Neuromuscular Pain and Clinical Somatics
While there are several approaches to neuromuscular re-education, Clinical Somatic Education is the most direct, and in my personal and professional experience, by far the most effective at addressing ongoing, “chronic” stiffness, discomfort, and pain.
It’s important here to realise that ongoing, “chronic” stiffness, discomfort, and pain is the type of pain that’s most often caused by problems in your neuromuscular system.
These types of pain (which include e.g. back pain, chronic pain “conditions” such as fibro and ME, as well as hip pain, neck pain, shoulder tension and more) are most often caused NOT by a structural problem or defect (such as a “slipped disc” or a mysterious disease), but rather by miscommunication between your brain and your muscles.
The problem is a FUNCTIONAL one, then - not a structural problem.
This is why medications only cover up the symptoms, rather than “cure” them. It’s also why physical therapies like massage and acupuncture, phsyio and chirporactic - surgery, even - can’t get rid of this kind of neuromuscular-based pain. The problem is one that only YOU can resolve, “from the inside”. Because to get rid of the pain, the miscommunications between your brain and your muscles need to change. No-one else but you can create that change.
Thomas Hanna developed Clinical Somatics precisely to address specific patterns of stress as they show up in the neuromuscular system to cause stiffness, discomfort, and pain of this type.
He developed it as an approach that works “from the inside” — because he knew full well that no practitioner can make changes in your brain simply by moving or adjusting your muscles or bones; it’s just not possible.
Only you can “overwrite” the disrupted brain–muscle communications that cause pain in your body, and only you can create new brain–muscle communications (that is, add new neural pathways) to enable you to move in ways that are better for you, enabling you to move out of pain, and with far greater comfort, efficiency, and ease. Only you can learn to move in new, more efficient, pain-free and comfortable ways.
Why is it important to identify if your pain is neuromuscular, rather than caused by tissue damage (such as an infection, would, or injury)? Because it makes a huge difference in how to approach easing and getting rid of your symptoms!
If you have stiffness, discomfort or pain that’s not responding well to medications, or to physical therapies, or to practices such as yoga and meditation - and if it’s been going on for months or even years, and likely getting worse rather then better - it’s very likely your problem is neuromuscular.
If your problem is neuromuscular, then somatic re-education is what will help. Not medication. Not surgery. And not any kind of physical therapy done “to” you by someone else. Those treatments have their place, and can be invaluable in cases of acute pain, and cases where your chronic pain comes from a cause that is not neuromuscular. But they simply will not help - because they cannot help - with neuromuscular pain.
You can learn more about pain - what “acute” pain and “chronic” pain means, in health care - as well as what to do about in free resources on this site.
I also offer online (and in-person) classes andfull programmes to get rid of stiffnes, discomfort and pain: see info about SoMA Essentials here.