Mind-Body Connection: a Way to Freedom from Stress and Chronic Pain?

Humans have wondered about the connection between the mind, the body and the spirit for millennia - what is there to know?

Have you ever stopped while reading a book, wondering if there is any way you could be reading quicker? Some of us are naturally fast readers, while others are really slow at finishing each page. However - one thing is sure - we’re usually slower at reading than we are at thinking the same number of words. And we even get bored and distracted by other thoughts if our reading pace is too slow for our minds. But, how is this possible?

Moshe Feldenkrais once wrote about a similar principle that occurs when we count from twenty to thirty instead of one to ten. In fact, if you start a timer and count in your mind from one to ten… You’ll realise you get to the end way quicker than you would if you were to count from twenty to thirty. The mechanism is simple. Despite the mathematical interval being the same, while you count in your mind, you’re still taking the same amount of time it would take you to count out loud.

In other words, you cannot truly count in your head without also activating the motor and sensory processes connected with saying the numbers out loud. This is a beautiful example of how your mind and body are closely interconnected.

Your motor patterns and emotions

If we cannot count in our minds without activating our motor patterns, then is it also the same for thinking? For most people, yes! Thinking requires at least a partial activation of our motor functions. The brain is activated, and it becomes aware of the word patterns necessary to represent the thought. If the mind is the software, the body is the hardware. And one cannot properly function without the other.

Take a moment and pause. How do you feel right now? Chances are, if you’re relaxed, happy, and peaceful, your body is also reflecting that state. Your muscles are likely not tensed or stiff. You might be sitting comfortably on the sofa and might have relaxed shoulders. On the other hand, let’s say you’re tense and anxious, perhaps waiting in queue for your turn at the post office. Your posture and facial expression might be reflecting your emotions. You might be standing in line, tapping your feet on the ground, looking around from now and then, or holding tight to this smartphone in an effort to unconsciously disperse some tension. These are all examples of how motor patterns reflect inner feelings… Or how feelings define motor patterns. Which one came first?

Feldenkrais wrote that the two cannot really be detached. It’s not a matter of picking whether the mind controls the body or vice versa. Your body and mind are a unity. They function as a whole and need one another. For instance, we usually cannot become aware of how we’re feeling unless it’s first expressed by a motor mobilisation in the body. Quoting Moshe’s writing, “There is no feeling as long as there is no body attitude.”

The body or the psyche: where should you start?

If the mind and the body are a whole, then where does healing start? You might say, “Well, when I have flu, I take a medicine. So healing starts in the body.” But you might also say, “When I am too stressed, I get fatigued and lethargic, so I guess healing starts in the mind?”

The truth is, both answers are correct. There is no one-way-fits-all for healing. The connection between the physical body and the psyche must be addressed in a different manner depending on your current state and the conditions you’re struggling with. However, in the Feldenkrais method, we start with the body. The reason is simple: the physical is easier to recognise, and change is visible. You know where your muscles are, and it’s easy to notice when some movements feel uncomfortable or drastically limited. It’s also easy to witness the change when you get from feelings of pain to the absence of it. You know something deep down has changed. And, the psyche always follows. No lasting change happens without the two working together. By changing the way we physically feel and learning to use our bodies in an easier, more efficient way, the nervous system changes, and our psychological sphere follows as a result.

Your nervous system and traumas

If you go back in time, to that classroom where your least favourite teacher used to call you at the blackboard, you must recall at least one moment when your heart was racing like crazy because you knew you were ill-prepared. That was fear in action. Your heart rate increases, your muscles tense, and your breathing becomes shallow. All of a sudden, you find yourself struggling to find the words to express the few things you thought you knew. Your fear might have started in the mind, but you could not become aware of it until it expressed itself through your body. 

What happens if that day at the blackboard becomes a very humiliating moment for you? Perhaps, not only were you ill-prepared, but the teacher put you in a very bad position. You might have felt judged, or you might have felt like you were failing your parents for taking another bad mark. You could feel the fear and the humiliation, but also the confidence leaving your body, being replaced by self-doubt and embarrassment. The tension was overwhelming. However, your classmates were still there. Of course, you did not want to look that weak in their eyes. So you decided to hide all of that and put a smile on your face. You walked home and hid your tears so as not to make a scene in front of your parents. Where did all that tension go? Did it truly simply disappear? Chances are, it didn’t. It got stored in your body.

Irene Lyon is another great somatic expert who specialises in the nervous system and trauma healing. She has worked in the field for decades, combining the Feldenkrais method, somatic experiencing, and other somatic tools to make a sustainable impact on one’s well-being. I discovered her while I was studying the role of our nervous system in how we experience strong emotions and how we store or express them. 

A key point in Lyon’s teachings is that no emotional response is purely mental. There is always a physiological change happening as well, such as fear in the classroom example.

