Good evening everyone. My name is Charlotte and I will be your chairperson for tonight's webinar, which is focus on your life and notice the pain, session one, pain and the brain. Just to remind everyone that this is a six-week course and all will be available on demand on the website the next day.
Any questions tonight, please pop them in the Q&A box, which we can go through at the end of the session. Tonight I have the pleasure of introducing you to the lovely Doctor Mike Scanlon, who is our presenter and speaker this evening. Mike has worked in in mental health for over 25 years, setting up services as a clinical lead and as a therapist.
Mike is widely published and continues to work on a consultancy basis across the UK and internationally. He is trained to use acceptance and commitment therapy, mindfulness, DNAV and EMDR. Mike also works closely with pain clinicians and pharmacists to offer psychological strategies to help people with pain, manage opioid medications in order to live more meaningful lives.
Mike is a trustee of the award-winning youth mental health charity, The Lowdown, and he works across the country with the Compassion Focused Parenting, CIC, and is a lecturer at the University of Northampton and De Montford University. Mike was also a recent winner of the Bartram Wellbeing Award in 2021. Therefore, with no further delay, I now hand over to Doctor Mike to start tonight's webinar.
Thank you very much, Charlotte. That was it's always odd, isn't it, to, to hear this stuff. But lovely.
So yeah, welcome, welcome to tonight's session and I think . As I look at people coming in now, what, what we try and do is, if anybody's got any questions, if you use that chat function, I think is the best one. And then at the end, what we'll do is we'll pause and we can take questions, which is a really, and, and, explore anything that you have doubts about or worries about.
And I think the more questions, the better. So. I'll just tell you a little bit about how I really became interested in, in pain, .
I suppose working as a therapist, I began to notice about 10 years ago, that significant numbers of people that we were treating for, mainly depression, anxiety, and very often, psychological trauma, were also struggling with comorbid pain. And you would notice it when they came to the therapy room, you know, wincing as they sat down and. Quite often it was almost like a sort of topic that, was incidental to the ongoing mood disorder that they'd come for help with.
And I always used to be curious about the impact that pain would have on them. And I suppose at that stage, I really started to explore this and become very, very interested in it. And it's led me to this point now where I've been running, These, sessions and supporting people with, pain to manage the psychological aspects of, of, of living with that level of discomfort, I suppose, and learning as we do, that pain is incredibly complex.
And if you try and sort of separate pain and the brain, we're making a huge mistake. So I'm hoping you guys will find this just even half as interesting as I think it is, and useful, I hope, because it's a very practical course we're doing today. For instance, a bit later on, we'll be having a go at something, I think it's a bit wizzy actually, and it's relatively new and very evidence-based, and we call it somatic tracking.
And, we were gonna do a live somatic track for tracking session tonight. And then when I send out when. The webinar that send out the recording.
I'll send over to them the recording of the somatic tracking, so you guys can practise it at home, because it can, that exercise itself really kicks us off into this course with something that works straight away. And that's important. So One of the things I've learned over the last 10 years of working with pain, and working with pain a lot, is that sometimes when we are in our darkest, most difficult times with pain, when it feels like it might never subside, when we might never get a break from it, we do.
Tragically find ourselves in a place where we feel very bleak, and I would still say, despite the press stuff about, you know, if you get an appointment with your GP send a postcard celebrating. I just don't believe that that's true, where we have a definite real need to speak to somebody. And I would always recommend that if you are struggling, you ask to see your emergency GP.
And you, you just insist. And these days, what they'll probably do is contact you. Maybe in the same way as you guys would as vets, perhaps, or people working in the veterinary industry, but there will be a telephone triage then.
And if they really feel that you need or you're struggling at a level where you, you really need support, primary care is still the gateway to services. And there is a new workforce, so if you are currently struggling with pain. And it's impacting on your mood, or struggling with the pain medication.
And it doesn't just have to be the opioids, all medications, as, we all know, have significant side effects, and pain medication, particularly so. Now, in nearly all primary care practises now across the country, there's a new workforce, and they're called the prescribing advisors. And I would always recommend to clients I see for 1 to 1 therapy.
