What if chronic pain was mainly bad information? When we’re in pain, our tendency is to search for structural reasons for the pain — is there disc degeneration, a torn ligament, an abnormality in a joint? Studies have shown though that most structural damage is not the cause of chronic pain, and that pain processing shifts over time to the parts of our brain associated with memory, learning & emotion. We “learn” to be in chronic pain. And if we can learn to be in chronic pain, we can also unlearn it. Read on to learn more.

I’m just going to be blunt here: you can’t overpower and smash chronic tension out of your body. Doesn’t matter if you find the strongest, smartest, most skillful bodyworker on the planet. Why is that? You’re working against your biology in two key ways: (1) you and your nervous system have constructed that tension for a very solid set of reasons that smashing won’t eliminate, and (2) your fascia, the stuff that holds you together, is designed to provide you more stability & adaptability than human hands can change.

Last year I found my keys to an amazing year of productivity, energy, and ease, centered around the notion that people who are happy and feel good tend to perform at their best. So I dove into a new set of practices designed to up-level my happiness index, with the very happy side effects of an increase in productivity and overall work-life performance. Those practices? Gratitude, Exercise, Mindfulness, and Sleep.