The years continue to swish by. It almost feels like someone has waved their magic wand and – poof! – here we are in the present moment. Where does the time go? Sometimes I feel like it is hiding around some corner waiting to step out and surprise me. Maybe that is what I am wishing for, extra time for extra moments in my life.

As I continue to clear out my home and business of things that no longer “fit”, I see that many lifetimes have passed. Not just in mine, but in others around me as well. Funny how we view life as we move through all its stages. When we are children we see anyone over 30 as “old”; when we are in our 30’s, people in their 60’s seem “old”; then we are in our 50’s, and we look upon those in their 90’s as such.

The stigma of chronic pain can lead us to persevere and try to push through the pain, only stopping when we cannot carry on. Then the pain flares up and we pay the price!

If you have read my blogs or listened to the pain education I provide, you will have heard me suggest that this technique may be good for ‘getting the job done’, and it may be helpful in acute pain, but it is actually counter-productive to regaining greater ease of movement in the face of persistent pain. The theory we have for this includes two key ideas. First, if your protection systems are producing pain in order to get you to stop, but you do not even yield, the system will start to function as if the alarms are not loud enough. Second, your nervous system will learn to get better at whatever it practices. The more it practices creating intense pain, the better it gets at producing intense pain.

A recent media report started with a statement paraphrased as follows: “Scientists report that they have developed a way to measure how much pain a person is having by scanning their brains”. The writers went on to say that, when doctors are faced with someone in pain, they have no way to judge its severity other than to ask questions.

If you are like me, such statements are worse than nails on a chalk board. Yet the report quotes one of the researchers as saying that children and people with cognitive impairments often cannot express their pain. Being able to measure it would help provide better treatment.

Again, if you are like me, you don’t like to be misled. So here is more information on the study, which will help you understand it better.

How does a child learn to be infatuated with perfection?

I was very much a perfectionist growing up and know what a difficult habit it is to shift towards allowing things to happen without judging myself so hard. I made it a point to be aware of this so that I could circumvent this behavior with my own child.

He is now 5 years old and signs of perfectionism are beginning to show in his behavior. For example, he recently had a school exercise to complete. Part 1 was to write the word “like” with his eyes open, then write it again with his eyes closed. Amazingly, he did a fantastic job with his eyes closed, although the letters were not in a straight line and the dot for the letter “i” was not directly above the letter.

My CT scan report, dated three days ago, concluded the following:
“At L4-L5 there is a broad-based posterior disc protrusion centered in the right paracentral region resulting in mild spinal canal stenosis and effacement of the right subarticular recess with probable compression of the descending right L5 nerve root. There is mild right-sided neural foraminal narrowing and minimal right facet arthropathy.”

This sounds pretty ominous. But strangely, these are common findings on spinal investigations for a guy in his early 50’s. Some people even have these findings without any pain or disability. If we summarize this paragraph, it simply states, “it looks to be a disc bulging out against a nerve”.

Generally, this is good news. Really!

Recently, a colleague asked me a good question – how do I know that pain is a biopsychosocial event? As we talked, it seemed he wanted to know two things: (1) how I can say with such conviction that our brain uses more than the input from our nociceptive systems to produce pain; and (2) wouldn’t this mean that chronic pain is outside the scope of physical therapists, and instead is something for psychologists to treat? At first I was shocked. Then I started to wonder whether I have scientific evidence to support my belief of the integration of body-mind-spirit and bio-psycho-social inputs. I do not like the idea that what I do as a physical therapist is based more on faith than on scientific understanding of human biology and experience. Faith is important in life, but it is a huge area of ambiguity in health care.

For the past few days I have been teaching at a beautiful yoga centre in the hills just south of San Jose, California. Mount Madonna holds the same peaceful feeling as its sister centre on Salt Spring Island (where I often lead retreats), even though it is much bigger. The natural settings and calm attitudes of the individuals working and living in these centres seem to make it easier to breathe more freely and let go of the busy aspects of our lives.

Every time I see or hear ‘San Jose’, a song, popular in my childhood days, starts to play in my mind.

In my classes we go from one extreme to the next. I offer very gentle, therapeutic, in-chairs classes, classes that are very athletic and will challenge you in every aspect, and everything in between. The one thing they all have in common is that I strive to get my students to find their “inner strength” from the deepest core muscles of the body.

So what are the core muscles of the body? The core muscles are located in the trunk of the body and sustain us for long periods of sitting or standing.
The muscles of the trunk are divided into two categories: “mobilizers” and “stabilizers.”

I submitted a proposal yesterday for a workshop at the 2013 International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) conference. As you would expect, I am hoping to provide an interactive workshop about yoga and pain. The title of the presentation is “How much pain is okay in Yoga?” In the proposal description I wrote something like this, “…pain, like love – another potentially troublesome human experience – is often misunderstood.”

I wrote this sentence for three reasons. The first two are that I want the conference to accept the proposal, and I want people to come to the presentation. The most recent IAYT conference had an excellent session on neuroplasticity and pain, so there could be a feeling that the topic has already been covered. Enticing people

Students in my therapeutic yoga classes often ‘disappear’ from the class for a while. Some move on to other classes, and some come back when they are ready. I don’t worry when a student hasn’t been to class, but rather hope that they have found a path and a consistent practice that are serving them well. Yet sometimes people are coming to me with significant physical and mental health issues. Occasionally, I find myself hoping ‘not for the worst’ when they do not attend.

Earlier last week, I heard that one of the students had been unable to attend the class because her cancer had returned/spread. In hopes of raising her spirit, we hand-delivered a card and bright flowers this weekend.