Pain Science Education

As always, I am delighted and honored to be spending this time with you. I recorded an episode on embodied cognition and the body's role in thought with Psychologist Rebecca Fincher-Kiefer. In that episode, we discuss the importance of using the body as a therapeutic tool for helping modulate difficult emotions or thoughts that people may encounter from chronic pain or other various chronic health conditions. As physical therapists, using the body as a tool for healing from pain or other conditions, whether it's physical or mental, is a big part of what we do. In this episode, we're going to go deeper into how to use the body, including how to use exercise and physical activity to improve pain as well as mental wellbeing with Dr. Jennifer Heisz. She is an expert in brain health. She's an Associate Professor and Canada research chair in Brain Health and Aging in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University. She directs the NeuroFitLab, which has attracted over $1 million to support her research program on the effects of exercise and physical activity on brain health. Her award-winning research examines the effects of physical activity on brain function to promote mental health and wellbeing in young adults, older adults and individuals with Alzheimer's disease. She has a new book coming out called Move The Body, Heal The Mind, which examines the latest research on how exercise can help you overcome anxiety, depression and dementia, improve focus and creativity, sleep better and even improve chronic pain. Without further ado, let's begin with Dr. Jennifer Heisz and learn about how we can use exercise and physical activity to improve brain health. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

If you have been following along with this show for some time, you know the one area that interests me. A question I often ask myself and propose to you is how can we educate the public about effective pain management and raise awareness of the physical therapy profession? I have been working with a select group of professionals one-on-one on different types of outreach projects and protocols as well as connecting with innovative physical therapists who have created practice models or businesses that center on health promotion or raise awareness of the PT profession. In this episode, you will meet Dr. Jazmine Tooles. She is a physical therapist who created the business called Explore the Magic of Motion. Explore the Magic of Motion was created in 2012 to raise awareness of the physical therapy profession. The way Jazmine achieved this was by working with the Girl Scouts of America to develop an approved Girl Scouts patch or badge. Jazmine is also a lifetime Girl Scout herself and created these patch programs to teach 6th to 12th grade Scouts about healthy living through exercise while also having them investigate the professions that utilize exercise for healing such as physical therapy.   Fast forward, Explore the Magic of Motion is a full business that has reached over 500 participants since its inception. It has grown to provide an interactive health and wellness learning experience not only for the community but also for clinicians as well as students. In this episode, you will learn about how Jazmine developed Explore the Magic of Motion, its history, what it offers now, and who it serves. Without further ado, let’s begin and meet Dr. Jazmine Tooles.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

In this episode, we are discussing embodied cognition and the role of bodily processes in thought. In the field of pain care, we strongly lean on theories of how the brain works and how we can use the nervous system to modulate pain. Many of these theories are rooted in the idea that the brain is the seat of cognition and views the brain as a CEO, which controls both thinking as well as our body. However, newer theories such as embodied cognition take a different perspective which emphasizes the significance of the physical body in our cognitive abilities. Embodied cognition is a theory that draws on the work from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, physiology, and even artificial intelligence. This new research points towards bodily processes in forming how our cognition is generated. We are joined by Professor Rebecca Fincher-Kiefer, PhD, who is a Professor of Psychology at Gettysburg College and discusses the potential application of embodied cognition. Her research interests include the investigation of embodied cognition and how all that we know and understand is grounded in our bodies. She's on the cutting edge of this field of study, which includes the publication of a textbook called How the Body Shapes Knowledge: Empirical Support for Embodied Cognition. In this episode, you will learn all about embodied cognition and its potential influence on pain, health, and human behavior. Without further ado, let's learn about embodied cognition and meet Professor Rebecca Fincher-Kiefer, PhD. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

In this episode, we're discussing how mindful movement can shift the experience of exercise or physical activity for people. This is important because the mindful movement can help people exercise in a way that is more fluid and easier, alleviate pain and with body image something they oftentimes struggle with when they begin an exercise program. Some of you may know that as a kid and adolescent and even into college, I was a gymnast. Mindful movement is something that was comfortable for me. However, I didn't fully dive into what mindfulness was with regard to movement until about the year 1997. At my first job at St. Vincent's Medical Center, there was a free yoga class that was offered by a yoga studio down the block called Integral Yoga in New York City's Greenwich Village. It has wonderful yoga classes and I became hooked on yoga as a form of mindful movement. Although I've never become certified in yoga, I've done thousands of hours of many different types of yoga methods and techniques. I always recommend it for people with pain. Somewhere around the year 2000, I worked for a practice here in New York City that specialized in Sports and Performing Arts Medicine. As part of that practice, we use the Pilates method of body conditioning for rehabilitating people with pain, as well as the performing artists and dancers that would come into our clinic. Moving with the mind or mindful movement is a big part of what Joseph Pilates created. He has five principles of mindful movement that he includes in his method, which is called Contrology. They include breathing, centering concentration control as well as precision. You see people bringing in these principles of movement into various types of movement methods and practices. You'll meet Professor Anne Cox, whose research has been focused on understanding key determinants of physical activity-related behaviors as a professor and a researcher, has completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training and uses the knowledge of mindful movement to examine the effects of yoga on things like mindfulness, body image and the promotion of the physical activity. In this episode, you'll learn all about mindful movement and how mindfulness shifts the experience of movement or physical activity? How does yoga increase mindfulness and how does being mindful affects body image or physical activity motivation? Without further ado, let's begin and meet Professor Anne Cox and learn how and why to add mindfulness to physical activity.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

