Summary:
Maybe you’re thinking that meditation can help you with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, or something else really hard. You’d probably be right. But it’s not always so easy to meditate or concentrate.
One of my students asked me just yesterday, “Hey my mind is so busy and I’m so distractible, I can’t settle down to do sitting meditation. But if I do Tai Chi first, it quiets me down, and then I can meditate. Is that OK?”
Is that ok? Yes, it’s more than OK. It’s great. Tai Chi, Yoga, Chi Kung, and other forms of “Moving meditation” or “Mindful movement” can be great pathways. They are wonderful calming exercises that shift you from the inflammatory biology of an overactive stress response, to the anti-inflammatory biology of well-being. And they can be great ways to settle your mind down.
His question is astonishingly common. We live in a time where most of us are stressed out, distracted, with lots of difficulty concentrating. So please check out the video, and let me know how you like it.
In my view, sitting meditation and moving meditation are like peanut butter and chocolate. Peas and carrots. Forrest and Jenny. That means they go great together.
That’s part of why Movement Toward Health emphasizes both modes of meditation practice.
If you haven’t heard yet, Movement Toward Health is a systematic training that guides you through the Seven Steps of Inner Healing. It combines sitting meditation and moving meditation, mindset training, and visual imagery. It’s purpose is to build your knowledge and skills so you can reverse the vicious cycles that worsen your pain, immobility, fatigue, and other symptoms.So you can take your life back and live again.
You can get more info at www.MTHtribe.com
If you’re interested, I suggest checking it out right away. We will have a brief open enrollment during the week of September 12th for this year’s cohort. Don’t miss out. (If you missed that, you can click that link and get on the waiting list to know when we will open again.
Did You Know:
- You can receive updates about new content and learning opportunities for transforming pain and suffering, by joining Dr Shiller’s email community here: drshillerupdates.com
- Dr Shiller is available for telemedicine consultation worldwide regarding chronic pain, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, fatigue, and stress-related illness. Contact the office or schedule a consultation at www.drshiller.com
- Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. Learn practical tools for transforming suffering, reducing stress and inflammation. You can get the schedule and register at www.mindbodygroove.com
Pain and Suffering. How To Get Off The Mindbody Rollercoaster
Summary:
Did you ever practice meditation that brought you to a really calm comfortable space, and then before you know it, you’re back in the distress and suffering? What is that about? This video unpacks the inner dynamics of the rollercoaster of mind-body practice. Why can it seem like all the. benefits just disappear like smoke. What is it a see-saw of feeling good then feeling crummy. We can understand it by looking at the inner mental/emotional/physical processes. We also get insight from the sages of Torah and Kabbala who talk about the very tangible existence of our “animal soul” and “divine soul” and how to get them to play nicely together. Please watch the video and share your comments or questions.
Did You Know:
- You can receive updates about new content and learning opportunities for transforming pain and suffering, by joining Dr Shiller’s email community here: drshillerupdates.com
- Dr Shiller is available for telemedicine consultation worldwide regarding chronic pain, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, fatigue, and stress-related illness. Contact the office or schedule a consultation at www.drshiller.com
- Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. Learn practical tools for transforming suffering, reducing stress and inflammation. You can get the schedule and register at www.mindbodygroove.com
Related Posts:
Full Transcript:
Hi, it is Dr. Shiller here. Today I want to speak in response to a comment that I recently got from one of the people in one of my classes, and I hear this comment quite a bit. It is very relevant for a lot of people, and this is someone who was doing some meditation training, some mind body skills development. Someone who is dealing with chronic pain and some other medical challenges and social challenges. Some really hard stuff going on for her, and her comment was like this: “Hey, Doc. During the meditation, I get to this really quiet sweet space, especially the things we do that are about opening up our hearts and like giving, and I really get to a great place and my pain is gone. And it can be gone for hours, it can be gone until the next day. It is amazing. I really appreciate this. But, and here is the kicker, right? But you know, I go back out into life, whether it is the same day or the next day, and something happens. And then suddenly, it is like, I never even did the meditation, I am in this place of distress in my mind and my emotions, my pain comes back. You know, I am starting to feel like I am just kind of a phony. Like, I am imagining it, like what is really going on here? I can relate so much to the question, personally, when I was in medical school and in residency, and I was first starting to work with contemplative practice. I could very much relate to what this person is talking about, that the experience, the practice itself was deep and beautiful, and seems so transformative. Like, “Oh, my gosh, the world is going to be completely different now”. Then, you know, whatever amount of time later, it is like, boom! Getting sucked back in the same old stuff, the tension, the anxiety, I was having. Like neck pain and back pain and things like that. And so, it was really this sense of like, okay, was that real? Is this just a bunch of phoniness, like, what is really going on? And what I want to say is that it is real. The experience of dropping into quiet in your mind, your emotions, in your body, generates biology, that is healing. It generates mental emotional patterns that are healing, and very pleasant. It is real, it is reality. The issue is that you also have other aspects of your being, and your history, and your habits. There can very much be a dance between those two, I am going to call that dance and not tension, because to my eyes at this point, 20 years later, the dance is where the real artistry and the real healing and creativity of life comes in. The first principle I want to share is that wherever your mind goes, there you are. And this is something that has been said by a lot of wise people over the years, including the Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Nachman and in some of the sages of the Torah tradition. That wherever you put your consciousness, your conscious intention, or your unconscious intention, where your mind is, that is, what is generating your, a lot of your physiology. That is what is feeding into the thoughts, you are having, the emotions that are coming up. Yes, the bodily responses you are having, together with those thoughts and emotions. So, the art and the work is really a question of starting to become aware of that. A lot of my students who are progressing further along, are starting to be aware of that, right? They start with the meditation that brings them the quiet to go, wow, this is amazing. Then they start to notice, oh, I keep thinking about that guy. Or I keep thinking about this experience or whenever I see this person, it brings on a sort of negative mind, emotion state. So, what do you do about that? Well, you start to work with it. It is an aspect of self-learning, it is reflective learning, to start to see those patterns. When you start to see those patterns, you start to become more mindful. You start to actually develop a kind of awareness that is not judgmental. You see that maybe, okay, I am self-judging, or self-doubting, or there is self-blame or even self-hatred. Then you start to actually say, wait, no, I do not want to live from that place. It is a little bit of an active will, just to decide that. Then it