdermal magnesium boosts magnesium levels while bypassing gut absorption issues and is an excellent way to spot treat sore muscles.

For more help with easing muscle pain and tension, click here to download my free guide No More Tight Muscles >>

October 8, 2019 Posture

The Best Office Chair For Sitting Long Hours, According To A Posture Expert

Note: this post contains affiliate links.

TLDR: The best office chair is one that keeps your core muscles active and engaged so you don’t slouch. We recommend the Kore Stool.

If you work at a computer, you may be wondering: what’s the best office chair for long hours?

Sitting is terrible for us. According to research, prolonged sitting increases your risk for 34 chronic conditions, among them cancer, diabetes, obesity, and, of course, cardiovascular disease.

Ack. That’s no good. But you can’t exactly quit your job and run away into the woods, never to be seen again, can you?

So what’s a person who has to sit at a computer supposed to do? What’s the best office chair for combating these sitting-related diseases?

Related:

From stability ball chairs to standing and even treadmill desks, employees are seeking ways to insert more movement into their work days.

Move over, ergonomic desk chairs! There’s a new player in town…

Active seating is a novel approach to workplace ergonomics that inserts movement into an otherwise sedentary day. Whether you sit or stand, incorporating active seating into your workday can help you to improve your posture, activate core muscles and maximize focus.

The Best Office Chair Might Be A Little Shaky

Active, or dynamic, seating just means that whatever you’re sitting on is designed to keep your muscles more engaged. After a lifetime of perching on static chairs and walking around on flat, stable land, most people have atrophied postural muscles and compromised balance.

The best office chair might not actually be a chair at all…

Stools that wobble, such as the Kore Stool, use instability to “wake up” your brain’s balance and coordination center. It’s far more effective as a tool to activate postural muscles than simply instructing a person to hold their body in a certain position because it works with the body’s inherent need to stay upright.

If your body senses that you are off balance, it will work to find a way to stabilize you. Therefore, instability increases the engagement of little micro-muscles in your core and spine that are difficult to consciously contract.

Wobble Stools vs. Stability Balls: Which Is Better?

If you’ve decided that the best office chair for you is one that incorporates active seating, you might be wondering: are stability balls or wobble stools better?

As a posture and movement therapist, I’m frequently asked about the difference between the Kore Stools (which I have and use in my office) and a yoga or stability ball. Stability balls are cheaper and more readily available, so naturally people want to know if they’re an adequate substitute for the wobble stool.

I recommend against sitting on a stability ball for work.

Not only are they often too small and short for most people, they’re also very soft. Soft surfaces cause your pelvis to rock backwards positioning your weight over your sacrum rather than on your much more stable pelvis.

This forces your spine into a c-curvature (think: banana), which overloads the discs and fatigues your muscles, resulting in spinal degeneration and pain.

All in all, this is not an ideal sitting posture.

A Kore Stool, on the other hand, combines support with instability in the perfect ratio. The stool itself is firm (although the seat is padded, so you’re not sitting on a wooden plank), but the bottom is rounded so that the stool moves when you do.

This gives you both the support your pelvis needs as well as the ability to move, which keeps your legs and core active while you sit.

How to Introduce Active Seating Into Your Workday

The first time you sit on a wobble stool, you might feel a little…well, unbalanced!

While that’s kind of the point, it’s natural to be a bit disconcerted by all the movement at first. I have two Kore Stools in my office, and typically the first time someone sits on one, they think it’s broken.

Usually, people are so accustomed to sitting on flat, immobile furniture that they have no idea how to properly keep their bodies active on a wobble stool. Fortunately, with a few quick tips, you’ll be ready to go and enjoy the benefits of active seating.

Here are five keys to getting the most out of your Kore Stool:

1. Perch, don’t “plop.”

When you sit on fixed furniture, it’s easy to collapse your body into the chair and let your muscles go slack. This is what makes sitting so deadly. After just a few minutes of sitting, enzymes that dissolve fats in your bloodstream virtually disappear as electrical activity in your muscles drops to practically zero.

This is where the Kore Stool comes in. Your wobble stool keeps these muscles engaged and at least somewhat active while you sit, but the instability factor means you can’t rely on the stool alone to hold you up.

Rather than “plop” down onto the stool and let your body go slack, think about “perching” your pelvis on the chair to support some of your weight.

This also works with standing desks. Most people find that standing in place all day can fatigue their feet and back, especially if they’re not used to it. Perching on a Kore Stool that has been extended to standing desk height is a great way to work toward standing for longer periods while still giving your feet some relief.

