Body Intelligence Perspective on Physical Pain

Have you heard of a concept called Body Intelligence? It is a cutting edge body of knowledge that is emerging out of the work I do at Body Mind Physical Therapy. It’s about learning to use the data from your body in any given moment to navigate your best life in flow.

Pain is one example of many ways in which Body Intelligence is expressed. Pain is your body’s brilliant alarm system to warn you and protect you from potential harm, threat or danger. It’s also more than 90% driven by the unconscious mind – which is totally out of our control and awareness!!

So here are three subconscious strategies that I’ve seen people use in the past 16 years that don’t work for dealing with pain from a Body Intelligence standpoint:

being angry at the pain, body part, or situation (it is totally understandable and OK to be mad and frustrated, I’m just saying that strategy sustained doesn’t help pain get better fast)
ignoring it. Pain is the body’s way of communicating, and by ignoring it, you will miss out on something important. And it usually will just scream louder (like a 2 year old) until it feels heard and gets its needs met.
being afraid of it. Past experiences of pain have a way of sneaking into our future because they change how we move. If we’re afraid of hurting ourselves, we actually move in such a way that can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Do any of these sound familiar to you or anyone you know? If you want to change your experience around pain, I think it’s a good news/bad news situation. Good news is – it can change. Bad news – it requires doing some difficult and honest work to identify things you’re currently doing that aren’t working for you. Body Intelligence provides a different perspective than most when it comes to interacting with physical pain.

Here is a taste of the philosophy of Body Intelligence when it comes to physical pain:

Pain is data. it is an objective method of communication that is unpleasant by purpose of design – it’s trying to get your attention to help you.
It is not a personal attack against you, your body doesn’t hate you and it’s not out to get you.
Pain is your body’s way of trying to communicate complex information to you. If you can learn to listen with a different set of ears to the data, you can learn to make adjustments to your life path and enhance your life experience for the better if you do.

When you learn to listen and interact with your pain from a Body Intelligence standpoint, you can learn how to do things differently and create a whole new experience for yourself! All you have to do is learn to develop the ears to listen to it.

To learn more about new ways to change how you relate to your Body Intelligence, and how you can navigate your best life in flow, come check out my 30 minute presentation at Women, Wine and Wellness on July 20, 2016 at 7pm. For more information, look here. And for those that are coming to the event, I’m offering a *sweet* deal that includes a 3 package offer with some serious discounts… so for those who like a bargain, I’d highly recommend you check it out 🙂

Sorry gents, ladies only! You’re going to be left out for this round. But more will come in the future if you’re interested, so please stay tuned!