is an act of awareness and something transformative that happens when you just start letting your heart receive it, and be aware of it. If you were to see a little kid who is misbehaving, and they are a little kid, they are doing what little kids do. And if you are not too close to the issue, you kind of recognize and you are like, Yeah, and you can like, give that kid some support. Like, “Hey, come on over here. Listen, you know, I care about you. I love you. I see you doing that thing that is making a mess. You start to do that with yourself, and it can be transformative, because what happens is you develop the skill of dropping into a quiet place that just feels good and brings on the biochemistry and neurobiology of healing. Then you also develop this presence of mind, this mindfulness, this compassionate, discerning awareness. That lets you see your habits of going to the negative places, and lets you start to make more conscious choices. Rather than just going with the habit. Because habits, most of them we developed from back then, when we were not so conscious. A lot of your worst habits, I can guarantee you came from a place of you actually taking care of yourself. When you start to actually notice, wow, the reason I am reacting with anger is because back when this happened, I was scared, I was scared, I did not want it to happen again. So, I am angry, because I am trying to protect myself, and you start to see that kind of stuff. And that is the process. That is the work of inner healing. I want to bring another aspect to this from the Torah tradition. And you know, the inner tradition of Torah brings this notion that every human being has got what we call an animal soul and a divine soul. Your animal soul is really responsible for self-protection, self-preservation, reproduction, pleasure; it is your physical embodied self with all of the urges, and aversions that you have. A lot of that is very conditioned, a lot of it is instinctual, a lot of it is cultural, it is stuff that we just are. Then we have got this godly soul, it is a divine soul. It is the part of us that as we grow and mature, we start to naturally have a sense of desire or urge, to be generous, to be giving, to include other people in our world, to care, to actually want to make a positive difference. Those are aspects of our godly soul. Those are aspects of your elevated divine soul. In that tradition, the work of growth, the work of healing, the work of returning to our highest potential, is to come in contact with that elevated divine soul. To understand it, taste it, know it, become familiar with it, start to identify with it, and bring it with compassion, with intelligence to that animal soul. The metaphor that often gets broad is like, if you are a person who rides horses, you know that the horse needs care, the horse needs to be brushed and cleaned, the feet need to be protected, the horse needs good food, shelter and protection from bad weather. If you want to be a good horse person, you need to take care of the horse. But you also need to ride the horse, and you need to direct the horse where you want to go. That is what horsemanship or horsewomanship is really about. It is actually having the awareness and compassion for the animal, and actually having a clear connection to your own higher aspiration, your own higher purpose, your potential of who you are. I invite you to really reflect on that metaphor, reflect on the different aspects of your own experience, that you might consider your animal bodily, embodied soul. Rather than judging them as bad, just realizing that they are part of who you are, and part of what you can direct and learn to develop mastery over in your path of self-healing, of self-actualization, of being your most beautiful, powerful self in the world. You are not a phony, you are someone who is learning to pay attention. You are someone who is learning that when you give your mind to matters of the divine soul, of purpose, of potential, of possibility of expansiveness, of connection, there is a certain physiology that is supported by that, and that comes out of that. When you give your mind to the potentially more protective, negative, challenged aspects of the animal soul, you may experience negativity. But gradually over time, you learned to let your divine soul be the rider of the horse. In summary, what most people say who stick with the practice and stay true to it over time is that as you get familiar with it, as you develop a sense of greater self-acceptance, and you work through some of the challenges of relating to those more difficult parts of self, then the difference is less glaring, the extremes are less extreme and you develop a somewhat smoother pathway. We all have times of elevation and times when we fall. And what happens over time is the decline, the fall becomes for the sake of rising, and according to the Hasidic tradition, every time you have a fall, every time you slip into a negative pattern, every time you meet those difficult parts of self that are such troublemakers, it is really happening for the sake of them being elevated by your own divine soul and awareness. There is really a path here of transformation that is available to you if you are sincere and dedicated and willing to develop awareness, develop the skill of self-regulation and quieting, develop mindfulness and compassion that the bumps are less strong, you spend more time in a place of relative, Hey, it is okay. I am with it, I have got this, things are going to be alright. And you spend less time cycling into the really heavy negative patterns. It takes time, it takes effort. This is real work, but it is also incredibly fruitful and valuable, because it not only influences the process of bodily healing, it leads you to excel, a sense of self and self-expression that is ever more beautiful and evermore connected to doing good things in the world and being the kind of person you want to be. I hope this has been useful. Feel free to leave any comments or send me comments or questions by email if you want. And tune in again. Look forward to being in touch.Fibromyalgia and Fatigue. Four Reasons Why You Flare Up and Can’t Make Progress
Summary:
One of my readers writes:
“Hey Doc, I’ve been doing all the right things to improve my fitness. Pacing myself. Accepting my low threshold and working within it with lighter weights and shorter workouts. I’ve progressed, but I’m stuck and not able to increase my exercise tolerance enough. Why is that happening?”
In the video, I dive into some of the reasons why fibromyalgia and chronic pain can be so limiting in terms of activity. Sometimes there are things you can do to break through the barrier and build strength, endurance, and ability to function.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Did You Know:
- You can learn to reduce pain, improve mobility, and increase energy. Movement Toward Health is an affordable online training program that helps you heal and grow in a warm and inviting community. It opens periodically for new members. You can get more information and join the waitlist here: www.MTHTribe.com
- Do you want experienced, compassionate guidance in overcoming chronic pain or illness? Dr Shiller is available for telemedicine consultation worldwide regarding chronic pain, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, fatigue, and stress-related illness. Learn more here https://www.drshiller.com/stage-dr/consult
- Have you learned to mobilize your most important self-healing superpower? If you balance your stress/relaxation response, it could change your life. Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. Even if you “can’t meditate”, he has a way of helping. Learn practical tools for transforming pain and suffering, reducing stress and inflammation. Sessions are free. You can register atwww.mindbodygroove.com
Related Posts:
- How to unlearn the mind-body patterns that create chronic pain and illness.
- Why Does Chronic Pain Happen? Empower Your Healing.
- Life-changing stuff most doctors don’t tell you about fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and chronic illness.
- LDN can be great. But here’s why it is not a miracle cure for pain, fatigue, and fibromyalgia.
