Nicole Sachs | Finding Mental Remedies for Physical Pain

TRAINED

Nike

Sleep, Mental Health, Training, Diet, Nike Podcast, Movement, Workout, Nutrition, Exercise, Recovery, By Nike, Running, Health & Fitness, Trained, Health, Fitness, Eating, Nike

4.7 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

That nagging lower-back pain may mean you need to take it easy— but not necessarily in the gym. Psychotherapist Nicole Sachs learned firsthand that physical distress can stem from unaddressed emotional conflict — and by getting the latter in check, you won’t just live with less pain, you’ll also be happier. After a doctor told her she’d need major surgery for a serious spinal condition and still would never be able to move the way she wanted to, Sachs started conducting mind-body experiments on herself to find another way forward, and — spoiler alert — she did. On this episode, the athlete shares her journey with pain, how she healed herself, and how she now helps others do the same. Her experiences with slowing down, journaling, and managing repressed feelings (including sometimes hating motherhood) can help us all understand and ease our own chronic torments.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Trained, a podcast exploring the cutting edge of holistic fitness.
0:04.0	I'm Ryan Flaredy, the Senior Director of Performance at Nike.
0:07.1	On every episode, I call up the world's leading experts and athletes to talk about mindset,
0:11.7	movement, nutrition, recovery, and sleep. All the ways to train your body and mind.
0:17.0	Today, I'm connecting with a psychotherapist who believes that the way we look at chronic pain
0:21.2	can change the way we feel it.
0:22.4	When the brain and the nervous system are in high alert, many signals are going off in your body.
0:31.8	Once you put a label on yourself, I have a migraine disorder, I have fibromyalgia,
0:36.4	I have chronic pelvic pain. The first thing you think is how is it going to limit my life?
0:40.7	How is it going to take away from my ability to make money, my ability to connect with my children,
0:45.0	my ability to be a good partner, my ability to have fun with my friends?
0:49.2	And that meaning continues to snowball into the nervous system being on higher alert,
0:55.4	and now we're in this negative cycle of it feeding itself into more and more pain.
1:02.3	That psychotherapist, author, and podcast hero Nicole Sachs,
1:06.2	on how the anxiety we feel about pain can contribute to that pain.
1:10.4	People who work out are no strangers to everyday aches. A lot of us, myself included,
1:14.5	have had run-ins with acute pain and big success stories with physical therapy.
1:18.8	But what about when pain sticks around after treatment? Or what if we can't get a straight
1:22.8	diagnosis in the first place? That's where Nicole Sachs comes in. She looks at chronic pain as a
1:27.5	misunderstanding between body and mind. Whether it starts with emotional trauma or physical injuries,
1:32.3	kind of chicken or egg. Either way, you've got a cycle from pain to fear and right back to pain.
1:38.4	Sachs says, the place to break that cycle is our nervous systems command center, the brain.
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