What if we are wrong about pain?
Pain is part of being human and existing on this planet. Pain hurts. I have no intention of denying this fact. However, at the root pain is simply a means of communication between our brain and our conscious mind to bring some potential danger to our awareness so that we can respond accordingly. So pain is actually designed in a way to help us keep a well functioning physical body. Most of us view pain as a problem, and this is precisely the way we are wrong about pain.
Pain doesn’t mean there is something wrong. Pain is a warning sign about the brain’s perception of danger. Perception of danger is the key here. Because the brain’s perception isn’t always correct or accurate.
Here is where pain works really well. You all know this example. You step on a sharp object, your brain gets signals from nerve endings in your foot and combines this with information about what you are doing, your surroundings, what could possibly be causing this sensation and then creates the experience of pain to HELP you lift your foot off the ground and avoid or minimize an injury.
Here is where pain doesn’t work well. At the time of this experience, I had been struggling with hip pain for 4 years that made it hard to sit in a car, lay on my right side, and entirely prevented me from running (an activity that I had grown to love and basically rely on for my mental health). So I had a lot of pressure on the importance of running in my life.
Being wrong about pain – the start of it all.
For my general well-being, I had switched my activities to yoga and rock climbing, and on this day I went to my local gym in Nashville, TN. I was staring blankly at the expansive bouldering area, all the while imagining the repetitive cycle of my feet hitting the pavement. And within moments, my right hip started to ache.
The ache in my hip felt like I had been running on it! I remember being confused in that moment, terribly. However, as a physical therapist, I had my preconceived notions about how pain worked and it wasn’t until several years later that I really began to understand the gift that experience was and how we are wrong about pain.
My original mind/body incident with pain happened almost 14 years ago now, and today I have a very different relationship to pain. And a recent painful experience centers around mountain biking.
Now, my husband got me into mountain biking during the pandemic. It was a way we got to still be active and get outside. Fortunately we have some decent mountain biking trails only 1.5 miles away from our house. So we didn’t have to get in our car to ride.
I was extremely hesitant, nervous, and tentative on the bike at first. I have since grown to absolutely LOVE mountain biking, but for reasons that I wouldn’t have guessed. It has given me a better sense of body understanding and awareness. Because of my training in yoga and physical therapy, I probably have a little more body awareness than most. But even I, fall prey to the false promise of performance.
I remember not too long ago riding my bike and getting caught up in a little bit of a race to the top of a hill. There were a couple of guys who were riding at only a slightly slower pace than I was, so I picked up my pace. The way I got faster here, was by tensing up my body to create as much force as possible through my legs to propel the bike.
It worked. I soared up the hill and left the guys in the dust. To deny the fact that my ego was stoked about this, would be missing a VITAL part of this pain understanding. I believed in that moment that I had proved to these innocent men, that women could be good riders too. Like, somehow I had just validated every woman mountain biker on this planet.
And I continued this pace…because I felt like I had to continue this absolute nonsensical mission to validate a women’s place on a mountain bike. And with this faster speed, I noticed some discomfort and tension in my back. I quickly dismissed this as unimportant in the moment, and continued on with my valiant effort to prove something.
But all I ended up with was an achey back for several days after and discomfort everytime I got back on my bike. My first reaction was frustration at myself. I was frustrated for not listening to myself, for trying to prove something, and for feeling a need to validate myself. And I stayed in this reaction for longer than I’d like to admit. It stayed with me for a few weeks afterward.
Could pain be a gift?
Then finally, I got an unexpected ride in one evening. My husband had just gotten home from a ride and said, “your turn,” and I handed over dinner duties to him and jumped on my bike. With this unexpected gift, I felt the pressure of the ride fall away and I simply rode the bike.
Many things were different for me during this ride. I noticed small shifts in the muscle patterns I was using. When my back started to tense, I took this as a sign that I was trying too hard and either slowed down or redirected my focus to my quads and glutes to help me up the hill. I shifted gears to allow an easier cadence to drive me up the hill and I worked with the bike rather than against it.
My body felt great on this ride. The ride was literally the most amazing bike ride I have any recent memory of. I quite simply felt like a kid again, enjoying the moment and experience of life as the playground it is.
I got home, and looked at my stats on strava. I had just rode my fastest ride by over 1 mph, which is about a 10% increase in speed. And yet I didn’t try to ride fast.
I simply listened to the signals from my body rather than the wants of my ego. And then I rode so much better. I let my body do the work in the way that it was capable of doing it that day, and magic happened.
And I realized how so many of us are wrong about pain. Pain was such a gift for me in this experience. It taught me how to listen, how to adjust, how to enjoy the moment more in my body and the activity I was doing. I didn’t listen to my ego of how fast I should be going or how I compare to anyone else. I just rode the bike, pedal stroke by pedal stroke, over roots, up and down hills, and in/out of the switchback turns.
When we start to understand the ways that pain is communicating to us, we actually gain the power to respond more appropriately for what we need in that moment. Pain isn’t bad. Pain is a gift. Pain hurts, yes. But there is a reason for that. It’s trying to help you.