In the past year, through my NeuroPilates training, I’ve had the opportunity to work with one of the most knowledgeable trainers I’ve ever come across: Heba Abdel Gawad. She is not only the co-founder of brain-based fitness company .body//HACK: but also a NeuroPilates™ Teacher Trainer, a former Olympic athlete and a Z-Health Master Trainer. She is specialized in helping people improve their physical performance through the use of movement and neuroscience. Her clients include high-level athletes, kids, regular folks who just want their bodies to regain the mobility of their youth and…you guessed it, people struggling with chronic pain and injuries.
If you are in this last category and have never been able to get to the bottom of it, read on, because today Heba will help us better understand the reasons behind chronic pain and what steps to take to overcome it. They might not be what you think. Her teachings have been a real eye-opener for me and I have not looked at movement or pain the same way since.
Q: What is the difference between acute pain and chronic pain?
A: Acute pain is the body’s natural sensation of pain after tissue damage has occurred; something that would have just happened like a cut, a fall or a muscle tear etc.
Pain is an action signal. It is your brains way of protecting you. We should be grateful for it but it can often feel like it is taking control of our lives. The amount of pain you experience very often has no correlation with the amount of tissue damage there actually is.
Q: What is the brain and nervous systems’ role in chronic pain?
A: Your brain’s number one priority is your survival. It is always the brain that decides whether you will experience pain or not, 100 % of the time, with no exceptions. Your brain can sometimes act like an over protective parent that is always watching out for you and giving you pain to get you to stop what you’re doing. The more sensitive and overprotective your brain is, the more likely it is to give you pain.
The way to make your brain less over protective of you, is to reduce the brains’ perception of threat and danger.
Q: How can movement help alleviate chronic pain?
A: The number one way to reduce the brain’s perception of danger is through movement. Movement lives in the brain and is one of the easiest ways to make our brain less over protective of us and build trust in our ability to handle danger and stress. The easiest way to do this is to build a huge library of movement maps. We constantly need to explore different ways of moving, different positions, different loads, different speeds and we need to remember that the brain craves and loves novelty.
Running for example and other cardiovascular activities are great for fueling the brain and improving blood flow to the whole body. But more cognitive types of movement such as dance and gymnastics on the other hand, activate the brain in a very different way because you have to move your joints differently and you have to think more about your body’s position in space. It is this type of movement exploration and mindfulness that a lot of us need, to make us more trustworthy to our brains, make us more resilient in our bodies and ultimately, experience less chronic pain.
Q: Why do people suffering from this not always get results from traditional forms of therapy?
A: There is a saying by a neurologist called Karl Lewitt who says “Those who treat the site of pain are often lost”.
Q: In your experience, what steps can one take to overcome chronic pain?
A: Pain education and mindful movement is one of the most powerful ways to overcome chronic pain. Understanding pain physiology is so important because thoughts are very strong nerve impulses too. Whenever you experience pain next, don’t think about what sinister damage must have happened to your vertebrae or shoulder etc; just ask yourself “why does my brain think it is in danger” and then “how can I make it chill out?”
Q: Where can we find out more about this?
A: ‘Explain Pain’ by David Butler and Lorimer Mosely is a wonderful pain education book written by two of the top pain scientists in the world, that is a page turner for everyone.
We also offer a 4 day brain-based fitness course twice a year which is aimed at giving people an understanding of their brain, how to keep it healthy through movement, balance, breath and vision training and how this impacts, in such a profound way, the health of all our body systems.
Q: What other services do you offer to help individuals with chronic pain?
A: We do full health assessments that assess your brain health, posture, gait, movement, vision, balance and breathing to find the areas of stress in your body that can be causing your brain to be overprotective of you.
Following from this, we would either send you off with specific exercises to do or see you on a regular basis depending on your goals and availability.
Heba Abdel Gawad
Heba is based in Dubai – for more information about .body//HACK:, chronic pain or NeuroPilates in general, please connect with her:
Website: .body//HACK:
Instagram: @neuropilates