Full Transcript:
Hey, it is Dr. Shiller. Today, I want to talk in follow-up to a previous video in which I was discussing the suffering cycle and the disability cycle in chronic pain and chronic illness, especially fibromyalgia and related conditions, and how a person can understand that and start to break those cycles. And I got a very interesting response from one of my readers, one of the watchers, and I want to read you some of it, because you might have similar questions.
She writes, “Doc, to be honest, I have made a lot of improvements, but I never got to a place of really big improvement. I have tried gradually building my exercise. I have done behavioral modifications to pace myself. I have tried to stay within my exercise threshold. I have done things to tweak a slightly low thyroid. I do not have a positive ANA or a high inflammation marker, but I continued to get these really bad flare ups of fatigue and discomfort. My pain is much better, but the fatigue and the post exercise, just malaise and feeling horrible keep catching up with me. What do I do about that?
It is such a great question, because whether it is chronic pain, or fibromyalgia, or chronic fatigue syndrome, ME, as we call it, these are complex processes. And there are a few different things that can be going on, and I would say there are really like, four or five reasons why it can be hard to break through and actually build that activity tolerance threshold, because that is really the issue here. For someone who wants to either prevent getting more disability, disabled, or someone who wants to kind of climb out of that hole of disability and get more active, what stands in the way?
The first thing we talked about in that first video is that the threshold gets lowered, right? Like everybody has a threshold, within which we can actually be active physically without damaging ourselves. So, I can run two or three kilometers, a mile or two or three, and I can feel okay with that, but if I try to run a marathon, I would be wrecked for days, and maybe a week or longer, I might even get injured.
Everyone’s body, you included, you have a certain threshold of how much energy your cells can put out, how much metabolism your muscles can do, and above that, what happens is it overloads the system and creates a kind of state of biochemical toxicity and inflammation and acidosis. And if you are susceptible, because you have a low threshold, which is expressed in fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, then that happens at much lower levels of exertion, and so you go over that threshold and suddenly this vicious cycle happens, which can increase inflammation, increase stress hormones, increase a whole bunch of different changes that create a flare, and so the question is, how do you work with that?
This particular person talked about, is trying to stay within threshold and doing shorter workouts with less weight, and she made a certain amount of progress, but did not really elevate her threshold, like she really wanted to. What else could be going on? One of the things is that we know that there are hormonal and immune dysregulation that happened.
We know that sometimes there are aspects of biochemical toxicity. Sometimes there are aspects of dysfunction of the mitochondria, which are your cellular energy producing organs. And all of these things are very much integrated, your degree of inflammation, your mitochondrial function, your biochemical stress, or oxidative stress, are all intertwined with each other, and when you are in a susceptible place, any one of those going up too high, can she kind of create a little vicious cycle, stuff like low grade infection feeds into that, hormonal dysfunction, whether it is your thyroid hormone, your adrenal hormones, or your sex hormones can also make you susceptible.
If you have ongoing toxicity to heavy metals or environmental pollutants, where you have got low-grade inflammation in your body from some kind of liver toxicity thing, that also makes your system more susceptible. So those things are incredibly important to address. That is a huge topic. I am trying to cover that right now. Although in future videos, I sure hope to God willing.
The last aspect that I want to bring up is really the stress response of the body. Because as we know, we already talked about it, that the stress response, the fight-flight-freeze response, which is meant to be kind of modulated by a relaxation response is intimately connected with that mitochondrial function or hormonal immune axis. They are all intimately connected, because your stress response is how your body copes, and there has been all sorts of research showing that when a person has a prolonged overactive stress response, or an acute stress response, it shifts immune function, it can shift hormonal function, it can shift mitochondrial function.
One of the ironic weird things about physical exercise is that it is a stressor, right? Like we know that to be true. You know, there is acute exercise, there is long-term exercise. But there has been tons of research that is showing that when you do exercise, your stress hormones go up, your autonomic system activates a stress response, because it is a get up and go.
The question is, when you are doing physical exercise, are you activating too much of a stress response? So, all those other biochemical things are really important. But what is going on in the stress relaxation response, is the autonomic nervous system. Which consists of that stress response and relaxation response. Is it kind of on the edge and so out of balance, that you do a little bit of exercise, and boom, you kick into a high stress state that flips off the mitochondrial function and your hormonal and so on and so on.
It is possible, it is possible, and that is why personally, from my point of view, when people are dealing with low threshold states like fibro and chronic fatigue, it can be so useful to do what you could call mindful exercise.
Mindful exercise means exercise with awareness, and it means exercise that is deeply relaxing. So, rather than going to the gym and pumping weights, even if they are small weights, we are getting on the treadmill, or doing the stair stepper, even if it is a low volume, low intensity, those can be stressors. And so, what you really might want to consider is doing exercise, whether it is a very gentle yoga, Feldenkrais awareness through motion, movement, Tai Chi, Chi Gong, things that are really meditative, with a lot of awareness, where the physical activity is not about exertion, the physical activity is about mobilization, it is about relaxation. It is about waking up your body’s natural ability to move, to breathe, to reduce co-contraction and resistance that you might have in your neuromuscular system, and so, it is a really good place to start if mainly what you have been doing has been typical gym exercise, without awareness, without relaxation, because gym exercise without awareness and relaxation can be a stressor, mindful exercise can be done in a relaxing way.
Let us also get clear, right? A lot of people say, “Well, I tried to do yoga,” but then you find out what kind of yoga and it is more the aggressive kind. There are yoga practices that are really forceful, Ashtanga and Iyengar, you know, other things that, you know, I forgot, Vikram, that can be fairly aggressive. And that is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about gentle Hatha Yoga, where it is about awareness. It is about gradually coming into a soft pose, not pushing too hard. Lots of breath, lots of awareness, meeting the edge and just relaxing into it. So, it is a different way of moving. And it could be what will help you get started and help you start to build your mobility, your flexibility, your strength, your body awareness, and what you need to progress to higher levels of physical activity.
I hope that is interesting and helpful. I am very grateful for your comments or questions. Feel free to shoot those to me either where you are finding this video, or through an email.
Thanks for watching, and looking forward to seeing you.
Fibromyalgia is Tough. Why is Disability Optional? Part B
This is part B of a two part video. Please watch part A first.
Click HERE to watch part A.