2. Keep the seat higher than your knees.

Just like sitting on a too-soft surface, having your chair — or stool — seat lower than the height of your knees will cause your pelvis to rock backwards, placing undue pressure on your sacrum and spine (and ultimately straining your neck and shoulders while also causing lower back pain).

Simply raising your stool until the seat places your hips a few inches above your knees allows you to sit more forward on the two pointy bones at the base of your pelvis — often referred to as your “sitting bones.” You can then more easily stack your shoulders over your hips without straining or hyperextending your lower back.

3. Lift your chest.

You probably know that your shoulders are rounded too far forward, but try as you might, they just don’t seem to want to stay back where they belong. This is because your shoulders actually rest on your rib cage, which determines their alignment.

If your sternum — or breastbone — is sunken due to a collapsed core, your shoulders will hunch forward no matter how hard you try to pin them in place. But, magically, if you lift your chest up and forward, your shoulders will naturally relax into place without much effort.

You’ll also find that it becomes easier to balance on your Kore Stool with a lifted chest that “stacks” your shoulders over your hips.

4. Place feet on the floor, one in front of the other.

Keeping your feet on the floor is a good way to support your lower back. While a lot of sitting advice centers around bracing your core muscles, I’m not a fan of this approach.

A braced core doesn’t allow your spine to bend and twist, which it needs to do in order to absorb your body’s motion. If your core is too tight, then you’re setting yourself up for back problems down the road.

Of course, some core engagement is good. You don’t want your abdominal muscles to be asleep at the wheel. But they can’t do all the work, either. Keeping your feet on the floor assists your core muscles in supporting your body and makes maintaining upright posture easier.

For bonus points, place one foot about six inches in front of the other. This “rocker stance” supports your weight as you lean forward and backward, which is ideal for working at a computer.

5. Lean with your whole body.

Static chairs force your body to bend at the waist when you lean or reach for a pen. But the Kore Stool moves with your body, which simultaneously keeps your muscles more active while also taking the burden off of your back.

When you reach or lean, allow the stool to rock forward and your weight to shift into your feet (which should be on the floor, per number four, above). This holds your body in better alignment while keeping the large muscles of your legs awake and online.

The Bottom Line On The Best Office Chair

If you’re looking for the best office chair for long hours spent sitting, I highly recommend you give wobble stools — and the tips above — a try.

While adapting to using active seating in your workplace can take some time, following these five tips should have you enjoying active seating and your new Kore Stool in no time.

Pain Free At Any Age

Want more great ways to stay pain-free whether you work in an office or on a mountain top? Click below to get access to my **free** Pain Free At Any Age video series that will help you heal your body in no time.

September 30, 2019 Pain Relief

The BIG MISTAKE That Will Make Sure Your Pain NEVER Goes Away!

I’ve been chatting with lots of people about their biggest blocks to resolving their pain, improving mobility, flexibility and posture.

And interestingly, what I’ve heard over and over from people struggling with pain is absolutely the biggest way to make sure your pain not only persists, but also gets WORSE.

What is it, you ask?

Related:

The Number One Block to Healing Your Pain

Waiting until you feel MOTIVATED to start stretching, start mobilizing, start exercising and start taking care of your body.

A lot of people will spend years or even decades of their lives living with uncomfortable symptoms and uncomfortable problems — shoulder aches, back pain, plantar fasciits, etc. — because they’re waiting until either it gets so bad that they need severe medical intervention to function or they have to start taking drugs to manage the pain.

Or, worse, the damage is so severe in your body that you’re going to be looking at invasive surgery with potentially drastic side effects.

And in the meantime, you’re missing out on so much of your life.

You are missing out on hikes.

You’re missing out on family activities — being able to go swimming with your kids, or walking your dog even.

I have had people even just tell me that they can’t go upstairs to tuck their kids in at night because they’re just in so much pain. They’re laid up on the couch with a heating pad.

How awful to miss those amazing opportunities to build connection with your children and develop a solid relationship with your family.

So many people just keep waiting, telling themselves things like, “I know I should stretch more,” or, “I know I should do yoga.”

I know I should, but I just don’t have the time. I don’t have the energy. I don’t have the incentive to do it (because it’s not bad enough yet?).

And I don’t have the motivation.

That’s a big problem because your body is not static. It’s either getting better or it’s getting worse. There is no standing still.

You’re Either Growing or Dying

A lot of people think about their bodies as though it were an object, but the reality is that your body as a process. It’s always either building up (anabolism) or breaking down (catabolism).

So if you’re not addressing things that aren’t working well — misalignments that are causing friction, for example — they’re going to simply keep causing friction and pain.

If you’re driving a car with the tires misaligned, the longer you do that the more severe your repairs are going to be and the higher the bill. You’re going to have to spend a lot more money and potentially time to get the car fixed if you wait until things fall apart.

