understand & overcome your chronic pain – book release date announced
I am delighted to share the book release date as December 1st.
Pre-orders can be made here to get your copy. I believe there is a discount at the moment — I have a generous editor 😊.
This has been a long time coming.
I have always admired people who have got a book out into the world, more-so now I have lived it from this side of the table.
What a process!
What a learning curve!
I have sat at home, stood at home, sat in a hut, on a train, in Wales under the shadow of Snowdon and many other places in order to get these words from my (embodied) mind to the page.
I have walked, strolled, run, push-upped, balanced and guitared my way to this point.
It has also given me an excuse to buy loads of books. Do I need any excuse for that?
Is that another one I hear landing on the mat? 👂
Book writing.
It’s addictive.
The next titles are lining up.
A bit like when you come back from holiday and want to book the next.
Or on completing an ultramarathon, part of the recovery is getting another in the diary. Perhaps only those in the strange world of ultrarunning get that one…
Oh yes, I forgot that I have retired from ultrarunning.
(But like all great rock bands, there can be an final tour, and another and another 😄)
A comment on the book title
In the book I define the terms as clearly as I can.
What does it actually mean to understand and overcome your pain?
Essentially it is personal and something I have a conversation with the person (aka patient) about in detail–expectations and reality must be aligned more often than not to stay on the path.
Each person will have their own ideas about overcoming pain.
To most I work with, overcoming pain means that they are living their best life and focusing on this way of being whilst surfing the inevitable ups and downs.
For some the pain recedes completely, for others it comes and goes. I do not compare people BTW. You have your own journey.
People living their best lives, and we have some wonderful examples of people who are doing this and generously sharing their experiences to encourage others, have shifted their position on their pain, updated their beliefs and take a positive approach.
The positive approach is not positive thinking. Instead it means that they focus on what they want (eg/ health, energy, wellbeing, connection, purpose, contribution) rather than what they don’t want.
Where your focus goes, your energy flows, said someone. It’s true. Notice what happens when you shift your focus and intent. What happens when you put your attention on one thing rather than another? And then practice.
(That’s meditation).
I believe that we, human beings, have the ability to overcome pain so it is no longer newsworthy.
Why?
Because of impermanence — no moment is ever the same. Things are always changing. How you are now is not how you will be.
We are designed to grow and develop. Our body systems update their predictions and beliefs when given the opportunity.
Chronic pain is an example of being stuck, similar to depression and addiction. The systems are stuck, generating pain experiences as best guesses to explain the current lived world because there’s not the evidence YET to update.
Creating that evidence is what we do to jostle and update. That is what the lived experiencers have and are doing.
You can too.
Bring flexibility back into the systems to have better experiences.
Where does it go? No-one can say for sure as the future is always uncertain.
But is depends to an extend on your expectations and beliefs.
So we work with those, aligning them with what we know about pain, neuroscience, being human and more.
You’ll be surprised by what we know now. The science has moved on enormously in the last few years, which I have tried to capture in the book in practical ways.
Getting better is a practical job.
It happens by creating the conditions in thought and action that are one. You are a whole person. Not a body and a mind. Just one.
Unified.
Harnessing the knowledge, honing and practicing skills with the know-how takes you down your path towards your pictures of success, gathering results along the way (you’ve got to look out for them).
You live your best life, considering the current and ever-changing circumstances, by choosing to do so and taking those steps, re-joining the path when you slip off.
A route of mastery. Mastery of you and your life.
Opportunities over obstacles.
Possibilities over problems.
Because you can.
That is overcoming pain.
Onwards.
RS