Summary:
You learned in part A of this series why the pain system gets sensitized in fibromyalgia and chronic pain, and what creates suffering, and why it can be so disabling. Click here to see part A if you missed it or want to review.. In this video (part B), you’ll learn some of the main things that you can do to reduce suffering, and break the “fear-avoidance-disability cycle” that otherwise can suck your life down the drain. This isn’t easy work. But have hope. There are things you can do to help yourself. Please let me know what you think by sending an email or commenting on this post.Did You Know:
You can receive updates about new content and learning opportunities for transforming pain and suffering, by joining Dr Shiller’s email community here: drshillerupdates.com Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. You can get the schedule and register at www.mindbodygroove.comYou can learn more about Dr Shiller’s practice and schedule a telemedicine or in-person consultation at www.drshiller.com
Related Posts:
- How to unlearn the mind-body patterns that create chronic pain and illness.
- Why Does Chronic Pain Happen? Empower Your Healing.
- Life-changing stuff most doctors don’t tell you about fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and chronic illness.
- LDN can be great. But here’s why it is not a miracle cure for pain, fatigue, and fibromyalgia.
Full Transcript:
Hi, Dr. Shiller here. We are continuing with part II of fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Why are they so disabling and what can you do about it? In part I, we looked at the whole variety of different metabolic and mind-body and sort of mechanical structural factors that can give rise to the disability and really loss of life and function that happens when people have chronic pain, especially fibromyalgia. In this part, we are going to talk about what you can do about it. I encourage you to watch part I if you have not seen it yet. So, look for that link connected to this video. I am going to bring back up the slide we ended with, let us look at that. So, just summing up, like you know that talk in 30 seconds that there are metabolic mind-body and sort of movement or motor mechanical system aspects to this whole process that the biology that gives rise to central sensitization is influenced by the mind-body variables, like your beliefs, emotions, and thoughts, and especially autonomic imbalance. Autonomic imbalance is that over-activity of the stress response that can happen with chronic pain and chronic illness. Fear avoidance is that, I do not want to do stuff because it hurts, because you are not active, and you get inactive, then your body gets weak and stiff, and you get disabled, and because you are not moving, that feeds into all of the physiologic and mind-body variables, and the place where you actually have therapeutic leverage is to actually work on these things, right? I am not going to talk about the metabolic part, those are incredibly important. I talk about those in other talks. So, have a look for that stuff. I am going to focus today on the mind-body stuff and the motor mechanical stuff, and summing up all of this, the things that we really can address with the right kind of mind-body and movement system care are really the autonomic imbalance, fear avoidance, and inactivity, and the rest that flows out of addressing those things. So, let us just talk about a few principles or interventions, and I am going to share the big picture, the top-level stuff. Every one of these big picture top-level things are things you can drill down to and learn more, and I will do that in other talks. I am really interested in your feedback, what you want to hear more about. So, feel free to respond in the comments as I am going through about what you need to hear more about or send an email or whatever it is, reach out to my office and let me know. The whole point of this content is for you, to help you, to empower you. So, let us go forward with this, okay. Other videos about metabolic and the mind-body stuff. There is a number of different steps to mind-body healing, and there is mind-body tools that you can learn to shift your physiology and especially your autonomic imbalance as well as the kind of fear avoidance thing and to heal your beliefs, emotions, and thoughts, and it is incredibly transformative because you stop and unwind these cycles that give rise to the suffering and the disability of fibromyalgia and chronic pain. Self-regulation is the foundation. Self-regulation means tools, like simple breathing and focusing techniques that actually shift your neurobiology and your biochemistry, stimulate the vagus nerve, the vagus nerve is this big nerve that comes out of your brain stem, serves your entire intestinal tract, and it is anti-inflammatory when you stimulate your vagus by going into a deep relaxation, it slows down inflammation. When you are stressed out, aggravated, when you have autonomic imbalance towards sympathetic, your vagal nerve is shut down, and it is a pro-inflammatory state, and that is why we got so much research showing that an overactive stress response is pro-inflammatory and that various mind-body techniques modulate the immune system in a positive way and help it function more effectively. There are various techniques of self-regulation, mindset and beliefs, where you put your mind is where you are going to go. It is like a person driving one of those race cars in the Monaco grand prix or wherever, where if they look at the guardrail or the tree, you are going run into the tree, and if you look for the open space, you are going to drive into the open space. Another way to think about it is that if you are focusing on negative stuff in your life, the pain, the suffering, the lack, the loss, the person who hurt you, the blame, the guilt, all of that kind of stuff, you are going to generate negativity, and it is going to cause more suffering for you, for you. You are going to suffer more because of what you think about, and again this is not blame and shame. This is just inviting you to start seeing that if you focus on the positive stuff and you start to give your mind over to the good things that you can do to help yourself, then you are going to move in that direction. It is much harder to do than it is to talk about it. So, there is a lot more to learn about this, but it is a huge piece, and I encourage you to start thinking about it. Mindfulness could also be described as compassionate present moment awareness. Most of us are used to thinking in an analytical judgmental, how can I fix this or change it mode, we are doing? How can I do it better? And we are all conditioned for that. We get especially conditioned for that when we are under stress and we are suffering, because we want a solution, we want to fix it. Mindfulness is turning that upside down, it is shifting into a place of being present and compassionate, and when you talk about it, when you read about it might make sense or not make sense, but either way, you are not doing it. Doing it is an experience, you need to practice it, you need to learn it, and what I suggest is you find a guide, whether it is, you know, on the internet with or mind space or headspace or apps, okay that is a good start, but find a teacher, find someone who can help you learn it, because it is transformative, and I can tell you from my own experience and seeing so many people who like thought about it, they read all the books. I know mindfulness, no. Because they get into the training and they start to do it, and okay if things are challenging and hard and then suddenly, “oh my gosh,” like they have a realization, they have an experience that shifts everything. I did not know that could happen. I did not know I could feel that way. I did not know I could have that much free choice about my life. You got to practice it, to get there. Everyone can do it to a certain extent, go for it, okay. Next thing, body awareness. I work with a lot of people who think good thoughts, they are prayerful, they are spiritual, they are religious, they are doing good things, thinking good thoughts, but meanwhile their body is in alarm reaction because of their trauma, because of their pain, because of their disease. It is completely different when you take the good thoughts, the positive, calm, happy mindful mind and you bring it to your bodily experience, and you start to send up a