If you have questions, or if, for instance, the new NICE guidance for National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidance for medicating pain. Recommends first line, antidepressant therapy, and I'll just let that sink in. Yep, I did say it for pain, NICE guidance recommends antidepressant medication because some of the antidepressants will actually help alleviate some of the pain sensation.
But the increasing body of evidence, and remember our session tonight is called Pain in the Brain. Is beginning to recognise that if we're struggling with depression or anxiety that accompanies the pain, then an antidepressant can really help make a difference to your lived experience of managing pain. Not just by improving mood.
For instance, we know that a certain antidepressant called duloxetine is absolutely wonderful for neuropathic pain. So, if you're sitting there listening to me tonight and you think, do you know, I didn't know that, and I really would like a greater degree of pain management, and my mood is struggling too, as is so common in people living with pain, then my recommendation is, go to somebody who really know this stuff in detail. So, you contact your GP practise and ask if they've got a prescribing advisor.
And they're very, very expert generally on pain medication and on this whole area. So I, I, I, I think that's hopefully really good advice for you guys. Anyone got any questions on that?
You know, do ask at the end, or you, you, you feel doubtful, you think, maybe I would prefer to see the GP. The main reason, I suppose, I would say, go see your prescribing advisor is my clients tell me that an appointment with the prescribing advisor to talk about medication tends to be a 30 to 40 minute, appointment, whereas an appointment with the GP to talk about medication. Just because of the weight of pressure on GPs at the moment, you'd be, you would be surprised if you were there for longer than 10 minutes.
So, I hope that's just some food for thought. And I will put this slide up every week, but I won't spend so long on it. Just because I think knowing that reminding people that, yep, it can be a struggle is very, very important.
So If you have a look at this slide here, and I'm just, you know, I'm working with a lot of people who have, I'm guess, I, well, I know that a lot of you have vast medical knowledge, you know, and you probably will have a good, a very good understanding of pain, because you probably work with it in your clients as such, on, on a daily basis. And so, I would just like to bear that in mind, but The wonderful, Dawn and others from the webinar that did send out a, a, a, a film and the pain booklet that accompanies tonight's session. And in there, if you've got a chance, and please, I know how busy everyone is, so if you didn't get a chance, don't worry.
But I would really recommend that if you think you'd like to. Explore this a little bit more and learn a little bit more than. I suppose what we're going to cover in tonight's session, I really would recommend that you go on and have a look.
I would also recommend that there's a wonderful, resource online called Pain is Weird. And Pain is Weird is my sort of way of keeping up to date with the very latest, shifts in psychological management of pain. But that site really does, it's, it's a really friendly site, but it does have some wonderful, podcasts, some wonderful stories.
Some great resources, just so that we can get really comfortable with how much we sort of know about pain. So, if you look at this here, where one is, do you know what, at the moment, I really don't know that much about, pain. So I'm probably right down there.
And if you think to yourself, you know, I'm a 9 or a 10, then that's interesting. And we've just had, we never use, surnames on, on this, as you know, but I think it was Lisa just came through to say she was at a 3 or a 4. That's pretty good, Lisa.
Now, I'm assuming, Lisa, that maybe you haven't had a chance to watch the Lorimer Moseley film yet, because it's just the most fabulous film, and we'll come to that later. But also, you may not have had a chance to have a. A real look at, a real look at the stuff I sent out as well.
Sophie's just come back with a 5. Just be really curious, anyone else out there, it's quite fun to get a sense of where we all are on this one. So, do we have any tens out there where people are thinking, do you know, I don't know this stuff.
Nina's 2 to 3, Alison's 7 to 8. Yeah, really interesting. And do you know what, even after doing this for 10 years, I reckon I'd put myself on about a 7 or an 8, because it is incredibly complex stuff.
And I think I've learned enough to understand and to work with people's psychological pain. But, I, I love learning more, so maybe by the end of the course we'll be even higher. So we do have, as people's, as, as you're sending this through to me, pretty much we're looking at sort of round about 2 to 3, up to 7 to 8, and that's, that, that's pretty grand.
So, . Let's see, at the end of the course, maybe we'll pop this slide back up and see whether people are feeling heaps more sort of knowledgeable and comfortable with their knowledge of pain. And the brain And here he is, the great Lorimer Moseley, and just if any of you have seen this film Why Things Hurt?
