Hey Beni,

I’ll light a candle!

Very much appreciated!

I forgot to tell you the fundamental of what I write is. My back started hurting last spring. I feel glimpses of the pain (3-4%). It’s also me pushing myself which creates the condition and what the doc says. It’s confusing cause I expirience that it’s what I belief is good and bad which creates this experience. I start to belief that to heal it’s better to fully trust in my body rather then doing what makes the most sense. That’s creating insecurity cause I do not know what I’m doing.

Oh I see, so you have back pain, slight though, and you’re afraid that doing certain moves while snowboarding or skateboarding might do you harm? And that’s what also your doctor says? But another part of you trusts your own body and wants to do those moves anyway?

What caused your pain, if I may ask? Did you injure yourself or it just came out of nowhere?

I too am suffering from back pain, got a herniated disc. And it came out of the blue, with no trauma, no wrong move or anything like that. I just bent to pick up something from the floor and that’s when the pain started.

When you get injured is it physical? I notice it changes as I get older. I’m more prone to injuries or sensitive to pain.

Yes, it’s physical. I’ve had physical injuries in the last 5 years that remained chronic (like knee and back pain), and this is limiting me quite a bit…

I think when I wrote it, it was more like that I’m so curious about this topic and there’s so much potential and hope that I have to talk about it as soon as the topic goes in such a direction. It’s in someway reactive and also authentic. Also I thought it might benefit you to hear it cause I see all that.

Yes, I am interested in that topic too, because of these injuries and chronic pain that I have to manage and live with. It was quite an adjustment, emotionally and mentally too, to suddenly have to live with physical limitations, to not be able to do the things you loved before. I had to grieve those things. It still causes me pain (emotional pain) but I’ve learned to accept it.

What helped a lot is also a more positive attitude towards my chronic back pain, like not catastrophizing, not believing it’s the end of the world, not fearing my every move, but believing that my body has the ability to recover, that it’s more resilient than I think. And even if I make a wrong move unintentionally, that I’ll be able to recover to my baseline, which is not pain-free, but with manageable pain, provided that I follow a pretty cautious lifestyle (unfortunately).

What also helped me a lot in managing my back pain is the whole idea that chronic pain is largely regulated by the brain and our perception of threat and danger. If we believe that every move is dangerous, we will be more tense, more anxious, and it will cause more physical pain.

This concept was first discovered by Dr. John Sarno, and now it is taught by Dr. Hanscom, Dr. Schubiner, as well as Tanner Murtagh, who is teaching the somatic tracking practice. He has a pretty cool youtube channel, with lots of exercises for tracking our body sensations and reducing chronic pain.

there’s so much potential and hope that I have to talk about it as soon as the topic goes in such a direction

As you can see, this topic can make me talk for hours 🙂 It came out of necessity, but it is what it is, I’ve learned a lot about it as I am trying to help myself…