message of safety to your body, you start to bathe your cells in the biology and neurobiology and neurochemistry of safety and positivity, transformative. Cultivating positive emotion, healing emotion, healing trauma. We know that people who have had adverse childhood experiences get more illness, they get more chronic disease, it is a complex phenomenon, it does not mean it is all in your head, but what it does mean is that emotional trauma, physical trauma shift your physiology, and there are tools that you can learn to shift it back into a healthy state. These are a collection of mind-body tools that can be transformative, and all of these are things to drill down to. Every one of these mind-body tools that I have listed here are things that you can learn to actually develop skill and cultivate, and once you do that, once you start to build that skill, it is yours. It is not something you have to go back to every week to your therapist or your treatment person. You have got tools, you have got transformative tools, that can help you break a fibromyalgia flare, that can help you find your way out when something triggers you, that can help you change your physiology and reverse those vicious cycles that give rise to the suffering and the fear avoidance, inactivity, and the disability. Okay, let us get into the motor mechanical, the movement piece of this. One aspect of this is bodywork, and there is two main kinds of bodywork. There is the hands-on direct stuff, where a person is pushing and prodding and doing stuff to move, to crack and crunch and move you, that can be great for some people. In my experience, it is not so great with people with fibromyalgia, because it tends to flare you up. There is another kind of manual bodywork techniques that you could describe as indirect, they are very gentle, they are more about consciousness and finding the freedom in the tissue and your body, your fascia, your tissue unwinds and moves in response to that, and that can be profoundly transformative. You can find that from a good osteopath, from a good manually trained physical/occupational therapist, some very good massage therapists, and some chiropractors, but you want to ask if they have worked a lot with people who have chronic pain and fibromyalgia, if they know indirect gentle techniques to release tissue, to release neuromuscular imbalances and reflexes that are counterproductive. Okay, and then there is stuff you can do for yourself. There is movement arts, and my emphasis, my bias is towards what you might call meditative or mindful movement arts, because exercise can hurt. If you just go out there and treat your body like it is a peanut piece of meat and you get on the treadmill and just go, go, go for 20 minutes, you are going to go above your threshold, and you are going to make yourself worse, and you probably have had that experience with some well-intentioned physical therapist, exercise therapist, or family member who said just get up and go, go do it. But what happens when you get up and go is you activate your stress response, you activate counterproductive reflexes, you go over your threshold, and you create a crisis in your cellular physiology, and you actually feed into this cycle, and you get a fibromyalgia flare, and that is not good for anybody, and maybe you have been there, done that, and maybe you never want to move again and maybe you are thinking who is this guy telling me I should move, forget about that. I get that, I have heard that from a lot of people, but when they started to learn to do a meditative quiet kind of motion and movement that respects the limitations of your body, that respects the low threshold, that actually lets you drop your calm, happy awareness into the body, and you know where you can move. You develop your intuition of your own body’s capability, and you start to move with that intuition and you build, you open up your envelope, you gradually learn to develop more flexibility, more strength, more endurance, and over time, you are climbing out of that hole of disability, and that happens through meditative movement, and so whether it is Feldenkrais or yoga or Tai Chi Qigong, Pilates, or other things that somebody may have invented. Find someone who is really good at it, find someone who has got a lot of experience and a lot of compassion and a lot of humility, who is willing to meet you where you are at and be your guide. Let them teach you and let yourself learn, let your inner wisdom grow, so that you know how to work with your own body, and over time, you are going to heal, you are going to feel better. You may need to work on this for the rest of your life to stay healthy, but you are going to be able to start doing only stuff that is meaningful for you. You are going to be able to get back to stuff that matters. It might not be like you were when you were 24 or 36, it might be like you are now, and then you build from there. So, you restart and you restart and you grow and you heal. Okay, so summing up. Fibromyalgia, chronic pain, there is a spiral of lots of different factors that lead to disability and disuse, and there is a process for preventing and reversing that, it has to do with addressing your metabolic biochemical system, to get the underlying cause of the symptoms. It has to get to do with your mind-body system, addressing your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions, and addressing most importantly that autonomic imbalance, it is about learning how to move again. This is a healing path, nobody can do it for you, it is your healing path and it is unique to you. I really encourage you to find your guides, find the people who can help you address those three aspects of this situation or maybe some people can address more than one for you, but you need to start walking down that road, that healing path, which is yours, you find your guides, you let them teach you, you become an expert in yourself, and with time, what is going to happen is you are going to become the hero of your own story, because no one else is your hero. They are your guides, you are the hero, you are the one who is making the journey, you are in a place where you are stuck, where you are feeling horrible or you are terrified that you are going to get worse, and what is on the other end of your journey is, I feel empowered, I feel capable, I feel stronger, I know what I need to do. I might not be perfect, I might have setbacks, but I know how to deal with the setbacks and what you are going to do is learn to be a fuller self. You are going to learn to reconnect to purpose, to do stuff that you care about, to start feeling better about life again. So, my work is dedicated to helping you learn and grow in that way. I want to hear about how you like this video, if it is good for you, let me know, leave feedback in the comments or send me an email, sign up for my email community, so you can get updates about when I produce more content, and I am here and at your service. Thanks for watching.Fibromyalgia is Tough. Why is Disability Optional? Part A
Summary:
In fibromyalgia, your pain is amplified. There are known biological changes that can contribute to the increased pain. Most of those changes can be helped if you know what to do. Suffering is a more complex thing. Suffering happens where pain meets your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. There are simple tools that you can learn to shift your experience of pain and suffering. So you can be more comfortable, happier, and live better. Disability is an even more complex process. You have choices about how to mobilize your body-mind’s healing responses.Did You Know:
You can receive updates about new content and learning opportunities for transforming pain and suffering, by joining Dr Shiller’s email community here: drshillerupdates.com Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. You can get the schedule and register at www.mindbodygroove.comYou can learn more about Dr Shiller’s practice and schedule a telemedicine or in-person consultation at www.drshiller.com
Related Posts:
- How to unlearn the mind-body patterns that create chronic pain and illness.
- Why Does Chronic Pain Happen? Empower Your Healing.
- Life-changing stuff most doctors don’t tell you about fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and chronic illness.
- LDN can be great. But here’s why it is not a miracle cure for pain, fatigue, and fibromyalgia.