So here’s the thing…

Motivation Isn’t Actually The Problem. (Gasp!)

The old way of approaching health and wellness is to use willpower and determination and grit to push you past your resistance to do things that will make you healthier.

That’s what we see in fitness culture today — no pain no gain, just do it, knuckle down, the juice is worth the squeeze, etc.

But there’s a very fine line between self-love and self-hate, right?

You can only hate yourself through a workout or an exercise plan or stretching program for so long before your willpower runs out ‘cuz willpower is a finite resource.

You will just simply run out of it and you’ll just stop because the reason you’re not doing the thing that will make you healthier is not because you don’t have time, energy, motivation or incentive.

It’s because “being healthy” somehow doesn’t line up with your identity. Or there’s a fear or a belief that is creating resistance to the action that will make you feel better.

So this really has less to do with a lack of motivation, but rather resistance to feeling better.

And that might be hard to hear, especially if you’ve poured a lot of time, money and energy into solving this problem in the past.

You might have thoughts in your head right now like, “No, I just need to do it, I just need to get up earlier so I can stretch.”

But you’re NOT doing it.

Why We Resist Feeling Good

The thing is, if you are holding onto resistance, or if this pain is serving you in some way (yes, I know, even though you definitely don’t CONSCIOUSLY want to be in pain, sometimes there are fringe benefits that our subconscious minds hold onto), no matter how hard you try to shake it off, you’ll somehow sabotage the results.

Or repeat the same habits and patterns that caused the pain in the first place.

Leading you to believe that the pain is here to stay. A permanent houseguest.

I’ve been having a ton of conversations over the past few days and this is the number one thing holding people back who are dealing with pain on a daily basis.

You don’t need another video tutorial on how to sit at your desk, or an article on how to stretch your hamstrings!

If more information we’re going to solve this problem it would be solved ‘cuz we all have Google.

I’d like to propose a different way of approaching this that is going to be much more sustainable for the duration of your life. Because the way I look at it I want to get better as I get older.

I don’t want to become less mobile. I want to become more flexible, agile and capable. I continue to feel better with every passing year, much more flexible and balanced than I was even as a teenager.

So if that’s something that you want for yourself as well, we’ve got to find a more sustainable way because otherwise you’re always going to fall off the wagon.

The No-Wagon Method of Getting Healthy

And I would like to propose that not only can you not fall off the wagon using this method but THERE IS NO WAGON. We’re not going to get on a wagon. There’s no reason to.

Instead, we’re going to take a hard look at why you are resisting feeling good.

What is this resistance all about?

How is the identity of I am healthy, I am mobile, I am active, running counter to the current beliefs about who you are and how you relate to the world?

And I get that those beliefs are subconscious. So I’m not saying that you’re, like, waking up in the morning and choosing beliefs that hold you back. But we learn these beliefs as we go through life and we don’t know we hold on to these stories about ourselves until someone shines the light on them.

You wouldn’t know you were breathing oxygen if you didn’t learn that growing up. You just wouldn’t know air existed until someone drew your attention to it.

Well, you don’t know you have these beliefs either.

Bad Habits Might Not Actually Be Bad

A lot of people say they have bad habits, and that those habits are holding them back. But habits aren’t really “good” or “bad.” Those are judgements we put on them.

“Bad” habits are the ones that don’t align with the identity of the person you’d like to become…but they do align with an identity that you hold, or they wouldn’t be your habits.

Your beliefs determine your behavior and your behavior determines your results. So if your results aren’t what you want then we have to look at the behavior.

And what shapes behavior?

You got it…beliefs.

So if your behavior isn’t what you want it to be and the results aren’t what you want, we have go deeper and uncover the beliefs that are shaping the behavior.

How to Get Your Beliefs in Line (Easier Than Herding Cats, Promise)

Inside of my Pain Free Naturally Facebook group — it’s a free group, you’re welcome to join us — I’m going to run a 5-day challenge to overcome your resistance to doing the things you already know you need to be doing to get healthy.

We’re going to unpack this resistance and move past it, once and for all. Because I know I don’t have any moments of my precious life that I want to spend being held back by my body.

And I’m sure you don’t, either.

The challenge is totally free, and it’s going to kick off inside the Pain Free Naturally group, so you do need to join if you’d like to participate.

Just click the link and request to join. I’ll get you in lickity-split.

Can’t wait to see you there!

September 24, 2019 Healthy Aging

How to Pain-Proof Your Body FOR GOOD

Have you ever wondered why we just accept that our bodies break down as we age?

That with every passing year we’re just falling apart?

Where did this belief come from? And is it fact or fiction?

