The word "rehabilitation" has developed a mundane and tedious feeling to it. When prescribed rehabilitation exercises as part of their treatment some patients sigh, some patients frown, and others smile and nod but they already know they aren't going to do the exercises.

Why has active care developed such a negative and boring element to it? As someone who has gone through numerous rounds of rehabilitation for different physical injuries myself, I admit that rehabilitation can feel like a chore.  Doing x reps and x sets of some sort of exercise can feel almost robotic in the way we are moving our bodies. But what if we were to approach rehabilitation more dynamically with real, functional movements that are more applicable in our lives? What if we were to view rehabilitation as a celebration of what our body is physically able to do? 

Functional rehabilitation is an important part of recovery, no matter what way you look at it. In order to be able to physically do what we want to do, we must strengthen and train our body to be able to tolerate movements that are involved in that activity. If the body isn't able to tolerate certain movements, then the goal of functional rehabilitation turns to modifying movements to place less stress on the body. Some parts of functional rehabilitation can be painful or uncomfortable, but understand that this can be the natural process of building tolerance in the body.

Let's look at an example of how changing our mindset can make a vast difference in how we feel about rehabilitation:

An individual has low back pain when performing the cat-camel exercise but they are still able to do it. Instead of focusing in on the pain, focus in on the fact that that person is physically able to do the exercise. Their body is capable! Now let's pretend that another individual with low back pain does the cat-camel exercise and has no pain. This is just as incredible because that likely means that their body is capable of even more intricate movements. 

Approaching rehabilitation with the mindset that it is a celebration of what your body is capable of is very empowering. It sets us up with the "I can do it" feeling rather than the "this is so boring" feeling. It sheds light on how incredibly adaptable and resilient the body is to physical injury and that with a little bit of work you can get it back to being able to do what you want to do! 

Pain science is beginning to be well recognized by a variety of health care practitioners, especially those who work with patients with chronic pain. This is important because it gives practitioners the additional knowledge and tools to better help patients. Pain is a universally experienced phenomena so the ability to understand pain better is very valuable.

Pain is an experience. It is ALWAYS perceived at the level of the brain. There are of course pain receptors all over the body but the sensation of pain must make it to the brain in order to be registered truly as pain (Fun fact: this is how nerve blocks work! Cool!). This is not to discount mechanical stress to your body as a reason for causing pain. Of course if you got a paper cut (mechanical stress) on your finger you would feel pain. This is known as acute pain: you get injured, you feel pain. Chronic pain, on the other hand, has many more factors that can contribute to the experience of pain including emotions, past experiences, beliefs, lifestyle, sleep and diet to name a few.

One of the leading researches in pain science, Lorimer Moseley, and his colleagues have learned that the central nervous system plays an enormous role in persistent, on-going, chronic pain. Chronic pain is loosely defined as being in pain for over months. When this happens, the central nervous system become hypersensitized to pain responses leading to less and less stimuli required to create a pain response. For example, a person with chronic low back pain can experience pain in their low back even from the lightest of touch or pressure placed on their low back. For some individuals with chronic pain, they can even develop pain by simply THINKING about it. This gives researchers great insight as to why and how pain is caused and experienced. Check out Lorimer Moseley's excellent video explaining pain.

If you or someone you know is experiencing chronic pain, get professional help. Visit your local chiropractor or family doctor for strategies and treatment to help decrease your chronic pain.