Full Transcript:
Hey! It is Dr. Shiller, and I am going to speak with you today about fibromyalgia and disability. What I am going to say goes beyond just fibromyalgia. We are going to be talking about principles that are relevant to also chronic fatigue and chronic inflammatory illness to chronic pain problems in general, and this question that comes up over and over that eats at people is like what is this fibromyalgia thing? Is it a progressive disease that is going to eat up my body and destroy me like some kind of cancer or autoimmune thing? Like why does it have to be disabling? Am I going to get disabled? Am I going to lose all of my function and lose all of my self-respect and swirl down some sort of whirlpool into a black hole? Like what is going to happen to me? And the encouraging answer I want to give you is that it depends, that there are actually lots of places where you have an option and you have the potential power to shift the process, and what I am going to do in this talk is unpack, why does disability happen in fibromyalgia and what you can do about it? Because there is a lot of hope. So, check it out, listen, and hopefully this is useful for you. I am going to use some slides, because I am going to share a lot of information, and I want to give you visuals on it, okay? First thing we know is pain. Pain is the core thing that starts to bother so many people with fibromyalgia and one of the things that even the medical experts agree on is that there is central sensitization, and what does that mean? It means that the pain processing system is turned up, and this is a picture from Scientific America and basically you have a pain processing system that is the nerves from your say your hand, like if you have injured your hand, like in this diagram, and that signal goes up the nerves to the spinal cord and then through the brain to the parts of the brain, that says, “aah, my hand hurts.” and the part of your brain that gives you that like emotional angst a person often gets when they have pain, and the key thing that you need to know, listen up, is that your pain processing system is like an amplifier. There are several steps where the signal is transferred and processed by a lot of different factors, and that can turn things up like an amplifier, so that things that should not hurt, hurt, and if you have fibromyalgia, you probably recognize that experience where things hurt you that did not used to hurt you. Modern medicine does not really agree on a consensus about why central sensitization happens even though we know a lot of factors that cause it. We know a lot of different variables that can create hyper-extensive excitability and inflammation actually in the brain and activation of certain cellular and biological processes that turn up sensitivity of the brain, and these are some of them. We are not going to spend too much time on all of this and do not get hung up on it, but stuff that you may have already heard about it, you may have been looking into like inflammation and biochemical or oxidative stress, loss of cellular energy, hormonal changes, dysfunction in the biome or the gut motility or the gut lining, the leaky gut phenomenon in certain toxicity states, and then there is something called autonomic imbalance, and that is when that stress response is overactive compared to the relaxation response. Look into this if you have not heard of it before, but the key factor is that you have a system within your brain and spinal cord that touches every bit of your body, it is your autonomic nervous system, and it balances, it biases your energy allocation. Am I in get up and go fight flight freeze or am I in relax, rest, digest, assimilate nutrients, heal, sleep? They are two very different sets of processes and every part of you is involved in them, and one of the common things underlying a lot of pain, fatigue, and chronic illnesses is autonomic imbalance, and that is a whole other topic. Look for more information from me or other people about that. It is part of what drives the wheel of all these different changes that give rise to central sensitization and give rise to pain sensitization, and so autonomic balance is also an outcome of pain. When something hurts, like it creates that, that sense of it is not okay, that sense of loss of safety and that feeds into the process. So, just showing for the diagram, that it is a vicious cycle, where pain leads to autonomic imbalance, which leads to all of these processes moving forward and worsening of the process. Let us just think about pain for a second, because pain and suffering are profoundly interconnected, but they are not identical. Suffering and pain, the way a person experiences it are very subjective, they are very conditioned, they are very cultural. There are a lot of different things that affect how much a person suffers when they have pain, and that tends to be in the area of your beliefs and your emotional responses and your thoughts that you have about it, and so you know this is just the piece we already saw about all these sort of cellular and biochemical changes that affect pain sensitization, but then there is the interaction with the beliefs, the emotions, and thoughts, and what I am suggesting to you to start considering is that your suffering is an integration of all of these factors, it is the pain itself, and it is the way your body and mind and emotions respond to that pain, and of course as I am sure you have experienced autonomic imbalance is part of that too, because when you are suffering, when you are suffering, what you are doing, what happens is your being feels distress, it feels danger, and your stress response tends to be activated, and that feeds into all the physiologic changes like we talked about, it feeds into central sensitization, and it feeds into your beliefs and emotions and thoughts, because when we are stressed out, it changes the way we receive the world. If you are living in a reality where you are stressed out a lot of the time, that us feeding the disease process. We are going to talk more about this, but that is one of the places where you potentially have leverage. Okay, let is keep moving. I just want to point out that you could kind of separate and say, look, there is kind of metabolic process, it is just a label we are giving it for ease of understanding, that all these biological processes that we talked about that give rise to central sensitization, they are kind of on the level of metabolism and biochemistry, they are in your cells, they are in your organs, your endocrine system, and then there is your mind-body system, your beliefs, your thoughts, your emotions, right? And your autonomic balance and your central sensitization is kind of in between those two, because both of them influence it quite a bit, your metabolic biochemical state, nutrition, a lot of things like that, and your mind-body state. Let us take this to the next step, right, because there is this principle, there is a principle called fear avoidance that every good pain practitioner understands, because basically when a person is afraid of their pain, they do not want to move, and it hurts when you move. So, you do not want to move, and it is the most natural normal thing in the world, and there is no shame, and there is no blame, it is just the reality that when things hurt, you naturally do not want to move, and your reflexes know that. If I put my hand on a hot fire, I guard it, I pull it back, it is a protective reflex, and your whole system is organized around protective reflexes, and so if your autonomic system is on fire and you have autonomic imbalance, your protective avoidant reflexes are going to be even more active, but the problem is when that becomes systemic and when it hurts so you do not move, and you get, I am sorry, I am just pointing out here, sorry that autonomic imbalance thing is integrated with everything, but the main thing here to think about is that when all this stuff is happening and you respond to that natural tendency of fear avoidance by not being active, by not moving, you get inactive, your muscles and your tissues get weaker, you become stiff, and that is when disability happens. Disability is a process that happens in response to the way your body and mind are reacting and responding to pain, and it is not your fault, right? A lot of this is things that just creep up on you, and before you know it, you cannot do stuff you used to do, and the horrible thing that I have heard from so many people as they get less and less active and more and more disabled is like, well, I cannot take care of my