Pain Academy Course
Sick of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome limiting your life and want to take your power back? Pain Academy is the DIY course that covers my signature MARS Method so you can decrease pain. You’ll get a lesson dripped out to your inbox every three days, with three lessons per module that contain the key dial movers when it comes to the lifestyle and movement strategies that Complex Regional Pain Syndrome has unique barriers around and benefits from. This course will steep you in the implementation of the most significant but achievable daily practices we control as patients, taught by someone who has lived and integrated this first-hand. By the end of the 6 weeks, you’ll have tons of new strategies to improve both how you feel, and how much you can do despite CRPS and the consequences of living with it.
Why Did I Create Pain Academy?
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I was tired of talking to CPRS patients who were frustrated by treatments that only took them so far, a lack of resources for how to help themselves, and doctors that didn’t seem to have a long-term plan that helped them deal with the challenges pain creates within their day-to-day life outside what the clinic addresses.
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I wanted a low barrier, accessible way to empower patients to decrease pain and the consequences of living in it. By improving energy management and creating more safety and predictability for your nervous system, you can change the factors that compound daily to amplify pain and nervous system dysfunction.
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Followed my education for a while? This is a great place to start learning about pain and taking your first steps to impact it. This course addresses the pieces of pain medications and interventions don’t and must be optimized for them to work as effectively as possible.
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What most people miss is that you can best impact the symptoms of chronic illnesses and nervous system dysfunction over time with an arsenal of techniques that are available to all of us. If you've been wanting to decrease pain and make symptoms more predictable, this course is for you.
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You’ll learn techniques to increase underlying instability and sustainably progress movement, decrease sensitization and allodynia, improve energy and focus, make sleep more predictable and refreshing, and decrease the impact of stress on pain and anxiety.
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With complex pain, we have a very small margin for error before we bubble over our pain threshold. Over the course of 6 weeks you’ll cover the four main domains to increase capacity and resilience, scaffolding actionable habit changes that build on each other to sustainably layer in improvements.
Pain Academy Curriculum
Module 1 - Mobility
Where do you start with movement when everything’s excruciating? The longer we limb guard and avoid activities, the more de-conditioned we get. Decreasing atrophy, inhibition, and spasticity, while improving compensations that affect back pain, pelvic dysfunction etc. are how we stop that slide. You’ll learn basics around desensitization with tons of self administered myofascial release techniques and activations so you can improve mobility, stability and pain without flaring your nervous system.
Module 2 - Awareness
Our coping mechanisms, past history, present environment, and beliefs about the future impact the context of pain, which can really amplify it. Things that create a persistent sympathetic state like trauma, as well as depression, anxiety and social isolation, have to be effectively mitigated. Having skills to downregulate and manage your nervous system with breathing and mindfulness are crucial ways we can begin to notice and then impact this and decrease the decrease the negative mental impacts of stress, fear, or catastrophizing on our anxiety and mood.
Module 3 - Recovery
This is a tremendously impactful bucket with chronic pain that includes circadian rhythm, sleep hygiene, wind down routine, sleep quality and quantity, and pacing and energy management. Nutrition including meal quality and timing, increased protein (especially with hEDS), more balanced macros, and sustainable sourcing and systems around food are a huge asset to better predict and increase energy, rather than a tremendous factor in exacerbating pain and chronic fatigue.
Module 4 - Sustainablility/Stress
Sustainability is key to keeping stress from accruing and putting us over our pain threshold. Stress is not avoidable, it is something we must learn to manage and be smarter about. How you progress daily activities and movement in a way that respects where your nervous system is at is paramount. You’ll learn how to integrate more exercise overall, and specific structures to progress strength and aerobic (cardio) training to get you moving again without flaring tons.