The River Beneath the Pain
Reconnect to the fluidity, flexibility, and resiliency in your brain, nervous system, and body.
A comprehensive program to reduce chronic pain with an evidence-based mind/body approach.
Early Bird Discount Ends 11/16!
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Sign up for the 6 session program here
Chronic pain can render you powerless over your own body and your life.
It is a frustrating and despairing experience to have your sense of agency taken away from you day after day for months, years, or decades of your life. It can leave you in a perpetual state of fear, frustration, and hopelessness.
When you are in pain, unhealthy patterns of avoidance may begin to dominate many different aspects of your life.
Maybe you stay at home, avoid social gatherings, perhaps even have to quit working or doing the activities you love. It can render a lot of financial insecurity, and wreak havoc on relationships and self-esteem.
Chronic pain can be a quick downward spiral into depression.
You may also find yourself cycling between feelings of complacency (this is just something I am always going to have to deal with) and preoccupation (planning your whole day around dealing with your pain or constantly researching your symptoms and possible treatments).
It can cut you off from the fullness of life, and before you know it, your entire life is centered around managing pain.
If you struggle with chronic pain or symptoms of chronic illness, you probably have desperately tried finding answers, cycling through many doctors and health care practitioners, paying thousands of dollars on different treatments. Perhaps you have even been given a diagnosis for your pain, and followed through with medication or a surgical procedure, only to find that the pain still persists.
Maybe you have had multiple medical tests only to find that there is no evidence that there is anything physically wrong with you. Maybe you have found something that temporarily gives you some relief such as chiropractic care or getting a massage, but the pain always comes back.
Meanwhile, the world around you keeps going, and almost nobody understands the invisible struggle of your exhaustive cycle of trying to manage the way you feel.
If this has been your experience, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT, and it is NOT ALL IN YOUR HEAD. Your pain is REAL, and your experience is 100% valid.
Here is the crux: the exhaustive cycle of trying to find answers and manage your pain is likely keeping you stuck in pain.
Neuroscience research is showing that most cases in which pain has become chronic usually has very little correlation with structural tissue damage.
Most of the time, chronic pain has more to do with the brain and nervous system than tissue damage.
Neuroplastic pain is when the brain misinterprets safe sensory signals from the body as dangerous, and sends out pain signals when you are not actually in danger, such as being in pain long after an initial injury has healed.
It’s a safety mechanism administered from brain to body through the nervous system, letting us know that there’s something dangerous, and to act accordingly, even when there is no danger.
It’s like your brain is misinterpreting a hose in the grass for a poisonous snake, sending out danger signals (pain) to alert you that there is danger when there is none.
Fear-based management of your pain is a danger signal to the brain, which is fueling the pain cycle and keeping you stuck in a cycle of fear, preoccupation, and pain.
This is good news, because it means that you have the power to break this cycle and to retrain your nervous system and brain. With evidenced based mind-body tools, it is possible to change your relationship with your symptoms, and therefore reduce your experience of pain.
This is a six session program in which you will be given the tools you need to break the chronic pain cycle and inhabit your body with more ease.
The intention is for you to gain insight into what is keeping you stuck in a perpetual chronic pain cycle with supported somatic coaching and an evidence based-mind/body approach for treating chronic pain that is specific to your needs.
You will get the pain science education to understand the body, brain, nervous system link with chronic pain, helping you to understand that your body is a source of wisdom and a resource for you, and that you can learn to trust your body instead of experiencing it as a source of suffering.
You will leave our time together with all the tools available for you to understand the cycle of your pain, and therefore have more insight into what you need in order to continue on your path to reduce or eliminate chronic pain.
You will have the keys in your hands to inhabit your body in a newly empowered way with a foundation of trust and safety in the wisdom of your body.
What would it be like to experience pain but to not react to it?
What if instead you could learn how to inhabit your body with curiosity, trust your intuition, and know how to listen to the inherent wisdom of your body even when it’s hurting?
One of the keys to healing is learning how to change our relationship to pain, and to understand that ultimately the brain is sending pain signals in an attempt to keep us safe.
Your experience of pain is your brain and body having your best interest in mind, believe it or not.
The tools you gain from our time together will help you establish a sense of trust with your body and your experience of pain instead of seeing it as a threat. This shift is essential for reducing pain.
Introducing…
The River Beneath the Pain
This is a one-on-one program specifically tailored to you to reduce your symptoms and reconnect to the inherent wholeness within you utilizing a mind/body approach.
This will include six one-on-one sessions to take place on Zoom that are a blend of Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Hakomi-Informed Somatic Coaching in which you will be supported in processing the deeper layers of your mind/body connection, including your emotions, to understand how your nervous system is perpetuating chronic pain.
Pain Reprocessing Therapy is an evidenced based approach to healing chronic pain through retraining the brain to respond to signals from the body properly, breaking the chronic pain cycle.
Hakomi-Informed Somatic Coaching is a body-based method that is rooted in present-moment awareness. Working with the intelligence of the body in the present moment, we will gently unravel unconscious beliefs and perceptions that may be limiting your ability to be fully engaged in your life in a meaningful way. We will gently work with limiting barriers and try on new possibilities with little somatic experiments, always with your consent.
In this program you will get:
Six 1:1 sessions on Zoom that are a blend of Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Hakomi-informed Somatic Coaching.
Extra email support to include one email exchange in between our sessions. It may take 48-72 hours to reply.
