The Pain-Free Body

27/03/2024

Tired of endless visits to the chiropractor, only to find your pain returning time and time again?

Here's one simple thing to change to get more out of every adjustment, so they hold longer, and you can get pain-free faster.

Want my help to get pain-free? I'd love to help you. Just drop me a message.

26/03/2024

Physio not fixing your pain?

Isn't it frustrating that, despite diligently doing your physio exercises, the pain always comes back, or never goes away at all?

Why is that? And what should you do instead for permanent relief?

Watch the video to find out.

22/03/2024

Let's talk about pain and ageing. Do you think they're connected?

Is it inevitable that as you get old, you'll have pain?

Watch this video for some surprising truths.

21/03/2024

Hello! I'm Dr Mona Singh. I help sports-loving women get out of chronic pain for good.

If you're here, chances are that your current treatment approach isn't working. It's time to ditch the symptom-chasing therapies that keep letting you down.

My goal is to show you how re-aligning the body and restoring natural movement to your whole body can eliminate your pain at the root cause. This is the last pain solution you'll ever need and in my view, it should be the first thing everyone does to fix their pain.

Here's a quick intro to find a bit more about me and how I can help you.

Link to sign-up for the Pain Solution Masterclass that I talk about is here: https://www.thepainfreebody.co.uk/masterclass

20/03/2024

Are you struggling with back pain? Frustrated that nothing gets rid of it? Knowing WHY the pain is there is important to get lasting relief, so you're not just symptom-chasing.

Treatments targeting only the area that hurts are often missing the source of the problem. The back is often the victim of how other joints and muscles in the body are not working properly.

What's going on in the body to put the back in such a position to hurt?

By restoring movement to the whole body, you can remove the cause of your back pain once and for all.

09/02/2024

Have you watched the Pain Solution Masterclass yet? If not, head over to painfreebody.co.uk to watch for free.

Why is it so difficult to get rid of pain, despite all the therapies we try and money we spend? Millions of people suffer with chronic pain, yet few find the solution for long-term relief.

My research led me to discover the biomechanical reason behind my back, hip and sciatic pain and I learnt how to fix it once. Now I want to share this with you.

I uncover why the pain keeps coming back no matter what we try, and how to identify and solve the true, biomechanical source of your pain.

This is a must-watch if you’ve tried everything under the sun and you’re frustrated that your pain – whether that’s back, knee, hip, foot, shoulder, sciatic or other kind of pain – keeps coming back.

Here’s what you need to know to fix it for good.

08/02/2024

You know when you do everything you’re meant to do, follow the instructions to a ‘T’, do the work even when you don’t feel like it, push through the tiredness and the pain because the promise of the outcome on the other side is so great….

The promise of a pain-free life. Running again. Playing tennis. Taking part in family stuff rather than being left out, because of constant discomfort.

Except that, despite all the work you’ve put in, the time you’ve invested, the money too….

You don’t get the result you’ve worked for.

You get nothing.

Only more pain.

And time and money wasted.

How demoralising and frustrating and soul-destroying is that?

Yet millions of people are experiencing this exact feeling every single day.

The false promise of so many pain treatments leaves so many people in despair wondering ‘what exactly do I need to do to make this back pain go away?’

Despite the hours of stretching, the yoga sessions, core strengthening, chiro and physio, that nagging, pesky pain returns.

There’s one simple change to make so that your diligent work and determination to banish the pain actually pays off.

It simply needs a subtle shift in focus.

If you have back pain, for example, you’ve probably been told to stretch the back, or strengthen it, maybe massage it or spend money on other treatments focused on your back.

But, if so many treatments fail to work, is it really a back issue?

Let’s zoom out for a second and look at what the rest of the body is doing. How is it moving? Or not moving? Is a hip a bit stuck? Pelvis tilted forward? Shoulder elevated?

What’s the rest of the body doing to put the back into such a position that it hurts?

