Understand Pain Live Well Again

You know what pain feels like, now learn how the pain alarm systems work. Understand Pain, Live Well Again provides ten chapters of easy-to-understand information about pain neurophysiology and pain management education. The knowledge you will gain has been shown through research to be important in recovery from chronic pain. With greater understanding, you will know why specific techniques are important for recovery. Read each section and consider how it relates to your unique situation - discuss it with your health care professional as well. This knowledge will provide you with more motivation to practice important pain care techniques every day. Practice, patience and persistence are necessary. Expect most changes to happen slowly, yet expect improvement to continue for a long time. What you read here will show you that you really do have the power to decrease your pain, to move better, and to improve your quality of life.

Understand Pain Live Well Again provides you with the knowledge you need to learn how to decrease your pain, improve your ease of movement, and live well again. This is evidence-based knowledge, shown to enhance recovery beliefs, and actually improve our ability to move with greater ease. Knowledge is power. You know what pain feels like. Now learn how the pain system functions, how it changes when pain persists, and how you can influence your pain and your life even more. Recent advances in pain science clearly shows what many people have discovered for themselves… through learning and practising specific techniques, we can slowly decrease the intensity of our pain, and recover more ease of movement. The techniques of pain care will make so much more sense after you have read about the purpose of pain, the parts of your nervous system, how nerve cells work, how the spinal cord and brain respond when danger signals are received, and most importantly, how pain is not as accurate as you might expect in telling you where your the pain is coming from, or even how bad the problem is. Each of the ten chapters provides easy-to-understand information, and this book provides self-reflection questions to assist with your understanding. When pain persists, the nervous systems change, yet we know that as individuals we have some influence over pain. Most cannot change pain like a light switch turning off and on, yet we can find ways to dim it down, a little more and a little more with time. And if you are like most with persisting pain, you have learned from almost everyone that movement is the answer to getting better. Yet movement hurts. This book provides guidelines for moving in the face of pain, that many have reported as beneficial. The guidelines are not easy, yet we should not expect a complex problem like pain to improve with a simple solution. There is hope when pain persists. Understand Pain Live Well Again goes beyond providing hope to offering solutions based on patient experiences and on current pain science.

Neil Pearson PT, MSc, BA-BPHE, CYT, RYT500 Neil is a physical therapist, yoga therapist, Clinical Assistant Professor at UBC, faculty for primary care MD post-grad education, and in five yoga therapy training programs internationally. Neil was awarded the Excellence in Inter-Professional Pain Education Award from the Canadian Pain Society in 2012. He works clinically and teaches therapeutic yoga exclusively with people with complex pain conditions. He is founding Chair of the Canadian Physiotherapy Pain Science Division, a Board member of Pain BC, and author of many open access resources for people in pain.