Well, you'd be recommending it. I just think Lorimer is one of those speakers I was telling the guys at Webinar there earlier, that I went to hear him speak. I don't know, 56 years ago.
And, you don't, you rarely come out of a talk like that with your sides aching, in, in pain, I suppose, with aching sides, because it was really funny and interesting. But I just came out of that with, with, with so much of a more clear insight into the role of, the brain and, and the threat mechanism of the brain, and how that threat mechanism of the brain can. Absolutely boss our experience of our pain.
So, as a slide says, what Lorimer takes us through is a series of stories where it illustrates that pain itself can be seen as a real motivator, and the job of pain from your brain's perspective, particularly the frontal cortex, is it exists to get us to act in certain ways. So, broadly speaking, we hurt. When our our brains reckon we should do something differently to make things a little bit more safe.
Even though safety's not always possible, and it doesn't matter about sort of what's causing the pain. Pretty much the brain we know just worries too much and if somebody is living with pain, our brains almost assume that we're living with pain, ergo, that human being is also living, living with quite considerable threat and so. If you think about the role of the amygdala, the frontal cortex, its job is to keep us safe at any cost, you know, it will send us horrible negative beliefs about ourselves if it thinks it will help us to be safe.
It will give us exaggerated startle response if it believes it will keep us safe, and it will. Help send us many more. Pain signals to the pain receptors in our body, if it believes we're under threat and we're not paying enough attention to whatever that threat can be.
Now, the problem with the amygdala is it doesn't really know whether the threat is real or imagined, or whether it's old or whether it's new. So what it sends us is a sort of amalgamation of that. And what we experience as human beings is, oh God, that really hurts and.
That aches and I'm in terrific pain. And our response to that pain, similarly, if you think about it, if we respond to any threat that comes our way, what we tend to do as human beings is we pull away from it. We, sort of hold our hands out in front of us and we, we, we may even find ourselves, oh God, will you go away?
And we want it to go away, so we meet it as though it's a threat. Sometimes we close our eyes when we're in pain, as though we could almost see the threat coming. Now, unfortunately, what our amygdala does then, our frontal cortex does then, is it doesn't know the source of all of this incredible threat.
It's making no sense. So if there is injury of any level, there is damage to the body at any level. In order to make us safe, it will send us bum.
An increase in our pain experience. So Lorimer tells this . This wonderful story about, you know, he, he's, he's walking, I'll just say, oh, we've jumped.
I'll just come in, yeah, so. Oh, brilliant. Dawn's just put the link of, of the slide there, she's very helpful, isn't she?
So, he tells this story about how he's walking in the outback, he's Australian, and, all of a sudden he gets this, really, really sharp pain, really sharp pain in his foot, and, you know, he's an, he, he's an Aussie, he's not wearing proper shoes for walking out in the outback. And he knows a lot about the flora and fauna of the Australian outback. And his fear brain sends him a message and says, you've just been bitten by something really, really venomous.
And he goes into an absolute panic, and in the talk, he describes the pain as being just off the scale. And he describes his sense of how he has to lie down, and he can't wait bear, and he can't do anything with it. And he becomes convinced that the venom is creeping up his leg and he feels the pain beginning to spread through his body.
And then a bit later on he discovers that it's a thorn. You know, and there is no threat. And he kind of like, you know, gives himself a bit of a hard time for being such a wuss.
And being Australian, he just gets on with himself and does whatever Australians do when they're hurt. And then a little while later, he's on another one of his hikes, and he gets almost exactly the same sharp pain in the same part of the foot. But this time, his, his brain says, Oh God, what's that terrible pain?
But he uses his reasoning brain, and he said, Well, it'll just be a thorn, you know, because the pain's almost the same as it was last time. And I'm in the same sort of terrain, and I'm not wearing, you know, he's not a man who learns from this, and I'm not wearing great boots. So I'll be OK because.
We get flipping big thorns in Australia, so it won't kill me, it won't do me any damage. And he just goes merrily on his way, and then he wakes up in hospital, and he's actually been bitten by a carpet snake, and the carpet snake, has got its venom into him, and he only just survives the experience. And when he wakes up and he says, whatever happened, they say you've been bitten by a carpet snake.
