The experience of pain can disrupt our lives on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis. The amount of mental, emotional, and physical energy necessary to battle chronic pain can leave us exhausted and demoralized, with little hope for relief. Relationships suffer; jobs are lost. Pain limits our possibilities, shrinks our world, clouds our perceptions, and leaves us less engaged with our families and in our lives.
But when we’re able to find relief from pain, the whole world changes. Once fearful of movement, we can return to and enjoy our favorite activities, from taking long walks to playing tennis to running around with our children or grandchildren. Without the mental and physical distraction of pain plaguing us, we can be present and enjoy our time with loved ones. We can forgo dependence on others and reclaim our independence, our freedom. We can once again carry our own groceries, walk up and down stairs, and tend to our own gardens. Our lives, once dimmed by pain, become brighter and full of promise.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not. I promise you, healing from chronic pain—an actual cure for your pain—is possible. Unfortunately, the current medical approach to treating pain is not to heal it, but to manage it. Chronic pain is seen as something to be minimized or muted or coped with, rather than to be permanently fixed. In an effort to rescue their patients from pain, many doctors’ primary focus has been on providing immediate relief through pharmaceuticals. But we now know that short-term solutions, though temporarily effective, carry tremendous risk.
Today America is in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic that has quadrupled in the last decade, claiming lives on a minute-by-minute basis. Drug overdoses have become the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, and opioids have driven this epidemic. In 2014 alone, almost nineteen thousand overdose deaths were linked to prescription pain relievers—almost twice as many deaths as those linked to heroin.1 Despite their widespread use, opioids provide only fleeting relief from pain, with patients quickly building up a tolerance. Our quest for a quick fix has left us in the midst of an ever more dangerous public health crisis and, tragically, much further from the true pain cure we need.
Thankfully, in recent years, neurologists have begun to uncover evidence that we can, indeed, heal from pain—not just block it or mask it. And as with many forms of healing, the most powerful natural remedy does not come in the form of a pill—it comes from within our own bodies.
Correct Exercise Is the Silver Bullet
We know that we need to exercise to stay fit. Your doctors have likely encouraged you to exercise regularly—but their suggestions were probably focused on promoting heart health, balancing your blood sugar, or helping you lose a few pounds. We are told, simply, that exercise is good—we should all just do some exercise, any exercise, to remain healthy. However, such general recommendations do nothing to address the issue of healing pain. In fact, though this guidance may be well intentioned, the lack of specificity is a problem. When exercise programs are taken to an extreme, they are often counterproductive, aging the body and laying the foundation for chronic pain.
It’s time for a new approach. We need to recognize that how we exercise matters. Rather than unquestioningly follow the anything-is-better-than-nothing approach, we need to be very conscious of what type of exercise we’re prescribing for ourselves. We need a complete mind shift around movement.
To heal our pain, stay youthful and limber, and prevent premature aging, we need to focus on exercises that refresh our tissues and reawaken our cells. Such movements can help us maintain peak function throughout our lives—not just in our youth. We need to put a high premium on balance, clean alignment, muscle strength, and full connective tissue mobility. To make it accessible to everyone, this approach should also be very simple: it should require little to no equipment; use only a small amount of space; and be versatile enough to be done anytime, anywhere. If we can incorporate this type of exercise program into our daily lives, we should be able not only to help our heart, reduce our blood sugar, and maybe shed a few pounds but also to reverse age-related decline, heal our bodies, and cure our chronic pain.
Essentrics—the method of dynamic stretching and strengthening that I have taught to millions of people with my PBS show, Classical Stretch, can do just that. I first created the Essentrics technique to heal my own chronic pain. As it has evolved, Essentrics has been influenced by several disciplines, drawing on the flowing movements of tai chi to create health and balance; the strengthening theories of ballet to create long, lean, flexible muscles; and the healing principles of physical therapy and scientific studies to create a pain-free body.
One of the greatest joys of my life is teaching people the Essentrics method and watching them reemerge into the light from the cloud of chronic pain. The Essentrics method uses “eccentric” exercises—those that simultaneously strengthen and lengthen muscle—to rebalance the body’s muscular structure through continuous rotational movements. It incorporates various techniques while systematically working every joint in the body. The basis of the workout is a dynamic combination of strength and flexibility exercises designed to gently open the joints by elongating the muscles and challenging them in the lengthened position. This full-body technique works through the muscle chains, liberating and empowering the muscles, relieving them from tension in the process.