kids, I cannot do my job, what happened to me? Who am I? This is not me, and your sense of self, your beliefs, your emotional state becomes even more out of balance, and it fits into the vicious cycles, and so it is disability cycle, and every good pain clinic knows this, which is part of why they have behavioral medicine people working together with the pain doctors, working together with the physical therapists and other therapists, because this is a holistic whole person process, and the better you understand this, the better off you will be. Let us just kind of follow this through because your movement system of your body, your muscles, your nerves. When you are physically active, you change your physiology for the better. Physical activity is one of the most helpful things you can do, it changes a lot of these metabolic processes, and so when you are inactive and becoming disabled, you are feeding into the underlying physiology that gives rise to pain sensitization. By being inactive, you are generating more inflammation and oxidative stress, potential toxic metabolites, hormonal changes, gut dysfunction, it feeds into the whole process. This is not about blame and shame, this is about opportunity, this is about understanding all these different factors and unpacking them. So, you can start to see what is relevant for you, so that you can start to make conscious choices to help yourself heal, to help unwind all of this. Every one of the changes that I put on this slide; all of these different things are biological, mental emotional, physiological processes that you have potential choice over. They all can be slowed, stopped, or even reversed depending on various lifestyle or other choices that you make, and so I am sharing all this so you can start to make those choices. The next part of this talk is really to talk about what we can do about it. I am going to pause and stop here, because we have already been at this for about 10 minutes. I am going to split this into part A and B. So, we just did as part A. Part B will be coming, look for that, and we will talk in part B about what do you really do about it. You know there is a healing process, and that healing process is addressing the metabolic, the mind-body, and the motor or mechanical parts of this. so, that is what we will do in part B. I hope you will tune in for that. I hope this has been interesting to you. My work is dedicated to helping you learn and grow in that way. I want to hear about how you like this video. If it is good for you, let me know, leave feedback in the comments or send me an email, sign up for my email community, so you can get updates about when I produce more content, and I am here and at at your service. Thanks for watching.Unlearning Negative Mind Body Patterns That Create Pain and Illness: Part 2
Summary:
In this video series we’ve been learning about how chronic pain and associated suffering develop. The idea is to understand the chronic processes, so that you can make choices about how to reverse them and reclaim your sense of well-being and ability to function and live your life. The previous videos in this series shared how the body-mind “learns” chronic pain. You can also “unlearn” chronic pain. This video continues to explain how that process works. I spoke in previous videos about the biological processes that are involved in the development of chronic pain. Have a look at those if you haven’t seen them yet. You can see those posts HERE. We discussed how protective responses are built into the pain processing and movement control systems of your body-mind. These processes get knocked “off the rails” by certain factors. And persistent pain leads to gradual changes in those systems that can unfortunately make pain worse. It’s like vicious cycles, where the pain system gets sensitized, and the movement control system stops working as well. So movement hurts, and pain spreads. It’s richer than that, as persistent pain and the resulting stress-response lead to measurable changes in gene expression, hormonal regulation, cellular energy production, emotional regulation, immune balance, and gastrointestinal function. And these all feed back into one another and can increase pain. So there is this snowball effect, where vicious cycles of biological relationships propagate forward and create the disease of chronic pain. The good news is that many of those changes can be reversed. In my experience, your own mind/body connection is a crucial place to start the changes. One great place to start is by developing the quality of ‘mindfulness”, which starts to shift the reactivity of the protective responses. Just like your brain-body learns chronic pain, mindfulness can start the process of unlearning.Did You Know:
- Dr Shiller is available for telemedicine consultation in CT, NJ, and Florida, as well as worldwide regarding chronic pain, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, fatigue, and stress-related illness. His US-based consultations are offered in conjunction with Rose Wellness to enhance the quality of care and ease of your experience as a patient. Contact the office or schedule a consultation at Rose Wellness. For international consultations contact www.drshiller.com.
- Movement Toward Health is an affordable and effective training program to teach you to heal and feel better and improve your functioning. It will teach you to integrate breathing techniques, mindfulness, and mindful movement techniques that are drawn from Dr Shiller’s 30+ years learning, practicing, and teaching these approaches to people suffering chronic pain and chronic illness. To get more info and be notified of the next start date CLICK HERE.
- Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. You can get the schedule and register at www.mindbodygroove.com
Related Posts:
- https://www.drshiller.com/why-does-chronic-pain-happen-these-scientific-principles-can-empower-your-healing-part-1/
- https://www.drshiller.com/why-does-chronic-pain-happen-these-scientific-principles-can-empower-your-healing-part-2/
Full Transcript:
As mindfulness develops, you start to notice stuff, you become more aware, because you start to develop your ability to pay attention and receive what is there. You start to notice, “Gosh, I’m spending most of my life filtering through my thoughts and beliefs about what’s going to happen instead of actually seeing what’s going to happen” and almost everybody that goes down this path is like struck by that, “Oh my gosh, I was living in fantasy and I’m starting to touch living in reality” and part of that is you start to touch the sweetness and goodness of life, you start to smell and touch and taste things that are beautiful. We will talk about that in the next part, because that is really important, but for now, we are talking about kind of inhibiting the negative patterns, because that is the other aspect of what we do, it is kind of like I said, stopping these unproductive reactive habits about your mind and your thinking, your nutritional habits, your posture, your bodily habits, what you do in the world, and it is not like you are being forced by some sort of blaming conscious and shitting yourself, like what is wrong with you, do not you know you should not do that, that is not the game, because what happens is you just start to pay attention and you just forgive everything and you just choose to be grateful and you let go and you practice letting go and being present, and what arises naturally is just a clear choice, like, “I don’t want to eat that stuff or gosh this person in my life is toxic. I want to do something different because I’m, so much negativity there or gosh look at all my own toxic thoughts, how can I be with that and let go of them” S Mindfulness practice develops this observer, that starts to notice the negativity and you naturally start to just say, “No, thank you” and you naturally become more forgiving with yourself and forgiving with other people. You naturally start to like accept your life as it is and that does not mean it is never going to change, but you are less reactive to the things that are difficult, that used to grab you and pull you into severe suffering, and it is remarkable the changes that just happen naturally that I have been privileged to witness with other people. You know it is kind of like there is concrete and then suddenly the grass grows through the crack somehow, like there is life in there that wants to come out. One example, there is a fellow that I worked with, his name is Bill, and he was a recovered alcoholic, but really struggling with cravings, a lot of difficult emotional