And then the pain is excruciating. But the pain that he felt when he was bitten by the carpet snake initially wasn't as bad as it was the first time when it was only a thorn, because of his brain's potential to overstate the danger, you know? And it did that in the first time.
And then, interestingly, he used the hindbrain to sort of learn from it and. Try and make sense of it, but in truth, I think that story tells us that the pain, our pain and our brain are inextricably linked. So.
When we think back to the, I think I've probably changed the title of the, I, I often do this, you know, I look at the title and think, oh, I know a better course. And I suppose when we look back at the title of tonight's session, focus on your life and notice the pain, let me explain that. It's because I think so many people I see who have ongoing difficult.
Interruptive pain and they live with it. And what we know is so many people in the veterinary profession do incur quite severe injury that leads to pretty severe and enduring pain. And when we live with that level of enduring pain, I've witnessed this so much, people start to live their lives focusing way too much.
On the pain that they're living with. To the detriment of . Of, of, of actually their lives.
And so we get this switch around where we focus on the pain and almost merely notice the rest of our lives because the pain becomes so all pervading. So my aim really for the cause is not, hold on, don't all switch off at this point, please. It's not, you know, Mike Scanlon will take your pain away because I really won't.
But what I will do, I will help you to, rebalance your lives. I will help you to move to a point where you're, you've got your pain in a much better managed place, and for a significant number of you, by the end of the 6 weeks. My suggestion is, and this is nearly always the case when we do this work, is that your experience of pain will be much easier.
And for some of you, you may actually find that your pain management takes less time and your lived experience of living with pain. Is that the pain feels less. There you go.
But we can't take pain away. If we could, if somebody invents some way to take pain away, then, we, we, that person is going to be the richest person on the planet, I would suggest. So that's Relook at that whole stance.
So some people will only want to engage in the activities and the practises that I'm gonna share over the 6 weeks. If we can sort of guarantee my, you know, if I put time, effort, and headspace into some of these, into some of these strategies, into some of these activities, into some of these experiences and experiential learning processes that you're going to encourage us to do, Mike Scanlon. Then I'm only gonna do it if you promise it'll take the pain away.
Yeah. Some people actually, by the end of the course, do experience subjectively an improvement in their pain symptoms. But Let me come back on that.
I hate the word but it's like a, it's like a glottal stop, isn't it? And. Many people will finish a course like this, especially this course cos it's good, happier, more confident.
Look at this next bit, sleeping better. And actively more connected to the people in your lives in matter. And find yourself doing more of the stuff that matters to you.
And when I look at that, I think, well. Do you know what, that ain't half bad. If we can achieve the, the bottom.
Paragraph there and finish this course feeling happier, more confident, sleeping better. And living a richer, fuller, more meaningful life. Then I, I, I think that's not a bad outcome.
And why they ask, cause Mike, . Brought up this picture of the wonderful Judy Garland, wasn't it, in The Wizard of Oz now, . I'll explain.
It, it kind of helps, I think, to use metaphor, to help us, get a hold, understand fully what's going on inside our heads and what the role of our brain will be. So Lorimer Moseley describes it in his way, and Mike Scanlon prefers to use the Wizard of Oz. So, if you look at this scene from The Wizard of Oz, this is the scene.
That I believe happens in our heads almost every time that our brain equates an increased level of threat with the pain that we're, that we're that that that we're experiencing. So let's just, I, I, I'm just hoping that, I think it's unlikely that anybody hasn't seen the, Wizard of Oz, this version, certainly, because it's on, it was on every Christmas in, about 40 countries around the world every year for about the last 30 years, wasn't it? And if you remember, they, they, they're, they're following the yellow brick road, and they're trying to find their way to .
To, to, to get the ruby slippers, and when they get the ruby slippers, that will take them to this place, place again, back to Kansas, where everything will be lovely again, you know, pain-free canvas, Kansas, I'll call it there. Now, if you remember what happens, eventually they get to the palace of the wizard, and the wizard does not want them to go. And visit the Wicked Witch of the Southwest, because the wizard's job is to keep everybody safe on Oz, you know?
And he's a grumpy old wizard. And his job is to keep everybody safe. So if you recall this part of the film, we see Dorothy, Tin Man, the, the, the cowardly lion and the scarecrow, and the little dog Toto.
