11/04/2025
It’s National Pain Awareness Week (Nov 2-8) — a time to shine a light on chronic pain and honor the millions of Canadians navigating it every day.
If you’ve ever experienced persistent pain, what’s helped you feel more in control or understood?
Keep reading more.. ⬇️
As a massage therapist and someone living with chronic pain, I bring both lived experience and clinical insight into how pain works — and how we can work with it.
Here are a few of the concepts that shape how I practice and how I understand my own journey:
Nociception – the nervous system’s detection of threat or potential tissue damage. Importantly: nociception doesn’t always mean there’s ongoing damage.
Central sensitization / centralization – when the central nervous system becomes more responsive over time, so that pain can persist or amplify even when tissue is healing (or healed).
Neuroplasticity – our nervous system’s capacity to learn, adapt, and remodel. This means there is hope: change is possible, safety can be re-learned, and function can improve.
The biopsychosocial model – pain is rarely just “hardware” (tissue, structure). It’s influenced by biology, yes — but also by thoughts, emotions, beliefs, environment, and social context.
Because I live with pain myself, I know how isolating it can feel when your body says one thing and others see “normal.” I know how frustrating it is to be told “everything looks fine” despite your reality. That lived perspective makes me more curious, more collaborative, and more intentional — not just to “treat tissue,” but to create a safe space, bring education, pacing, movement, self-management and hope.
In this clinic and beyond, living with pain has become an asset — it means I can empathize, help you unpack what’s happening in your nervous system, and support you to rebuild confidence in your body (and mind).
If you’re living with persistent pain: I see you. Your experience matters. Your nervous system is trying to protect you — and together, we can help it feel safe again.
