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My Pain Story

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In my first year practicing physical therapy, a colleague was demonstrating a manual therapy technique on me in a training and used too much force. I ended up with a serious nerve injury in my right arm that led to searing, burning pain from my neck to my fingers and an inability to turn my head to the right or grip with my right hand. It got so bad that I couldn’t write my name with a pen, get dressed by myself, or hold a fork in my right hand.

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Unfortunately, there is a poor correlation between findings on a MRI and pain. The reason for this is because pain is actually the nervous system’s response to perceived threat, and not simply the result of tissue damage. This means that your MRI could show tissue damage when you don’t have pain, and you can have a lot of pain without any clear damage visible on an MRI. This is exactly what happened to me: The MRI of my neck didn’t show any damage, and so despite very real, life-changing symptoms, the neurosurgeon told me I was fine (I wasn’t) and sent me on my way.

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This experience completely changed the trajectory of my career. It helped me to understand pain as the nervous system’s reaction to threat, and gave me an inside look into how frustrating it can be to navigate a medical system that doesn’t really understand pain. It motivated me to understand pain inside and out so that I could be the kind of provider for my patients that I needed when I was struggling.

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It took years to unlock the mystery of that injury, leading me to study ancient and modern approaches to healing in an effort to heal myself. What I learned through my own journey through chronic pain is that healing isn’t linear, and to heal pain, we have to address the root causes, not just the symptoms. Pain is an alarm to warn you about potential danger. The brain on pain can become incredibly sensitive, and the longer you have pain, the easier it is to trip the pain alarm. To heal the root causes of pain, we have to heal the nervous system so that the body no longer feels it is in danger.

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Even though it was an incredibly difficult and painful experience, I am grateful for my pain journey because it helped me learn how to honor my body’s wisdom and radically transformed my clinical practice. Rather than look at pain as a problem that needs to be suppressed, I now see pain as a way for the body to communicate.

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Pain is a GOOD THING. We want our bodies to tell us when there is danger. We also want our nervous system to trust that we will listen when it talks to us. I see my role as one of a guide or a mentor that supports clients in recognizing the healer within themselves and learning how to take control over their symptoms.

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Together, we decode the signals your body is sending and get curious as to why your body is sounding the pain alarm.

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We create internal and external environments that support healing, and give your nervous system what it needs in order to heal.

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We help you understand pain because if we can reduce the fear around the pain, it will help the nervous system relax and actually decrease the pain.

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I use a combination of therapeutic yoga, energy healing, craniosacral therapy, Ayurvedic medicine, pain science, and physical therapy to help your nervous system to heal and to treat the mind, body, and spirit holistically so you can break the pain cycle, stop feeling depleted, and restore your vitality. The world needs your unique gifts, and it is my job to help you shine!

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