You remember how much fun it was to listen to lectures all day in school? A teacher/professor would show a few slides, say a few words, and hand out assignments. With their slides, they’d likely have a main point that they’d either bold or underline (or maybe one of those odd ones who italicize everything) in order for you to get the gist. But sometimes, they’d say these one-off things that wouldn’t be written in any of their slides, and for whatever reason, it just stuck with you. We had a rather colorful elderly man who taught our first-year philosophy class in grad school. You know the type: Says whatever he wants, carries a briefcase around, and repeats himself so frequently that you wonder if he really knows where he is. One time – we’ll call him Roy – Roy was going off about all the wrong things with our healthcare system, not following any of his slides or outlines. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he delivers the most significant thing I learned in all of grad school: “Pain is an acronym. It means Pay Attention Inside Now.”

Not only did I write it down and underline and italicize it that day, but I also think about it every day in our office. Frankly put, pain is just your body’s way of telling you three things: 1) What – pay attention. 2) Where – inside. 3) When - now. The how is entirely too lengthy for this newsletter (and honestly kind of boring), but the why is fascinating. Why is your body communicating this signal to you? Why now? Does it mean something is going “wrong” in your body? Does it mean something is “broken” and needs to “be fixed”?

It’s okay to experience the feeling of pain; in fact, the reality that you can experience feelings is a gift from God. The same reason you can feel pain is the same reason you feel cozy when sipping on your favorite coffee, or joy when you’re running around with the kiddos at the park, or excitement for your spouse’s promotion at work. There’s a condition where people don’t feel pain at all. It’s called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP). “Sounds like a dream life!” Not exactly. In fact, do you know what the average life expectancy is for someone with CIP? For the most severe forms, the mid-20’s. Yikes. Why does that happen? They have an inability to notice when they cut their hand open from a knife, when they’re getting too hot or cold, or when they have a 100+ fever. They can’t pay attention to what’s going on inside their body. So while feeling pain can be both incredibly frustrating and debilitating, it’s also lifesaving.

“But when one of my kids is in pain, something surely has to be wrong, right?” Kiddos dealing with pain saddens me deeply. They have their whole lives ahead of them, and as a parent, if one of my kids were to deal with chronic pain, I’d move heaven and earth to try to support them. Desmond was one of those kids. From an early age, he began to notice “random” leg aches and pains. As he got older, these “random” pains became more constant, an everyday part of his life. Despite this, he got really into calisthenics and strength training, learning to master one-arm pull-ups and L-sit holds. Pretty fit kid. We assessed him and found that he had both tremendous mobility and stability. From a movement perspective, everything in his body was functioning at tip-top shape.

But even though he could move really well through most of our assessment, he still had pain as he did them. Here lies the most important question: If he has great mobility and stability, but still has pain, is something wrong? Let me ask you, if you have a day where you don’t “feel” like going to work, does that mean something is wrong? Or if you’re flying across the country to visit family, and the day of the flight, you’re not “in the mood” to get on the plane, is something wrong with that? Certainly not! As a fallen human, you experience moods and feelings that shift constantly throughout the day. If I only did things based on my feelings, I’d drink coffee, on the hour, every hour, from the time I wake up until I go to bed, but I recognize that my sleep might be “a tad” perturbed from that, so I stick to one cup in the morning. So while feelings are important to recognize, feelings aren’t facts. And what did we say pain was? It’s a feeling; a feeling that your body wants you to pay attention to.

There is a healthy tension between paying attention to your body and simultaneously not letting your body’s feelings run your life. That’s why I think habits and routines are so valuable: they serve as excellent fallback tools on days when we don’t feel our best. There are days I train in the gym when I don’t feel like it because I feel so beat up and sore, and days when I seem to have found a massive bag of motivation. But in either case, I try not to pay too much attention and just get in the gym. In the same way, I’m the person who never feels like getting on a flight, so I bribe myself with cold brew coffee at the airport. That stuff helps me pay attention to everything!