If we can see back pain as a reaction to what’s going on in the rest of the body, we can refocus our attention on restoring movement to the whole body, to relieve the tension and pressure on the back.

A simple shift in focus can be the key to unlocking the pain-free life you've been diligently working towards.

07/02/2024

Myth: Finding the right stretches for my back will make the back pain go away

Truth: Back pain is a consequence of what is going on in the whole body, therefore a whole body approach is required to get lasting relief.

What if the constant pain in your back is actually a protective mechanism the body is using to help you out?

Hear me out on this.

When your ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders function well and are balanced, your spine will have a natural S-curve and the entire spine can fluidly bend, flex, and twist without symptoms or limitation.

When the muscles don’t function well, perhaps from years of sedentary living, the S-curve can be lost completely to form more of a C-curve, which comes with a flat back or posterior pelvic tilt.

When your spine loses these favourable curves over time, your body resorts to a last ditch effort of contracting or tensing all the muscles that surround the spine, hips, and shoulders, in an attempt to “lock down” your movement.

It’s a protective mechanism to reduce movement in an area that has lost its favourable alignment and function.

Most people feel this “tightness” and think their back hurts because its tight…yet that tightness, in most cases might actually be the only thing “protecting” your spine from further issues or damage.

An example of this is someone stretching day over day, and not really getting looser, or even worse, experiencing more pain/symptoms the more they stretch.

The solution to getting rid of this back pain is not about finding that magic stretch or just strengthening the back.

That pelvis and spine position is just a reaction to what’s going on in the WHOLE the body.

So getting rid of back pain requires a whole body approach.

Restoring the natural curves to the spine and rebalancing a posterior pelvis to a more neutral position needs the ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, the spine to function properly.

That way, the spine returns to a functional natural “S shape” and the central nervous system can release that “tight protection mechanism and the pain disappears.

Check out the link to my YouTube video routine to help your back pain.

Today, I’m going to bust the myth that just stretching your back helps get rid of back pain, especially if you have a posterior pelvic tilt or flat back.Chec...

02/02/2024

Got an anterior pelvic tilt that's causing back pain and don't know how to fix it?

Here’s a tip to help you avoid making the same mistake I did, of just stretching the hip flexors and strengthening the glutes, thinking that will tilt the pelvis back into position and relieve the pain.

The position of the pelvis is influenced by what’s going on in the whole body – the hips and shoulders primarily.

Let’s focus on the hips to keep it simple. Your hips should be really mobile and able to rotate, flex, extend comfortably in the hip socket. But when they stop being able to do that and lose balanced between left and right, the hips get stuck rotated either inwards or outwards or one might rotate one way, and one the other way.

Now, the pelvis, which sits on top of the hip joints, is going to have a hard time staying in place, because the foundation below is now….well, wonky.

So, the pelvis will shift, rotate….tilt forward to accommodate everything that’s happening below.

The pelvis is simply reacting to the environment around it.

In this example, the loss of movement in the hip is the problem, but this could also apply to a foot that doesn’t work well that changes the balance of everything upstream. Or one shoulder that’s elevated which affects the pelvis position downstream.

So, is it really the pelvis that’s the problem? Or is it a problem with how the whole body is functioning that’s putting the pelvis in an anterior tilted position?

Eliminating long-term pain in an area of the body always requires a full-body approach to restore balance and function to ALL the areas that have lost it.

We have to at how the entire body created this in the first place.

It’s never about just isolating the part that hurts and focusing all the efforts there. As I’m sure you know, that doesn’t work.

Here’s a simple exercise routine to help rebalance an anterior pelvis by restoring balance and function to the whole body.

Let me know how you get on.

https://lnkd.in/gauycMPq

01/02/2024

If you haven’t found a solution that actually stops the back pain, knee pain or [insert other pain] from coming back…..

Or you find it overwhelming and stressful trying to figure it all out yourself…

The answer isn’t another visit to the chiropractor or stretching for hours or rolling out the mat for another round of Yoga with Adriene (she’s amazing, but not for pain solutions).

