Mike Williams

03/20/2025

I recently had the tremendous pleasure of being a guest on the "Heal with Grace" podcast!

Hosted by Grace Secker, a trained holistic psychotherapist, yoga therapist, and nervous system coach, the "Heal with Grace" podcast delves into the interconnected realms of mental, physical, and spiritual health, and offers a unique blend of personal stories, professional insights, and practical tools for healing.

I really loved being part of this conversation with Grace. In this podcast I share how my journey from finance to healing work was shaped by growing up with parents who had chronic pain. Together, we explore how subconscious beliefs, stress, and identity patterns shape our physical experiences—and how understanding these hidden dynamics can unlock true healing. I also share real client stories and practical ways to reconnect with the body, shift limiting patterns, and establish a sense of safety for lasting relief.

We discuss:
-How stress, emotions, and subconscious beliefs influence chronic pain
-What Hakomi is and how it helps uncover the root causes of pain
-The connection between self-worth, control, and physical symptoms
-How pain can reflect unmet needs and emotional barriers
-Why slowing down is key to healing and nervous system regulation
-The power of curiosity and experimentation in the healing process
-When deeper emotional work may be needed beyond PRT
-How to make sustainable, integrated shifts for long-term recovery

I hope you'll give it a listen! Check it out below, or give it a listen on all major podcast platforms.

If you enjoy the conversation, please consider leaving a positive review on your podcast platform of choice so more people can tune in and listen to our chat! Thank you!!

In this episode, Grace welcomes Mike Williams, a former investment banker turned pain reprocessing and somatic therapy practitioner. Mike shares how his jour...

02/11/2025

Kickstarting my "Ask the Expert" series for 2025 next week and would love to have you there!

Join me live on Tuesday, February 18th at 530pm Central time.

» Ask questions and find out more about how your chronic pain might be solved
» Learn about Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and the neuroscience of chronic pain in a short, interactive talk
» Experience a guided Somatic Tracking practice, a key tool for solving chronic pain

Free & live on Zoom!

This is a great opportunity for you if:

» You’re newly exploring why you have pain, and you’d like to learn more about the science of why pain becomes chronic
» You’ve been practicing Somatic Tracking a bit on your own, but aren’t certain if you’re doing it right or you want a bit of live guidance
» You’re thinking about trying Pain Reprocessing Therapy, or have heard about it before, and you’re curious to learn more
» You’d like the chance to ask someone who works with chronic pain clients everyday using PRT and mindfulness tools your questions!

I look forward to seeing you there! Learn more & register here: www.somamike.com/groups

09/16/2024

Join me live on Thursday, September 26th at 2pm Central time!

» Ask questions and find out more about how your chronic pain might be solved
» Learn about Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and the neuroscience of chronic pain in a short, interactive talk
» Experience a guided Somatic Tracking practice, a key tool for solving chronic pain

Free & live on Zoom!

This is a great opportunity for you if:

» You’re newly exploring why you have pain, and you’d like to learn more about the science of why pain becomes chronic
» You’ve been practicing Somatic Tracking a bit on your own, but aren’t certain if you’re doing it right or you want a bit of live guidance
» You’re thinking about trying Pain Reprocessing Therapy, or have heard about it before, and you’re curious to learn more
» You’d like the chance to ask someone who works with chronic pain clients everyday using PRT and mindfulness tools your questions!

I look forward to seeing you there! Learn more & register here: https://www.somamike.com/groups

06/21/2024

👇🏼👇🏼Overheard this week in my practice. TWICE.

An important part of chronic pain relief is feeling validation, resonance, and connection with those we're working with.

It increases the felt-sense of safety in our systems, which lowers the volume significantly on pain.

In fact, JAMA Psychiatry recently published its report "Physician Empathy and Chronic Pain Outcomes" that shows just that (see 2nd slide).

In fact, empathy comes in ahead of lumbar spine surgery, opioids, and non-pharmacological treatments in successfully treating chronic pain!!!🤯

Trust your gut. Work with a practitioner that gets it and gets you.

03/07/2024

Pain is complex (huge understatement, right?).

Especially, perhaps, chronic pain that's been around for years or even decades.

The good news is that recent advances in pain science have helped us understand that pain is, in many ways, a simple equation that your nervous system puts together:

Pain = Sensation + Emotions + Beliefs + Expectations

Let's break those down a bit:

» Sensation: This is the easiest to wrap our heads around perhaps, as sensation is the felt, physiological experience of pain. When our bodies detect injury or something dangerous to our bodies, our nervous systems generate a feeling that we generally don't like. We call that "pain." Pretty straightforward in concept, but it's also important to remember that tissue damage or measurable danger doesn't always correlate directly with the experience of pain.

» Emotions: Emotional factors, such as fear, anxiety, and stress, can significantly impact the perception of pain. Your emotional state can amplify or mitigate the experience of pain, and people with heightened emotional distress often report more intense pain.

» Beliefs: Beliefs about the cause and consequences of pain can influence your perception of pain. Someone who believes that their pain is a result of a serious injury, for example, may experience more intense pain compared to someone who perceives their pain as less threatening.

» Expectations: Anticipating pain or expecting a certain level of pain can shape the actual experience. If you expect that bending over to tie your shoes will hurt your back, it'll likely hurt your back. Positive expectations or a belief in improvement, on the other hand, can contribute to a reduction in pain.