And we see them coming towards the throne of the the wizard. And at that point this terrifying loud voice says, go away, leave! And it threatens them and tells them terrible things will happen unless they react adversely and run like mad, unless they buy into the threat response and escape quickly, act on it.
So the whiz is motivating them to get out of his place and to get safe quickly because he knows that the Wicked Witch of the Southwest can turn you to dust, you know, she's. And they're flying monkeys, do you remember those? Deeply unpleasant.
And so they, they run back towards the doors and then Dorothy stops and says, no, no, we've come this far, we're not just gonna stop. And they come closer again, so the whiz, the wizard pulls out every stop, and this time it's not just, the special effects, audio effects, it's not just that booming voice. This time there's poofs of smoke and flame and a very, very scary image.
Suddenly the special effect of this terrifying image overwhelms poor Dorothy and her crew, and this time they are running for the hills. Apart from. Of course you vets have got it.
The little dog, cause, you know, how clever are dogs, and the dog notices that, the curtain's twitching at the side, and the dog runs over and pulls the curtain aside, and this is what we see, this exact scene. They look in and there's this little old chap. Pretty harmless.
With His sole intent to keep everybody safe, and he's pulling levers, and he's upping the special effects, and he's doing whatever he can to make them. Act as though this is a real genuine threat, although obviously it's not, he's just a little old man with lots of machines. And for me, this is what the brain does.
So when we meet our pain, when we're in real pain, if we meet it with adversity, if we meet it with, oh God, please, please, please go away, if we, if the brain hears us weirdly, saying stuff like, I can't cope with this anymore. If we are wincing, if we are responding to the pain in . Ah, oh, all this sort of stuff, you know, as we, of course, do, because pain is horrible.
I don't know if any of you know me terribly well from the other stuff I've done, but my best experience of pain, when I really experienced this, I was on morphine for a while, was, doing the Land's End to John O'Groats cycle ride. And I came flying off and broke my neck in 3 places, and my back in 6 places and ruptured my spleen and all that sort of stuff. And I do remember my pain was much worse when I was connected to my memories, my traumatic memories of, waking up and initially thinking, oh my God, I think I'm gonna die.
And at that moment, the pain was worse than at any other time. And, My own experience of this is very much that when the pain showed up, I would really try and make it go away, even though I'd been working in this sort of field for a number of years. So the first exercise that I'd like us to do together tonight is called somatic tracking.
Now, the whole idea of somatic tracking is that we need to change our relationship, our emotional, psychological, some would say spiritual relationship with the pain that our brain sends us. We need to change our relationship because every time we respond to pain. As though it is genuine threat, then the brain perceives that as genuine threat, and so it sends more pain to make us act.
And if we're not acting in enough of a visceral, make it go away way, then the pain will send us more, our brain will send us more pain. One of the ways to gain some psychological mastery over this process is. To use somatic tracking.
Let me explain a bit more. We know that we can use eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing now works well, particularly for pain associated with stuff like fibromyalgia or pain that stems from a traumatic injury. And again, in my reading.
In preparation for delivering this course to the veterinary profession, I came across a number of studies that pointed out to accidents at work being responsible for an awful lot of the pain that vets find themselves in and came across accounts of people having limbs broken by horses, bites by dogs, scratches by cats, and sometimes the pain and the injury is almost career threatening. And it's tho those sort of injuries, particularly, we would use EMDR to try and help. Now, the way EMDR works, neurologically speaking, is in essence, when somebody is connected to their fear and their pain, but their eyes are moving from side to side with rapid eye movements similar to REM sleep.
Essentially, what we know now is that as any human being, and I don't know about animals, but I guess it might be the case, as we move forwards, our eyes move from side to side bilaterally. So they've side side, side side, side side like that. And so the brain associates rapid eye movement with moving forward.
And if we're moving towards something. Well, we can't be scared of it, can we? And so the whole process of approaching our pain.
Using our superpower of curiosity, because this is the other magical thing about somatic tracking, really, is that the moment our brain switches into the curious place, it largely switches off that fear response. So we're going into a whole new brain hemisphere, and do you know what? Curiosity done used wisely, always leads to reward.
