The Pain Ecosystem

Here is a visualisation to understand chronic pain.

You are the environment - a rainforest perhaps.



And training, or movement, is the medicine.

Each movement or activity represents a particular plant or animal, for example:

Snakes are pull ups
.

Flowers are pushups


Wild boar are squats


and so on... with sub-categories of species representing the many variations of familiar movements.

In the same way a forest thrives on biodiversity, your bodily ecosystem thrives on stimulus that is changing, seasonal and receptive. These qualities are the essence of what medicine should be.

But things get tricky when this two-way dialogue breaks down and your mind thinks it can run things better than your body.

Example: you have back pain aggravated by squatting still want to squat heavy even though your body is asking for long walks. Because you think “I’m a powerlifter, and this is what powerlifters do”.



This is like having an out-of-control wild boar population and still wanting more pigs, even though they’re eating all the food and leaving other animals in the forest starving.

You're giving your energy to something that isn't giving back to your bigger picture. You're taking an athlete's mindset but you aren't getting paid for your sacrifices.

Sport is a finite game. You TELL yourself what you need and make it happen to get the result.

Life is an infinite game. You speak WITH your body as often as possible. The goal is for your entire ecosystem to flourish so you can keep playing and grow exponentially.

Often the ideas you have about what you should be doing come from someone who gave you advice suited to THEIR ecosystem, not yours.

When you're in chronic pain, you need a constantly evolving and personalised approach, with (relatively) unbiased reference points to support your clarity and sanity.

It's a long, non linear path of ego dropping and learning.

You're capable, but shit, it's hard alone.