That was a simple reconstruction of how traumas originate. All those powerful, strong, negative emotions can get stored in the body and might reappear weeks or months later in the form of pain, tightness, fatigue, or simple discomfort. Although a medical assessment might not show anything, you know something is off.

Traumas are one of the most evident ways in which the mind and the body are so closely intertwined. In some ways, it’s like a ping-pong table. The mind tries to dump unresolved emotions on the body, and the body demands the mind’s attention once the weight of the burden is too heavy to be carried around. At this point, the only path to healing must involve techniques for the mind and the body altogether. Calming the nervous system is what takes the body out of the fight-or-flight mode, while practices like breathwork, gentle movement, and somatic awareness help to regulate physiological responses.

Chronic pain that has no physical root

In my practice, I deal a lot with neuroplastic pain. Also known as neural circuit pain, it’s a special kind of pain you might feel in your body even if no injury is present. You might have suffered from an injury in the past. However, now, the pain you’re feeling comes from the mind.

One of the leading experts I follow for research on the matter is Dr. Howard Schubiner. Having a background in both conventional and integrative medicine, Dr. Schubiner combines the best of both worlds to help people recognise and heal from neuroplastic pain. 

Some clients experience it way after an injury has healed. They cannot explain why their body is still hurting. In other cases, people notice the pain emerging from an area that has never suffered any sort of trauma. At first glance, this type of pain has no reason to be there. But usually, once our work together starts, the root cause begins to emerge.

Just like Dr. Schubiner often teaches, a wide array of mental and emotional factors are usually involved in the making of neuroplastic pain. If traumas aren’t addressed for too long, suppressed emotions aren’t heard, and negative thought patterns are repeated over and over again, results can surface months or years later. Thoughts, feelings, and emotions can be so strong that they influence neural pathways and confuse the brain. As a result, despite your brain’s best efforts to interpret the sensations, overwhelm might blur the inputs received, causing a misinterpretation of the physical signals. At this point, pain arises.

Once again, trying to treat neuroplastic pain purely from the mind, or solely from the body, cannot produce effective and lasting results. An integrative approach is the best way to sustainable healing.

Here is where techniques such as EAET and PRT come into play. EAET stands for Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy, while PRT means Pain Reprocessing Therapy. At MindfulBody, we use both of them. While the first one revolves around the identification and processing of suppressed emotions, such as anger, sadness, or fear, the second technique is based on understanding neuroplastic pain and shifting the perception of it. Let me give you a couple of examples. 

Some people seek help because traditional treatments have failed to help them get rid of their chronic pain. It’s often really daunting to try multiple paths, one after the other, and still wake up feeling impaired, unable to move the way you want, and physically restricted. Such conditions can be so exhausting that, in the end, they encourage patients to try alternative treatments for the first time. That’s how many people find out about somatic practices. Through EAET, individuals suffering from chronic pain often discover hidden or forgotten emotions that have been there for a long time. For some, it’s anger and resentment piled up after a troubled relationship. For others, it’s grief and sadness due to a loss that hasn’t been processed. 

PRT works on another level. Critical aspects of this technique involve the education of the person on neuroplastic pain, a shift in how the pain is perceived, and a series of exercises aimed at desensitising the individual response to pain through a practice called somatic tracking. In other words, with PRT, we work mainly with the brain and the mind, reminding the body that it's not in danger and there's nothing physically wrong with it while rebuilding a safe space for the mind to feel at ease.  

Let’s take Jenna, a fictitious patient suffering from chronic shoulder pain. Jenna had an injury in the past, but the physical trauma has long been healed. However, she still feels the pain. She cannot properly train at the gym, dress up in the morning, and accomplish daily chores because of it. It’s highly frustrating, and she’s desperately looking for a solution. Through PRT, Jenna finally understands what is going on. By working with a practitioner, Jenna learns the role of her brain in the correct interpretation of physical signals. Eventually, she starts to work with her mind and body simultaneously to move her shoulder again gently, without forcing the movement. She no longer gets angry at her “bad shoulder.” She no longer blames her body for being broken.

This is the power of the mind and body, connected.

A tailored path to healing

At MindfulBody, our goal is to help you unlearn your pain, reconnect with your body, and discover - or rediscover - the freedom of pain-free movement. We do this by combining mind-body re-education, somatic bodywork - like the Feldenkrais Method - and a range of pain therapy techniques, including PRT and EAET.

The mind-body connection is a real thing. For millennia, humans have tried to explain in what ways the psyche and the physical body are intertwined. Today, there is no doubt the two have to work together for sustainable improvement of health and overall well-being.

If you want to reconnect with yourself, break your pain cycle, and find ease and freedom in your movement, I’m here to help you. To explore the ways in which I could support you on your healing journey, feel free to drop me a message at iryna@mindfulbody.lu