A resource list to support you with chronic pain full of books, podcasts, and videos for you to have extra support outside of our time together.
A six week free trial for the Curable app which is an interactive resource for you that includes pain science education, journal prompts, guided meditation, and brain training exercises specific to chronic pain.
Ongoing tailored resources tailored to your specific needs.
A comprehensive recap at the end of our time together highlighting the major points you have become aware of, and what you need to focus on to continue integrating into your life.
You will be supported to gain insight into your internal landscape, with your body’s wisdom as our compass. This work can gently and organically unravel deeply held unconscious emotion and thought patterns that may be keeping your nervous system stuck in a pain cycle.
I know it’s challenging to consider that a mind/body connection may be the root of your pain.
“Pain isn’t in your head, but it is in your brain.” Meaning that it is not a moral failure or conscious choice you are making to be in pain. Nor should you be falsely led by healthcare practitioners into believing that it’s all in your head.
It is an automatic and unconscious physiological mechanism involving communication pathways between the brain and the body that are not functioning properly, and you have zero ability to control it when it’s actually happening.
With evidenced based somatic awareness and evidence based tools, you can retrain these misfiring neurological mechanisms with persistent practice. It will require engagement of your conscious awareness of your body, emotions, and nervous system, as well as your capacity to re-approach the way you are relating with your pain symptoms.
You will be given every available tool to continue to do this for yourself even after our time together is done. During our time together, you will be directly supported while working with these tools.
This is for people who are experiencing chronic pain (more than three months) who are interested in a somatic approach to working with chronic pain.
If you are willing to attempt to put in the self inquiry needed to re-pattern your relationship with pain, this is for you.
If you are willing to look at and work with the ways that your emotions and nervous system play a role in your pain experience, this is for you.
Even if you have a diagnosed structural issue or autoimmune dysfunction that confirms that your pain is not 100% neuroplastic, these tools can still support you with working with fear around these diagnoses which can potentially reduce any unnecessary additional chronic pain.
This is not for people who want to be “fixed.” I am not here to fix you.
I am here to support the facilitation of your own internal knowing, helping you to find your own path to inhabiting your body more fully.
This will require your full participation. I will hand you the keys, and it’s up to you to use them.
This is also not for people who require in-depth mental health counseling, as I am not a licensed mental health professional. If I see that what you are needing is outside of my scope of practice, I have list of competent body-based therapists to refer you to.
This is NOT a program that supports you in crisis.
Please seek support from a licensed mental health professional or call a crisis hotline if you experience suicidal ideation.
Chronic pain does not have to be life-sentence. I truly believe it’s possible for you to experience less pain and inhabit your body with more ease, and live a happy, fulfilling life. I personally have struggled with chronic pain and fatigue for over a decade, and these tools have reduced my experience of pain to an immense degree. I am committed to supporting other people on this challenging path.
You deserve support, and I am glad you are here.
FAQ
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Sessions will take place over Zoom.
Our first session will be a thorough intake of your pain history, and a collaborative assessment of what you are needing support with the most now. You may need to be assessed by a medical doctor to ensure that your pain experience has some degree of a neuroplastic component, meaning that it’s not 100% structurally caused. You will be provided some basic pain science education to help you understand how chronic, neuroplastic pain persists.
During our sessions, you will be encouraged to enter into a state of present moment awareness to see what’s showing up in your body in the moment, including sensations and emotions. Your body’s wisdom will be our compass while we utilize the tools of Pain Reprocessing Therapy.
We will go back and forth between what is arising automatically and organically in the body in the present moment, and what that information actually means. That being said, no two sessions will be the same, and there is no set “formula” for doing this work.
The ultimate intention is to support you in feeling a sense of safety in your body, as opposed to experiencing it as a threat. We will collaboratively look at your relationship to your symptoms, and see where you can be supported to shift some behavioral patterns that may be contributing to the pain cycle. You will be supported with figuring out small, attainable changes you can make to begin to interrupt these patterns.
We will utilize a combination of leaning into the unfolding present moment of your internal terrain, and some dialogue around how to integrate what we are learning about your body, emotional patterns, and needs. You will be supported with integrating what we learn in our sessions with specific tools that will be helpful for you in your daily life outside of our sessions.
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Yes. Outside of our six sessions together, I will be available for inquiries and support via email. It may take up to 48-72 hours to reply, and email support includes one email exchange in between our sessions.
You will also receive a resource list full of suggested books, podcasts, You Tube videos, etc, for you to have access to supportive tools outside our container.
You will also receive ongoing individualized tailored resources unique to your needs and where you are in your process.
At the end of our time together, you will receive a recap of the major points that you have worked through, and what you need to focus on continue to integrate effectively.
This is NOT a program that supports you in crisis. Please seek support from a licensed mental health professional or call a crisis hotline if you are suicidal.
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No. There are no guarantees. Everyone’s experience of chronic pain is incredibly unique, and everyone is in a different stage of their process.
This means that some people may make strides with this approach while others may take baby steps. There is no right or wrong, and speed of recovery is definitely not a measure of success.
The healing process is anything but linear, and there is a chance that you may even experience a flare-up of symptoms during our time together. Sometimes, but not always, recovery means getting worse before you get better.
Usually, the more outcome independent you are, the likelier you are to experience a reduction in symptoms.
I encourage you to cultivate an attitude of patience and compassion toward yourself during this process, and focus on how you can cultivate a sense of safety and ease just for today.
Curious if this program might help you?
Let’s get to know each other.
