PNMT Mystery of Pain Seminar

For all of us who do various forms of manual therapy, many of the people we treat are in pain. Much of our treatments are to alleviate pain in one form or another. Stepping back, we must ask ourselves how much we really understand the pain process itself. Do we know what pain is? What it means? How it can be amplified or diminished?

These are questions that challenge old assumptions about pain. In the old model, pain was a messenger, a prompt to make us stop some potentially harmful activity. Decartes described it as a rope ringing a bell. The offending stimulus produced a warning bell in the brain to cease activity. For many years, this was the accepted thinking.

The problem is, this model does not really explain our experience in clinical practice. Explain how phantom limb pain fits in the old model? Or a chronic tension headaches? Or a terrible cancer that has no pain until it is too late?

Pain research is one of the most exciting fields of study in health care today. The doors are being blown open with new understanding of the brain and how it works. Far from theoretical, these insights have massive implications for the practice of massage therapy. A deeper model of understanding of pain can help us help our clients better.

To accomplish this, we will:

• See pain as perception and list three ways to alter massage technique to accommodate for this
• List the differences between chronic and acute pain
• Describe the role of somato sensory parts of the brain and how those areas process pain
• Understand and describe the link between memory and pain
• Understand and describe what phantom limb pain has to teach us about pain mechanisms
• List new advances in neurophysiology of pain and how that translates to manual therapy

After exploring the importance of pain science, we will take a gentle walk through the brain, understanding how the brain senses and processes pain. This will be translated right to the treatment table, as you will explore fascinating assumptions about sensory processing. While the process is fun and entertaining, the implications to clinical practice are profound.

The Mystery of Pain is a fascinating journey into the very heart of how you treat pain and suffering. The evening will open new vistas for exploration and your practice may never be the same!

NMT MidWest, Inc • 407 West Windsor Rd. • Champaign, IL 61820 • 866-325-7668
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