In fact, those things could be part of the problem.

Over time, your body gets a smorgasbord of exercises and stretches that might work for some, but that aren’t right for your body. It’s pushed and pulled in all directions, forced into exercise positions that aren’t quite achievable yet…

You're told to strengthen your back, only for someone else to say, ‘No, STRETCH your back! After you’ve foamed rolled it!’

The result is a cross-fire of untargeted exercises, with your body stuck in the middle, literally not knowing what’s hit it.

No wonder, it’s still in pain, or even feels worse.

When you realise that the generic back pain exercise protocol, for example, is not what YOUR unique body actually needs, you’ll never do these things again.

Simply because, there is no one-size-fits-all-approach when it comes to eliminating pain at the root cause.

I did all the things mentioned above when I was in pain and was baffled when nothing helped. Why was it so hard to get rid of pain, when so many people experience it?

Long story short, after much persistent research, I discovered what causes pain, biomechanically, and was able to target the root cause & solve mine once and for all.

I realised so many others needed help, so I created a pathway that uses the same method that helped me get out of pain.

I've called it the pain-FREE pathway.

Each letter in FREE stands for a step in the pathway. Each step builds on the last. The most important step is the F, and I’ll explain why.

The F stands for Foundation. Knowing your starting point, i.e., why you’re in pain and therefore what to target in YOUR body is fundamental.

When you can see in your body alignment and how you’re able to perform simple movement assessments…

It’s really easy to understand which muscles are not working well and which are working too much…and why you are in pain.

Suddenly, you have total clarity on the true source of your pain.

This foundation step is fundamental in formulating your personal roadmap of targeted exercises to guide you out of pain, to give your body what it needs to thrive.

It'll be different to what the next person with the same pain might need.

Without this clarity, you’re back to haphazard, trial-and-error approaches that don’t work.

If you want my help in guiding you along the simple steps in my pain-FREE pathway, so you can feel like yourself again, drop me a message.

I’ve got 2 spots left and more will open only in the summer. I’ve love to help you get back to doing the things you love before then.

25/01/2024

I’ve never known anyone to get so excited about squeezing a pillow.

But one of my clients frequently tells me this is her favourite exercise because it wakes up her hips and makes her feel like ‘something is happening that she’s not felt in years’.

Her decades-long hip and ankle pain have already reduced from a 9 to 6 in 3 weeks – something that’s not happened before - and she’ll only continue to enjoy more benefits as she progresses.

This is the difference when you give your body the RIGHT stimulus to wake up the muscles that have been taking a free ride at the expense of others, that are now complaining in pain from all the overwork.

This particular client had been on the merry-go-round of physio, Pilates, Yoga and stretching but her pain kept coming back.

Plus, her particular gripe was with the Yoga tree position, which was impossible for her – no surprise with the tight, unstable hips she’s got.

Only when her hips can rotate, extend and flex as hips can she even think about attempting that.

The point here is that generic exercise routines that are made for the masses won’t suit everyone and will often make things worse.

Especially, if you bring a tight, misaligned, imbalanced body to the movement and ask it to contort itself into positions it can’t even access right now.

The body will only compensate to find some way of getting into some semblance of the exercise.

This only strengthens dysfunctional movements, when what is needed is the exact opposite.

Re-educating muscles that have forgotten how to do their job, with simple, targeted exercises is a much safer and easier way to restore movement to the body, without aggravating anything.

Your body will need different movements to the next person to get you moving and feeling better. This is because your imbalances, movement limitations, dysfunctions and compensations will be different.

So you need exercises that give YOUR body what it needs to thrive.

That’s why my pillow squeezing client is so ecstatic – her muscles are waking up and it feels amazing.

No surprise then, that this is helping her experience long-term pain relief, when other exercise routines didn't.

I’ve put the link to the exercise in question, in case you’re curious to see what all the fuss is about.