You know, if I'm curious about a situation. And I get an answer. The answer is my reward for my curiosity.
So somatic tracking seems to work by pushing our brains away from the pain experience, even though we are approaching the pain and letting in curiosity. And That curiosity, coupled with that sense of moving towards, makes a real difference to pain. Now, like with any of these sort of approaches, to get the most out of somatic tracking.
And unashamedly here because I know how busy. People in the veterinary profession here are, I've been working with, the webinar vet, working with vets for years and years and years now. And you guys are busy.
You know, you're, you're busy, busy, driven people. And then I'm gonna come along and say, well, to make this really work for you, you are gonna need to practise your somatic tracking, probably at least daily, and ideally, once or twice. And for that very reason, it needs to be short.
And manageable. So all of the meditations, all of the somatic tracking, everything we do on this course for the next 6 weeks is aimed at vets and people working in the veterinary profession, bearing in mind that if I ask you to do an hour's homework every night, you're not gonna do it. But if I say to you, in between, patients or in between clients or in between animals, every now and then, just ask, you know, I need 10 minutes.
I hear some of you scoffing already, but, you know, value yourselves. I need 10 minutes. And in that 10 minutes, find the audio recording, .
And practise. And get great at it. And the more we do this, the more the brain starts to go, hang on a minute.
He, she is now approaching the pain from a very different perspective, and that is the beginning of the improvement. So Let's do a short, about the same length as the one we're going to send you. Somatic tracking exercise.
So I would ask you all please to Sit in a position where you're comfortable. I'm not so comfortable that, my, sonorous voice. As I'm sometimes told, sends you guys to sleep cos that really won't help, but it might, but it won't help in the way I want to help.
So if we get ourselves comfortable. And if you're able to just close your eyes. If that's a problem, half close your eyes.
But your eyes should be soft and relaxed. And let's start. So we start our somatic tracking by centering our attention.
Right into our bodies. And in order to do that, Let's just take our attention outside of the room. That you're working in with me tonight.
And just listen And can we hear anything at all out there? And I can just hear a car. Just kind of purring past outside.
And then bring your attention in this room. The room that you're working in. And listen.
What can you hear? And then Escort your attention right in and find your breath. Just you Breathing and listen.
Can you hear the in breath? Can you catch the sound of the outbreath? And now assented.
And our mind is. Connected to our body. And the mechanisms of breath.
And staying alive. We're breathing. And now I'd like you guys to really find that courage to take a chance with me tonight.
And deliberately on purpose. Go look, see if you can find where your pain is sitting right now. Right at this moment now.
Maybe escort your attention from the top of your body, your scalp down. Over your face, your shoulders, your neck, your chest. Down into your torso.
Both legs feet. So When you find your pain. I just ask you to settle your attention on it a bit like.
Almost a light shining that finds where this pain is. And this warming soft curious light. Just settles and illuminates.
Wherever that pain is sitting. And as we find it, I'd just like you to. Move towards it.
And find a real Curiosity, that superpower of curiosity, I want you to ask yourself, so. I found my pain. And If my pain had a size to it.
Would it be A small grape sized. Pay entity Would it be like An orange. Size of an orange.
Would it be bigger? Would it be a grapefruit sized pain? Would it be a real Hefty melon sized area of pain, is it a real big area of pain, get a sense of the size.
Of your pain Notice if your brain distracts you because it will notice if your mind wanders somewhere else. Because your brain won't like you doing this. Because it likes being the boss of you.
You smile at the brain, you say no. I'm staying with this exercise. And we find With a real cure, so what is the size of my pain?
Get your answer, get your reward. Yeah, OK, and If my pain. Had a colour.
Would it be just one colour? Would it be two colours? Would it be a bright?
Shiny vibrant colour or would it be a dull Subdued dark colour. Try and get a sense of the reward of the answer. Yeah, maybe, I think my pay might be quite a dull pain.
Yeah, so maybe it's a kind of purply black. You go explore what colour your pain is. And keep moving forward.
Keep leaning into your pain. Letting your brain know that you're not frightened. You're not pulling away.
You're leaning in with real genuine curiosity. And If your pain Could emanate or emit a sound. What sound would come from Your pain Would it be a shriek of pain?
