Movement, or more specifically, novel movements can be quite useful for pain relief. They are an opportunity to create a new impression in your nervous system. 

There is no guarantee that this new impression will be a favorable one; if you’re not careful the impression may cause an output of pain from your brain. If you’re careful, the impression may help to “convince” your brain and nervous system that movement should not be interpreted as dangerous and therefore, offer some pain relief.

If the impression causes yet another output of pain, there will most likely be some protection, and therefore limited or limiting movement. In order to change things for the better and create a pain-free impression you need to nudge your painless range of motion in the right direction. One way to stack the deck in your favor is to pair the new or novel movements with something that already  has produced a favorable impression by your brain and nervous system.

This is creating context to obtain pain-free movement. Context is important when talking about pain and can be used in your favor.

Do you need to perform specific movements or movement patterns for this to occur? People often worry that imperfect movements create patterns of strain that can cause pain at any moment. In fact there are those in the functional movement camps that insist this will happen (I know, I used to be one of those people).  Is this based on fact? Will “improper” movement cause us to break down, will this result in pain?

Consider these questions and points:

• Why don’t people with cerebral palsy hurt constantly at every joint even though movement is often difficult to control and where movement and postural asymmetry are very common.?
• How do you explain why so many people display these imperfect and asymmetrical movement patterns but have no pain?
• Why are so many of us walking around with herniated discs, meniscus tears, rotator cuff tears, and/or arthritis without knowing it? There is actual tissue damage in these people and yet they don’t hurt. The research documenting all of these findings exists….. in large quantities.
• How can we explain phantom limb pain; even in individuals who were born without a limb?

What about the countless stories of how people (maybe you) have had pain relief by changing movement patterns and/or posture?

Body mechanics and movement are important and useful to consider clinically, but my argument is that I would not be helping my patients by convincing them that their body mechanics and movement patterns are going to lead to them falling apart, injuring themselves and/or leading to degeneration or arthritis. Not only would this be harmful to my patients, but this is clearly not the case in any way.

Now this is  flies in the face of what many in my profession as well as the physical therapy, athletic training and personal training profession, as gospel. Am I denouncing my own profession as well as many others? Well, in this case….. yes!

Body mechanics clearly play a role in the treatment of my patients and I use movement every day to help people with pain. When pain is present, movement and body mechanics can change drastically, but movement patterns and body mechanics are not useful as a pain predictor even though they can be a useful in pain relief.

Regardless of how you move you will all hurt at times during your life and pain may correspond to certain movements. 

Neuroscientist, V.S. Ramachandran said that “pain is an opinion.” Painful movement means that our body is acting on the opinion that we are under threat and should therefore be protected. So, how can we change this “opinion”?

Movement patterns and postures should be thought of as tendencies or movement habits. They develop over time and therefore can give me a glimpse at your movement history. If you do something new, something outside of your normal movement regiment (I will call this novel movement), you give your nervous system something to form a new opinion about. If you perform this novel movement in a non-threatening context, a context of safety, a context of expansion, your nervous system is not likely to come to an opinion hat this is threatening and therefor not output pain.

Pain relief that occurs with postural changes, specific exercises or prescribed movements likely helps to reduce pain because they are all novel movements and is another example of the power of novelty. It likely has nothing to do with attaining perfect posture or perfect movements patterns or reducing musculoskeletal strain reduction, but has everything to do with non-threatening movement variability.

Share on Facebook