The Journal

Joe has been an inspirational mentor and teacher in terms of the holistic management of pain, and I have completed his courses on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as well as nutrition for chronic pain. 

In this episode, it was a fantastic opportunity for me to discuss the principles of trauma-informed care and how our understanding of the management of chronic pain needs to incorporate the understanding of trauma, including PTSD, where the entire immune and nervous system are under extreme threat and sympathetic arousal. This continues to be a very important topic, I hope you enjoy this interview and I certainly enjoyed this chat with Joe.

Matt is a sports therapist and running coach with a major interest in movement and pain science.

In this episode, I talk about my book, The Pain-Free Mindset, my workaround setting up the community pain services, as well as the long COVID service. Matt was a great interviewer and this was especially a great talk around touch-based therapies. Even though there may not be the high-quality evidence that organisations usually ask for, I feel that touch therapies provide a great many of benefits when viewed from an evolutionary perspective of protection and safety with regards to pain and the neural circuits. I hope you like this interview.

The Connect Health Webinar series calls for a more concerted call for better ways to think about pain management. I was part of a very excellent international panel of clinicians including Cormac Ryan, Lorimer Moseley, and lived experience patients like Niki Jones, to start changing the conversation on how we manage pain. I talk about a need for a change in mindset across primary, secondary and community care by adopting a trauma–informed approach to pain practise. If you want to listen to my talk then go directly to the 46th minute.