stuff in his life, and every day was like a war to not drink, and you know we were practicing one day and Bill basically says, “I really have the urge to drink” and I said, well, okay, so what else are you experiencing? He said, well, I feel tight in my chest and I feel irritable, my back hurts. Okay, and what about the emotions? I feel irritated, I feel angry with you for asking me all these stupid questions. So, I said okay, so how about just sit with what you are experiencing, sit with the difficult emotions, just observe them and be with them, notice what they feel like, do not try to change them, just agree because that is what is happening. He sits there for like a minute and a half and then like a smile comes on his face, like why are you smiling? He’s like, well those emotions were really hard and then they just kind of went away, and I do not feel like I need to drink anymore. That was a discovery, it was something that just came to him through observing his own life, and I could give you so many examples of things like that in my own life, in the life of so many patients, where it just comes from paying attention with compassion, dropping the judgment, forgiving, being present and cultivating this part of you that actually kind of hovers above your emotional self and your bodily self and is with you all the time, and it is an expression of a deep inner intelligence, and it is your healing intelligence and that is the power of doing that kind of training to unwind these pathways of mind, emotion, and physiologic reactivity that perpetuate and develop this process of chronic pain and chronic illness, and so, as you practice and train yourself to be aware with compassion and with discernment, things start to change spontaneously, you start to just, you know, you may have lived your whole life in patterns of reactivity that are mental, emotional, and physical, and you start to notice them and they start to kind of get lighter and get less heavy and you start to have more freedom of choice, and it is from practice, it is relearning, it is rewiring, nerves that fire together wire together. When I have that experience of tasting the irritation that once created reactivity, and I choose to just be with it and let it be there and say yes, it is happening, I agree this is what is up, letting go the judgment, then I am turning off the reactivity, it is like, I am uncoupling it, you know, it is those two nerves, there is the irritated and then there is the reactive nerve, right? I am irritated, so then I get emotional, and I am basically saying, “No, I’m not believing you anymore, you are just a habit. I don’t need to get reactive when that happens” and then you start to actually uncouple your physical, emotional, mental experience from your ability to choose to have the kind of experience you want to have, and that changes your physiology, it changes your neural networks, it changes your gene expression, because you are living in a more calm, clear, connected state, where you are not as reactive. We talked about how there can be setbacks and how a person can be learning to live in a calm or clear state of mind and body but then something happens that like knocks him on the ground, knocks him back into the hole or they fall in the water, so to speak metaphorically, so what is that about, how do you deal with that? We talked a bit how just being mindful gradually that happens less and you develop the capacity to respond more effectively when it does happen, but the other thing is that there is deeper kinds of work than just sitting there and being mindful of what is going on. There is deeper work that involves getting therapeutic support, whether it is with an individual or a group or in your own inner work and intentionally going in and meeting the dark places inside, because a lot of us, most human beings, we have had experiences of profound disappointment of hurt, of trauma, of fear, times when we felt like we were disconnected and it just was not okay and, you know, there is a language for this in various psychotherapeutic and spiritual traditions, but the point is meeting those places and evoking various tools for actually doing a deeper level of work, to reclaim that part of yourself and to free up the deeply held protective responses that you might have in your heart or your body, that is profound work as well. It is a little bit beyond the context or it is a little bit beyond the scope of this video. So, I am not going to go there now, but that is something else to think about and talk about, because a lot of people with chronic pain and illness have trauma. We know that early life trauma is a huge part of what influences people to develop chronic pain and chronic illness and healing that trauma can be a profound influence on all of these physiologic processes, because what it does is sort of uncouples or discharges or disengages these deeply held patterns that said, “danger” and it is about healing those, so that your whole system can be more at ease in that rest, and there is techniques for learning that. Okay, so let us make a break now and we have talked really about the process of sort of saying no and uncoupling and unlearning negative protective responses, and we also want the process of installing and learning and actually awakening healing responses. So, we will talk about that in the next vid, hope you tune in.Unlearning Negative Mind Body Patterns That Create Pain and Illness: Part 1
Summary:
In this video series we’ve been learning about how chronic pain and associated suffering develop. The idea is to understand the chronic processes, so that you can make choices about how to reverse them and reclaim your sense of well-being and ability to function and live your life. The previous videos in this series shared how the body-mind “learns” chronic pain. You can also “unlearn” chronic pain. This video begins to explain how. I spoke in previous videos about the biological processes that are involved in the development of chronic pain. Have a look at those if you haven’t seen them yet. You can see those posts HERE. We discussed how protective responses are built into the pain processing and movement control systems of your body-mind. These processes get knocked “off the rails” by certain factors. And persistent pain leads to gradual changes in those systems that can unfortunately make pain worse. It’s like vicious cycles, where the pain system gets sensitized, and the movement control system stops working as well. So movement hurts, and pain spreads. It’s richer than that, as persistent pain and the resulting stress-response lead to measurable changes in gene expression, hormonal regulation, cellular energy production, emotional regulation, immune balance, and gastrointestinal function. And these all feed back into one another and can increase pain. So there is this snowball effect, where vicious cycles of biological relationships propagate forward and create the disease of chronic pain. The good news is that many of those changes can be reversed. In my experience, your own mind/body connection is a crucial place to start the changes. One great place to start is by developing the quality of ‘mindfulness”, which starts to shift the reactivity of the protective responses. Just like your brain-body learns chronic pain, mindfulness can start the process of unlearning.Did You Know:
- Dr Shiller is available for telemedicine consultation in CT, NJ, and Florida. worldwide regarding chronic pain, fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, fatigue, and stress-related illness. His US-based consultations are offered in conjunction with Rose Wellness to enhance the quality of care and ease of your experience as a patient. Contact the office or schedule a consultation at Rose Wellness.
- Movement Toward Health is an affordable and effective training program to teach you to heal and feel better and improve your functioning. It will teach you to integrate breathing techniques, mindfulness, and mindful movement techniques that are drawn from Dr Shiller’s 30+ years learning, practicing, and teaching these approaches to people suffering chronic pain and chronic illness. To get more info and be notified of the next start date CLICK HERE.
- Dr Shiller gives regular free mind-body training sessions on zoom. You can get the schedule and register at www.mindbodygroove.com
Related Posts:
- https://www.drshiller.com/why-does-chronic-pain-happen-these-scientific-principles-can-empower-your-healing-part-1/
- https://www.drshiller.com/why-does-chronic-pain-happen-these-scientific-principles-can-empower-your-healing-part-2/