25/01/2024

Dealing with a pain flare up can be a pretty emotional experience, especially when it’s not clear why the flare up was triggered or what exactly will help it resolve quickly.

Learning how to navigate a flare-up and understanding what your body needs is a really great skill to learn.

It can drastically change your relationship to pain from an emotional experience, where there’s a feeling of having lost control of your body, to knowing why it’s happening and feeling 100% in control to move out of the flare up.

So how can you make a flare up easier to navigate?

Pain usually enters the picture when your body loses balance and function.

Your body us unable to move in a normal, balanced way and something in your body is taking on extra stress, strain and load and you feel that as pain.

Your body is asking you to do something that gives it balance and symmetry.

The key to understanding why you’re in a flare-up is to know how your body is moving in a flare up vs how it normally moves.

There’s a couple of simple tests that show you immediately where your body is having trouble and therefore how to provide what it needs to be on your way out of the flare up quickly.

In my latest video, I show you what these simple tests are, as well as three of the best, but little-known, restorative exercises to gently rebalance the body and guide it back to feeling better.

I've put the link in the comments.

Let me know if helps you.

22/01/2024

If you’ve got back pain but can’t seem to shift it permanently with all the remedies and therapies you’ve tried, this could be the reason why.

Your hips should be able to rotate within a range of 15-20 degrees. If they can’t, your foot, ankle, pelvis, lower back or shoulder will naturally figure out a way to make up for the fact that the hip can’t rotate properly.

Typically, the lower back and/or the knee will pay the price. Something as simple as walking can become quite painful if the hip is unable to rotate well.

If your lower back has to move because your hips can’t, this is really helpful information for you. It can shave years off trying therapies that are ineffective because they only focus on your back, which is not the root of the problem.

Getting your hips to move better could be the low hanging fruit to get relief in your lower back.

Observing how the whole body moves is the core of my Pain-Free Movement Programme where I help people understand why they’re in pain and guide them step-by-step along my simple framework, tailored to their body to get them moving and feeling better.

I’ve created a short video for you with a simple exercise to see how well your hips are able to move. If you find that movement feels sticky or limited and your lower back is chiming in to help, this is a great indication that it’s time to move away from the symptom-chasing strategies that haven’t helped.

The first step towards resolving any problem is to understand the problem better so you know what you’re targeting. I hope this simple exercise helps you do that.

Click the link in the comments to follow along.

16/01/2024

I enrolled a new client into The Pain-Free Movement Programme earlier this week, to help her get rid of her hip and ankle pain. After our first session together, she’d already had a revelation.

When I’d finished talking her through her posture and movement analysis and how that was causing her ankle and hip pain, she said to me,

‘You know, I always thought I was squint’ (she’s Scottish, so I had to look this up. Wonky, I guess is the English equivalent.)

She went on to say, ‘Despite me telling all the doctors, that my alignment was off, they insisted on giving me this and that therapy aimed at just my hip, which only made it worse.

Now I know I was right all along.’

What struck me was her awareness that the alignment of her body was linked with her pain. Usually this is a surprising revelation for most people. But, when you see it in your natural, standing posture and how it limits your movement, it makes total sense.

You wonder why no-one has told you this before. This is how I felt after chasing back pain symptoms for 13 years.

My breakthrough came when I started training as a Posture Alignment Specialist with The Egoscue Institute.

That’s when I realised that the methods I’d spent years and hours a day on – stretches, physio exercises, Yoga etc., were just strengthening the dysfunctions in my body and making the back pain worse.

It’s easy to get lost just chasing body parts. We forget that the body is connected and the site of the pain is rarely the source of the pain.

I teach people simple and effective exercises that address the root cause of the pain by restoring movement to their entire body. It’s tailored to what their unique body needs to thrive, so it doesn’t make things worse with generic protocols.

Let’s remind your ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, spine, shoulders, elbows, and wrists how to move properly so that when it comes time to move as a team, every team member can do their job fully.

I’m excited to see what more breakthroughs my new client has as she restores function to her body and feels the pain disappear.

