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Writer's pictureSam Herrendorf

How to Rest with Pain

You get a scary injury to your body and immediately connect with your general health practitioner.  What do you think that they will say?  Probably “Make sure you rest your body and ice the area”.  

I strongly urge you to change the statement to “Listen to what your body tells you it needs, and send messages to it to tell you what you need”.

There will be ample times after an injury incurs or after surgery where your body demands rest.  Listen to it!  Your body is doing so much work to heal. 


Now think about a relationship with a loved one.  It is very unhealthy to have one-sided conversations. Growth is stunted when both parties aren’t speaking, listening, adjusting, and MOVING forward. The same can be said for conversations with our bodies.


Day 2 of an injury or post surgery, conversations need to happen.  What movement can your body tolerate? What movement can the affected area (joint) tolerate?  When you need to hobble over to brush your teeth, what is your body doing to compensate for the pain?  How can I counteract that pattern mindfully? After a set of joint movements, do I need to rest for 3 minutes?


You don’t need to ask those questions, you ask the questions you need to ask.  It is your relationship with your body. What I will propose, however, is to make sure rest is a love-based activity. When us westerners rest, we numb.  We are trying to avoid the pain by resting.  Avoiding pain is the worst thing to do.  We want to get in our bodies.  We want to understand how to improve this relationship. Do not let rest = numb.  


Moving forward to “tendinosis”.  Which usually manifests as “my shoulder hurts when I try a pull-up”. Or “my high hamstring hurts when I go for a jog”.  Tendinosis is just a tendon (muscle attaching to bone) getting aggravated.  I hear a lot of people choose to rest for a month and then get back exercises under a smaller load.  While pain may subside a bit, you can tell stuff is still off within movement/the body.  In fact it is super common for pain to get worse once we return to these activities. Usually tendinosis happens because there is a mix between postural patterns being off and a lack of variability in movement (arguably the same thing).


For example, a runner gets their high-hamstring pain.  The part at the bottom of the pelvis is constantly in pain and stretching it recreates the pain, but gives some neurological feedback.  (Newsflash - the neuro-feedback is saying “this is not helping, stop stressing me out more”).  Usually runners put their weight on their toes and their rib cage is flared forward. After doing this consistent action with this consistent postural strategy, something in the body feels "inappropriately used/loaded".


There is a rest aspect to tendinosis, but like I have already spoken to, it is about changing your relationship with the affected area.  The runner should maybe take a couple of days off from running.  Start postural/corrective training. Then the conversations start.  “Hey, body,  what is the longest amount you can run before pain comes about”.  We make that our new starting point. As if you are trying to train and increase your capacity weekly.  Every week you add 10% effort to the movement that hurts. Meanwhile you are training.  The rest comes from doing a little bit less, but it is because your body is telling you that it can’t handle it. Not because we are avoiding anything. 



We are refusing to slow down and listen to what our body is saying.  A lifetime without this practice makes listening a pretty difficult feat.  This is why seeing a therapist is so important.  A therapist shouldn’t override what your body is saying.  If the body needs rest, resting is what should be done.  But we have uncertainty with what is acceptable with our pain.  The confidence to know what we can/can not do is such a valuable feeling.  It is worth seeking help for.

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