When you learn to address all the elements of this equation, you can take the fuel out of the inputs that go into your pain equation, dramatically reducing or even eliminating your pain.

That's exactly what we'll be doing in my upcoming virtual men's group --

From Pain to Empowered: Transformative Tools For Men Navigating Chronic Pain Recovery
Wednesdays, March 20th through April 17th
Registration deadline Friday, March 15th

Learn more and register here: https://www.somamike.com/groups

03/01/2024

Does chronic pain make you feel like you’re disconnected from the important things like work, hobbies, and socializing?

Do you feel like people are sympathetic, but don’t quite understand what you’re going through?

Do you feel like you’ve tried everything, but just can’t figure out how to unlock your pain?

It’s not just you. It’s 1 in every 5 men in the US, literally 23.5 million of us.

Chronic pain defines our lives, limits what we can do, and perhaps most importantly, limits what we think we can do.

Recent advances in neuroscience are redefining what we know about chronic pain though. We now know that pain does not necessarily mean that our bodies are broken, or that something is dangerously wrong with us. Pain, in fact, is a complex biological, psychological, and social phenomenon that lives in our nervous systems.

When you learn the basic elements of how your nervous system has constructed your pain, along with some simple tools to take the fuel out of those inputs, you can begin to steadily retrain your brain to return to its normal settings. To turn the tide against chronic pain.

In this 5-week pilot program we’ll be doing just that: deconstructing and simplifying the inputs that go into chronic pain, and practicing simple Pain Reprocessing Therapy tools to take the fuel (and guesswork) out of the pain experience. To do this, we’ll:

‣ Tap into the latest neuroscience to understand how pain is constructed in your brain. If you change your thinking you can change your pain.

‣ Identify your specific triggers so that you stop (unknowingly) perpetuating the pain cycle.

‣ Practice simple mindfulness exercises to turn down the volume on your pain.

‣ Learn alongside a solid crew of 5-10 men who are all in the same boat, and understand what it is you’re going through.

Details:

‣ This pilot program will take place over 5 weeks, Wednesdays from March 20th, 2024 through April 17th, 2024.

‣ Your program includes five weekly, 90-minute group sessions via Zoom from 7:00pm-8:30pm Central time.

‣ Investment: $350 (this is a pilot program, take advantage of this pricing now!)

‣ Registration deadline is Friday, March 15th at 5pm Central time.

More details and registration here: https://www.somamike.com/groups

02/22/2024

Excited to be a teaching assistant for the first-ever Hakomi Somatic Coaching Certificate Program starting in April. Check out this short conversation I had this week about integrating Hakomi into my coaching practice with Ketriellah Goldfeder, co-creator and trainer for the program.

And if you're a coach, this is a great opportunity to learn how to integrate core Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychology methodology into your coaching framework. The focus will be on developing mindful and somatic awareness practices to deepen the client’s personal process in transformational coaching containers.

I'd love to see you there! Check the comments for links to the course and info sessions.

Join Ketriellah Goldfeder, Certified Hakomi Practitioner, and Mike Williams, Certified Hakomi Practitioner and Mind Body Coach. Mike shares more about his pr...

12/07/2023

Transformation, by definition, is never safe.

To transform an aspect of your life requires you to break out of what’s known, predictable, and most likely, comfortable.

Aiming at something new & big through logic and precise, comfortable planning frames your thinking through the lens of the things you already know, so most likely, nothing new will happen.

Unplugging from our lives to travel South America for a year required my family and I to lean just beyond our comfort zone and not fully know how everything would come together.

And if we can do it, you can too.

Check out my blog "Get Out Over Your Skis" for more -- https://www.somamike.com/blog2/transformational-work

11/12/2023

Fantastic to see Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) featured this last week on the Today Show!

Interested in learning more? Comment below or reach out with questions/curiosities!

More than 50 million Americans suffer from chronic back pain — but a new drug-free groundbreaking treatment, pain reprocessing therapy, is helping patients a...

07/25/2023

50 million adults in the US alone are reported to suffer chronic pain (that number jumps to 1.2 billion adults globally!).

Chronic pain defines our lives, limits what we can do, and perhaps most importantly, limits what we think we can do.

The old paradigm for solving chronic pain tells us that something’s wrong with your body, that something’s broken and you need to fix it. Pain is a thing to conquer.

The new paradigm understands that your pain doesn’t live in your body; it lives in your nervous system. Your body is not broken. We simply need to teach your brain that your body is safe.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is a cutting-edge, mindfulness-based system of psychological techniques that retrains the brain to respond appropriately to signals from the body, breaking the cycle of chronic pain.

To learn more, check out my latest blog -- "Pain Reprocessing Therapy: From Pain to Empowered" -- https://www.somamike.com/blog2/pain-reprocessing-therapy-austin

07/08/2023

30,000 (!) 'unnecessary' spine surgeries performed in the 1st year of the pandemic.

When you're experiencing chronic pain, it can be very tempting to stick with the idea that something structural must be wrong with your body, and that thing just needs to be fixed.

Unfortunately that's usually not what's going on. Many of these low-value, overused procedures offer little to no clinical benefit or are more likely to harm patients than help them.

Hospitals performed more than 100,000