At this point, you may be thinking that of course your body falls apart as you get older. After all, everything old needs repairs.

Your car needs to have the oil changed and parts repaired at regular intervals. Old plumbing and wiring have to be replaced and updated. Even your old iPhone slows down (although that might have nothing to do with age).

So why wouldn’t you experience the same deterioration in your body?

Well, there’s just one catch here…

YOU are not a machine.

Related:

You Are An Organism.

This is a very important distinction, and one that unfortunately goes unmade all. the. time.

But the reality is, your body is a living process. It’s changing constantly — moment by moment.

Sensory cells in your body absorb information about the environment that signals the brain to make changes in hormone production, heart rate, respiration, digestion, balance, coordination and a number of other subconscious processes.

Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist and author of The Biology of Belief, discovered in his research that environment is critical to cellular development.

It’s so important that the environment can alter cellular expression. Changing the environment in a petri dish actually determines the type of cell that will grow.

And cells are remarkably similar to your body in how they “perceive” their environment. They do so through the membrane which has sensory powers analogous with your own skin.

The key here, though, is perception.

What If Aging Is All In Your Head?

While it’s true that your environment influences your body, it’s actually only the stuff you notice — consciously or subconsciously — that affects you.

Back in 1981, a researcher by the name of Ellen Langer performed a small study where she had eight senior citizens confined inside a converted monastery that had been decked out to look like the year 1959.

The participants were instructed to speak and act as though it were 22 years earlier. And the results were remarkable.

All participants “reversed” in age. Their biometrics improved with increased flexibility, dexterity and even better sight.

While the study was never officially published, a British television show replicated the experiment in 2010 using aging celebrities as the test subjects. They demonstrated the same remarkable anti-aging results.

In both of these cases, the participants embodied their younger selves — they perceived themselves as younger not just in thought, but through all their senses.

And it should be noted that their improvements were far superior to a previous group who had been to the monastery and told only to reminisce about the past — not to inhabit it in mind and body.

So, if aging is just a mindset and we’re not doomed to a slow and painful physical decline until we crumble into our final resting place, why do so many of us hurt as we get older?

Interesting question.

I have three answers for you…

Three Reasons You Hurt More As You Age

The first is that you have been conditioned to ignore your body’s messages that things are out of balance until it actually is too late and damage has been done — a.k.a. Injury.

Recovering from an injury is much more difficult than preventing one in the first place.

But even when you have had no significant accident or injury, as in the case of many of my clients, you are indoctrinated from a very young age that getting older means losing function. Getting older means breaking down and becoming irrelevant. Getting older means limitations.

With all of these — and many more — subconscious beliefs playing in your head, you will be sure to find supportive evidence. Because science increasingly shows that it’s not reality that forms beliefs, but rather your reality is a projection of what you already believe.

And finally, remember how I said that perception is everything? Well, the above falls into that category.

But in addition to that, the medical industry is obsessed with pain.

And rating pain.

On a one to ten scale.

How BAD is your pain, asks your doctor.

What does that make you perceive? A couple of things.

Your pain.
Something is wrong.

I mean, pain inherently means something is wrong.

But your experience of pain can also be altered by what you expect. Participants in this study were told that either immersing their hand in cold water would make an electric shock more or less painful.

Of course, those who were told that the cold water would lessen the pain actually reported feeling less pain.

So your doctor implying that pain is “bad,” inherently heightens the intensity, which in turn increases your brain’s interpretation that something is wrong in your body. This is BAD pain. Not good pain.

All this constant focus on pain with a negative overtone can actually make you more prone to pain. The more pain you experience, the more sensitive your nervous system seems to get to the sensation.

Argh.

So, in sum:

We ignore our bodies until we’ve got a five alarm fire going on.
We believe that we are supposed to hurt as we get older.
We focus our attention on perceiving pain and telling ourselves it’s bad.

This is why we hurt!!!

What a cluster, am I right?

Okay, so now, how do we pain-proof our bodies?

What To Do: How to Pain-Proof Your Body

The truth is, our medical industry basically has two approaches: chemical (drugs) or mechanical (physical therapy, surgery).

Both of these are useful options for the right cases.

But if your pain is not operable, PT didn’t help and you don’t want to pop pain pills until the day you die, how can we help you stay active and healthy for as long as you’re on this planet?

The answer is simple: help your body to perceive itself differently.

Broaden the sensory input.

Change the way your body is relating to itself and to the environment.

These practices, as I said, are deceptively simple. But their impact is profound.

And this is the basis of what I teach in Posture Rehab.

Enrollment is currently closed while the program undergoes an update, but you can click here to get notified as soon as we open the doors again.