We're going to talk about psychological aspects of pain rehabilitation that physical therapists perceive as important. When we're talking about research, a new topic or providing new information, oftentimes I'm talking to a pain researcher. It may be someone with a PhD or someone who is actively engaged in investigating different aspects of pain from a lifestyle and a biopsychosocial perspective. In this episode, I'm introducing you to Alexa Knuth, who is a student physical therapist. Alexa is a student at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. She is in the last year of her program and she is excited to start a career. Even before she started her career, she had already started to delve into the evidence and contribute to the evidence base by writing a paper called Psychological Aspects of Rehabilitation as Perceived by Physical Therapists. You can all access that. It was published in 2018. I came across it and thought it was important to share with all of you so we're going to be talking about that on the show. Alexa also has an interest in working with and applying psychological techniques to a specific patient population, which is those who are looking to self-manage inflammatory arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis. There are lots of great applications for this work here. We'll talk about that in this episode as well. Overall, we'll talk about the important psychological techniques people can use for self-management and which physical therapists perceive are the most important. As you know, psychologically-based care or psychologically-informed physical therapy is something we often discuss on this show. We teach courses on that at the Integrative Pain Science Institute. You can go over and check out our courses as well as the newly released Psychologically-Informed Pain Practitioner Certification. That's a complete certification that discusses the different multimodal approaches that you can use with regard to cognitive and behavioral interventions as well as whole health interventions for treating people with chronic pain. Without further ado, let's begin and meet Alexa Knuth. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

In this episode, we are discussing perfectionism and stress in the physical therapy students. Stress and burnout in the PT profession are personal interests of mine. I have done some research and explored how to use ACT in preventing burnout and creating resiliency in physical therapists. We briefly explored this topic of perfectionism in episode 217 with physical therapist Andrea Moore. She is a PT who specializes in treating women in overcoming perfectionism, and the intersection between pain and perfectionism. Perfectionism is often caused by having high standards or having a hypercritical evaluation of oneself. Some doctor or physical therapy students experience increased stress when they go through the rather rigorous academic coursework that we take in physical therapy schools. Yet there is limited research in understanding the intersection between stress and perfectionism in the PT students, what the successful behaviors are that these students have that help them manage this increased stress, especially those who are perfectionists coming into the program. Here to discuss perfectionism and stress in the PT student is Professor Mike Richardson. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Doctor of Physical Therapy Program at Hanover College. He is a Doctor of Health Science from the University of Indianapolis. His current research interests include perfectionism and stress among physical therapy students. You will learn all about perfectionism and its prevalence among DPT students, perfectionism’s relationship to stress, and why it is important to better understand the relationship between stress and perfectionism. Finally, what can be done? What strategies can you employ if you are a DPT student or a physical therapist yourself who is looking at the impact of stress on your physical as well as mental well-being? Let's meet professor Mike Richardson and learn all about perfectionism and stress in physical therapy students. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

We're discussing the intersection between PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and CRPS, which is Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. My guest is Dr. Deborah Brandt. She is a retired Doctor of Physical Therapy. She teaches about issues regarding chronic pain and the use of somatic therapy practices. Her personal experience with and the study of complex post-traumatic stress disorder as well as complex regional pain syndrome, which she identifies as being complex psychophysical phenomena, has enriched her comprehension of both issues and provided her with unique tools to communicate her insights and knowledge to others. In this episode, we will discuss treatment options, but more importantly, this episode is an opportunity to hear one's lived experience, which includes her knowledge of PTSD and CRPS gained through her direct firsthand experience rather than learning through textbook-like descriptions, which can be challenging to understand the full complexity of what people go through. Without further ado, let's begin and meet Deborah Brandt and learn about the intersection between PTSD and CRPS. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

In this episode, we are discussing the impact of physical therapy on long-term opioid use for patients undergoing a total knee replacement. My expert guest is Professor Deepak Kumar. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training at Boston University and the Section of Rheumatology at Boston University School of Medicine. He directs the Movement and Applied Imaging Lab at Boston University. The goal of Dr. Kumar's research is to improve the quality and quantity of movement during everyday life in people with knee osteoarthritis to reduce pain, improve physical function and maintain joint health. We're going to review the findings of Professor Kumar’s study called the Association of Physical Therapy Interventions With Long-term Opioid Use After Total Knee Replacement. You can find that article in the October 2021 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. This show has implications for people with chronic pain. Also, there is important information here for opioid use and the positive impact that physical therapy can have on people's lives living with chronic pain. Without further ado, let's begin and let's meet Professor Deepak Kumar. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Healing Pain Podcast Community today: integrativepainscienceinstitute.com Healing Pain Podcast Facebook Healing Pain Podcast Twitter Healing Pain Podcast YouTube Healing Pain Podcast LinkedIn Healing Pain Podcast Instagram