What’s up? Patrick Lerouge here, from Evolve Restorative Therapy. You can find me at livepainfreeprocess.com. I’m an intuitive healing expert and the creator of the Live Pain Free Process. I’ve been creating some innovative ways to get you to learn how to heal. It’s no longer about feeling good anymore. It’s about learning how to heal. Today I want to talk about a massive mistake that I see a lot of people making: they’re using pain as their indicator to assess where they are in their body. The only way that they know something’s wrong is when something is hurting. That never works out well, or they use pain as a way of recognizing their stop point, or their end point.
Using pain as your indicator of something is wrong is like when you are driving and the only time you think something’s wrong is after a horrible wreck. What makes things worse is that we don’t realize the first wreck, so then we into five accidents. That’s way too long for you to recognize that things need to change.
You want to start recognizing smaller actions like I realize that I’m on my phone a lot when I’m driving, that I am focused on the kids, talking with them, handing them things etc. I’m thinking about different problems that I’m having, and the list can go on. But what is happening is that you are no longer paying attention to the road. Those are your indicators, not the five wrecks that you got. If you’re waiting that long, of course something bad is going to happen.
What you have to start doing is lean away from pain as your indicator and start using movement as your indicator. Start seeing how your body is moving; how well are my shoulders moving? How well are my hips moving when I squat?
Here’s a really easy one that you could practice right now. If you go into the Downward Dog position and you attempt to get your heels down and your butt up as high as possible, you’re going to realize the feeling in the lower part of your legs. You want to find out where you start to feel a nice stretch, not an end result of pain.
Now when you were doing it, did you try to get your heels to the ground? If you are saying, “Oh, I can’t do it very well,” please slow down; that’s the place that you want to be, not instantly getting my heels to the ground. You want to find that sweet spot of how your body’s moving and work with it there, not just force it and have the pain stop you in a way where it’s not helpful. That’s when you’re doing your restorative work and your rehab work to actually hurt you, and that doesn’t work.
I want you to start really thinking about what is your indicator of you feeling good. Are you still leaning towards pain, or are you really good with looking at how your body’s moving? Those are the keys. If you are looking at pain as your indicator, start whittling your way out by looking by looking for soreness instead of pain. It’s one step away on the chain of intensity. It’s soreness, and once you start really focusing on soreness, you have a real fighting chance of once you see something happening, having a chance of changing it like that.
But if you keep waiting until you are in pain, you have a good chance of doing tissue damage, and then you’re in an almost guaranteed two or three-day cycle because tissue needs time to heal. That’s just biology. Folks, stop looking for pain as your indicator. Start looking at movement and really start looking for the place right before you get that discomfort to stop in your moving pattern just like the Downward Dog.
I can tell you plenty of stretches that people do it to pain because they think it works better if you push it harder. It never does. Stop going to pain, and start looking at movement. Until the next time folks!
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