If you feel like it’s time to make some big changes in your life with how you move and feel, contact me to learn more about how I can help you.

12/01/2024

Knowing what’s right for your body and what’s not, can make all the difference between getting out of pain and being stuck in pain.

The only question I was asking for YEARS was “How do I get out of back pain?” - a completely valid question.

This question led me to power through therapeutic modalities that just didn’t work – physio, chiropractic, spinal injections and so on.

I found this baffling. I wasn’t the first person to have back pain. Why was it so hard to fix?

What I experienced and what my clients experience before they come to me, is the situation of the Pain Protocol.

It has pain at the centre of the treatment focus, not your body.

If you have back pain, you get The Back Pain Protocol. Got Knee Pain? There’s a Knee Pain Protocol. There’s one for the hip, the shoulders and so on.

But there’s a problem with this.

The reason for the pain is ignored. I can have back pain, but the cause of it may be different to why the next person has back pain.

What’s going on in my body – the imbalances, the movement limitations, the dysfunctions that cause the pain - will be unique to me.

So, a one-size-fits all protocol that just focuses the area that hurts and that’s not tailored to what my body actually needs - to restore movement to the parts that are stuck, to rebalance the body and remove the dysfunctions - won’t work.

And it doesn’t work.

That’s what I hear time and time again from my clients who have tried the pain-focused therapies and are left frustrated that they’ve wasted time, money and energy and are still in pain.

It’s time for a different approach.

What we need to do instead, to get the long-term relief you’re searching for is to stop focusing treatments on the part that hurts and zoom out to look at what the whole body is doing.

What’s not able to move well? What’s moving too much? What’s imbalanced or misaligned and bearing too much weight or stress?

Everything is connected.

The site of your pain may not be the source of your pain. You can have back pain because your hips don’t extend or rotate well (see my earlier posts on this).

Or because your pelvis is stuck in an anterior pelvis tilt.

Already I’ve mentioned 3 different possible reasons for back pain, none of which have anything to do with the back.

Your body is unique and needs to be treated as such. To get you out of pain and restore balance and function to your joints and muscles, you need an approach that is tailored to what your body needs.

This is the approach of my Pain-Free Movement Programme. I assess your natural body alignment and how you move to see where your limitations are that are causing your pain.

Then, you follow a targeted road-map of corrective exercises, specific to what your whole body needs to get it back moving efficiently and effortlessly.

It’s so simple when you think about it.

If you’re feeling stuck in pain and have no clue how to get long-term relief, check out thepainfreebody.co.uk to see how I can help you.

12/01/2024

Allow me to introduce a GAME-CHANGING ‘exercise’ to you.

It’s an important component in the first of my ‘Why does my back hurt’ series and is especially transformative if you have back pain coupled with an anterior pelvic tilt or tight hip flexors.

It’s informally known as the world’s greatest hip flexor stretch, but even that title doesn’t really do it justice to the depth of what it really does.

Over 15-30 minutes this position resets and restores the length of the hip flexor causing a chain reaction up the body. It gently tilts the pelvis back, releasing the lumbar spine and then the thoracic spine all the way to the shoulders, allowing them to release, open up and settle to the ground.

It gives you a full body re-alignment while you lie down relaxing.

Think of most other hip flexor stretches where you have to contort and rotate the body to lengthen the hip, like dropping into a deep lunge and rotating.

In this situation, the hip flexors never learn to lengthen while the rest of the body is balanced, aligned, and relaxed. So the hip flexors tighten up quickly after other stretches because of how they were released.

The world’s greatest hip flexor stretch works in a way these other stretches don’t, because as the hip is lengthened, the rest of the body is repositioned around this new, optimal length making this one of the most effective “hip flexor” stretches of all time.

Check out the video in the comments if you want to learn more about this!

Jump to 4:49 mins in the video if you want to skip the part about how limited hip movement is linked with back pain.

Let me know if the comments how you felt afterwards.