Greetings, Reader! I met a new client this week (who we'll call Jill) who has been living under the shadow of chronic pain and fatigue for years. She said that she feels like she is living in a permanent fog that is so dense that she feels lost in space. Jill got teary when she shared that she used to be a funny, engaging person, and now she doesn't even recognize herself. She feels like her true self has been replaced by a stranger who is too tired to engage, too overwhelmed to be present,...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Greetings, Reader! Way back when I was in PT school, I was stopped at a red light on the way to teach a yoga class when I was rear-ended by someone who somehow didn't notice the line of cars stopped at the light. Fortunately, she was only going about 25 mph, but my neck absorbed the impact, and I knew right away that I had whiplash. I have a sensitive system, and it took some time and tender care to unwind the guarding and tension in my neck that developed when I braced for the impact. If...
23 days ago • 3 min read
Happy Equinox, Reader! Today marks the point in the earth's orbit when day and night are perfectly balanced. It struck me this week that this perfect balance occurs only twice a year. The rest of the year, as the earth rotates around its axis, gradually changing the proportions of night and day across the arc of a year, and giving us the gift of seasons. I've always felt that light and dark are not opposites, but rather they contain each other, existing along a fluid spectrum. When nights are...
30 days ago • 2 min read
Greetings, Reader! I am emailing a bit early this week because my Neurosomatic Pain Program starts tomorrow, and I wanted to send one last invitation to join us. One of the most common questions I hear is this: “How can I still hurt when I'm doing everything "right," my doctors say nothing is ‘wrong’, or when my pain doesn't match the results of my imaging?” Here’s what most people don't know: Pain isn’t a direct measure of tissue damage. In fact, there isn't a good correlation between X-ray...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Greetings, Reader! Last week, I shared about the three-step process the nervous system uses to produce pain: The nervous system receives sensory input from the body. The nervous system processes that information to determine whether it is dangerous or safe. If the nervous system detects a potential threat, it sends an output signal in the form of pain*. (*The output can manifest as physical pain, digestive issues, anxiety, sleep disturbance, brain fog, executive dysfunction, overwhelm, etc. I...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Greetings, Reader! During a Nervous System Attunement Strategy Session, a new client teared up when telling me about how she feels like her nervous system is failing her because even though she meditates and has a lot of tools to "regulate" her nervous system, she still doesn't feel calm. I hear things like this all the time, and I want to shout from the rooftops that calmness is not the goal! When we equate nervous system regulation with being calm, then activation starts to feel like a...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Greetings, Reader! Sometimes all it takes is asking one simple question to shift everything. For several clients this week, that question was this: Is your nervous system attuned to safety or danger? The nervous system has so much to manage that it relies on patterns for the sake of efficiency. When it is exposed to repeated stress, it learns to anticipate, becoming vigilant and sensitive. When the nervous system is attuned to danger, everything feels like a threat, and it creates a feedback...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Greetings, Reader! "Is it normal to be this exhausted all the time?" a client asked me this week. Another said, "I can't believe how physically tiring pain is." A third said, "My executive functioning is nonexistent right now. I keep starting things, forgetting what I'm doing, and giving up because I just don't have the energy." My friend, our nervous systems were not built to hold the trauma and tragedy of the whole world, and they were especially not built to hold it all while still going...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Greetings, Reader! Many years ago, I was working in an orthopedic PT clinic that wasn't a good match, energetically or philosophically. It felt like I was always swimming upstream, and I was exhausted from working so hard fighting the current. When my dream job landed at my feet, it should have been an obvious yes, and it was to everyone else, but I hesitated, and my rational mind could not understand why. Even after I accepted the position and felt a wave of relief flow through my body, I...
2 months ago • 2 min read