Essentrics workouts—comprised of deliberate, focused movements done in a specific sequence—can unlock long-standing knots, rebuild flexibility into stiffened joints, and reduce all types of musculoskeletal and myofascial pain. While I’ve known for years that Essentrics can sometimes trigger spontaneous healing of pain, we were never quite certain of the mechanisms involved. But recent studies have revealed that Essentrics is able to heal pain by tapping into a previously unknown pathway that flows directly through the fascia—the connective tissue—itself.
Researchers now know that fascia, once thought to function simply as the packing material that holds the body together, plays a much more significant role in the body, transmitting messages of pain or pleasure, tension or relaxation, inflammation or healing. Chinese medicine recognized this principle two thousand years ago with the introduction of acupuncture, still one of the most effective natural remedies for pain relief. Today, it’s been proved that Essentrics taps into this innate whole-body healing network, sending healing messages to various body systems at once. In fact, thanks to its full-body rebalancing approach, Essentrics may trigger the very same self-healing mechanisms in the body that acupuncture does—but without the needles!
Regardless of whether or not we will eventually be able to pinpoint the exact mechanisms involved in the healing process, the most important thing to know about Essentrics is something I have known—and witnessed firsthand—for decades: It often cures pain. And when used consistently, Essentrics allows us to rebuild lost strength, to regain hope, and to remain sustainably pain-free for the rest of our lives without dependence on drugs or expensive medical treatments.
I do want to be clear: if the joint degeneration is extreme, as in the case of advanced arthritis, complete pain relief may not be possible. However, some degree of pain relief likely can be achieved by decompressing the joint through stretching and strengthening. We can rebuild muscle strength and flexibility—but sadly, we cannot rebuild destroyed bone.
Our bodies hold the most powerful, versatile, and effective keys to unlocking our pain—we just need to know how to use them.
What This Book Will Do for You
This book will help you understand what might be causing your pain so that you can begin to cure it. It will also teach you how your cells, connective tissue, blood, muscles, and joints react when you do the right exercise, the wrong exercise, or—the worst—no exercise.
In part 1, you’ll learn how people have been misunderstanding and thus perpetuating pain for decades. I’ll talk about some of the most common causes of pain, many of which we bring upon ourselves. You’ll learn about the groundbreaking research that’s revolutionizing our understanding of chronic pain. And you’ll see why a well-constructed rebalancing exercise program—not a dangerous drug or medical treatment—is the only sustainable, healthy, and effective means to permanently prevent and alleviate many types of pain.
Part 2 offers detailed exercise workouts designed to heal the body of specific types of chronic pains. Chapter 5 presents a basic warm-up routine that must not be overlooked—it is essential to warm up properly before you begin any workout. Next you’ll make your way through several sequences of movements, each targeted to heal a particular area of the body. While these routines are meant to address specific pain pathways, you’ll find that they are often appropriate for other types of pain within each region. For example, while ten different people may have ten different causes of hip pain, similar exercises can be helpful for each. A hip is a hip—it has a torso on top and legs underneath! The hips all work with the same muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints, and connective tissue. An Essentrics hip-pain workout rebalances the full anatomical structure of the hip, so it addresses the various causes of pain simultaneously. Chapters 6 to 14 offer specific routines for pain associated with certain body parts such as knees, hips, backs, and shoulders, or for conditions that cause pain, like fibromyalgia or arthritis. All the exercises in part 2 are drawn from the Essentrics technique, and all have been successfully used by tens of thousands of people to relieve their pain.
Along the way, you’ll also read stories from people like you who suffered from chronic pain and have found lasting relief using Essentrics. You may find yourself relating to or empathizing with their years of suffering. My hope is that you’ll also find inspiration and encouragement in their perseverance. Their dramatic experiences show us that real relief from chronic pain is within reach.
For almost two decades, it has been my mission to help people live vibrant, pain-free lives at every age. When we understand what’s going on inside our bodies, we are able to make clear decisions about how to keep ourselves pain-free, healthy, and vital. No matter what your age, no matter how long you’ve been in pain, I believe you can heal. I believe you can be free. I believe Essentrics can help you be painless, forever.