Would it be a low Irritating hum. Would it be an intermittent? Ble So we find The sizes of the pain we lean in.
We find the colour. Of our pain and we lean in. And we find the sound.
Of our pain And we lean in And we Sit with that pain. And we apply curiosity to it. And we meet it differently.
And we smile. Because we've just managed to Completely change our relationship with our pain we are no longer. Pushing back We are no longer flinching we are.
Leaning in With curiosity Somatic tracking And when we're ready, very gently just come back to the room. Now, each week. I'm going to be offering.
Either somatic tracking. Or we'll be looking at using two particular body scans, of which, are on the slide here. And, what I will do after tonight's session, .
It might come tomorrow morning, but I will get it to you tonight or tomorrow morning. The somatic tracking, short film, but just listen to the audio. And these two.
Body scans, but look at this research, you know, look at this research here. And it is 2014, but it's still the beginnings of the first time ever that we were able to illustrate scientifically with a good. Piece of research, you know.
Good research that There's a significant reduction in people's ratings for their distress associated with their pain. And for the ability of pain to get in the way of functioning with people that really started to make use of body scanning. Now, next week we'll do a live body scan together.
But the somatic tracking is a sort of extension of the body scan. It takes it further, and it's a sort of advance upon this research from 2014. And some of you will find that body scanning, which is A much more passive.
Exploration of. The sensation of pain in our bodies. And others will find that that.
Genuine leaning into exploring. Curious. Approach to pain that we get with the somatic tracking works for you, and I'm working on the old Steve DeShazer, a great American psychologist, who said on a court, well, he didn't, but he would have done if he could.
He actually said, find out what works and do more of it. And if I just borrow from the great Mister Dehasa and say, on a course like this. You find out what really works for you, and you just do more of that stuff.
And in order to find out what works and the degree to which it works, we do need to practise. Everything that I share with you guys, you know. Because body scanning works, good evidence based now.
Somatic tracking really works, good evidence base. So people come on to, and they come into therapy sometimes and I hear them say to me, especially people I see for pain therapy, . Who have tried You know, everything left to offer and pain is now really ruining their lives, and they come to see somebody like me for psychological therapy.
And I nearly always hear them say, oh Mike, I really hope you're gonna help me with this. I really hope you are. And I'll say, well, I'll tell you what, I will.
You know, I will help you and. You have hope, which is fantastic. Now let me tell you, hope is fantastic.
Hope with commitment. Becomes transformational, and I want this course to be transformational for so many of you. And if it's gonna be transformational.
I'm begging you, please, really asking you. It's just 6 weeks, 6 hours spent with me, you know, on this stuff, and lots of practise in between. Transform your lives.
Transform your experience with pain. There's an opportunity here, but to do so we really will need. A degree of commitment.
So I'm gonna ask you to . Just check in with yourself in a mindful fashion each day. Using the somatic tracking on a couple of other days between now and next week's session, have a go at kind of playing with the body scan, try the, the straight body scan and have a go at the body scan for pain.
In the interests of finding out what works and doing more of it. Now, over the years, and that's all I'm gonna ask you to do. Well, and if you get the time to watch, oh, you must watch the Lorimer Moseley film, it's a hoot, but it's also, you just learn so much from him.
I it's a TED Talk, it's brilliant. And that's, that's, that's it. I don't want you to do anything other than play with this stuff every day, ideally.
There you go. Now I just finished tonight by just sharing with you that. Every single person practically I work with who's living with enduring confrontative, difficult pain struggles with their sleep.
They all, everybody does. And we absolutely know, look at this, bottom stuff here. The first proper brain study of sleep deprivation, one of the really, .
I, it, it's an FMRI study actually, I don't know why I've called it proper, but it really is proper. And what it looks at is the parts of the brain that light up. And what we find is that somebody in a state of sleep deprivation.
Experiences more pain. And I think I have used the right words more sinisterly, what we find is that if we're struggling with our sleep and living with pain, we. Our brain suppresses our ability to find .
To actually modulate the pain and. Put together, as I say here, it's a pretty difficult cocktail that we have a louder alarm system for our pain and we have a diminished ability to cope with said exact pain. So.
What we're gonna do as well over the next 6 weeks is each week, I will be looking at the importance of making some changes to sleep alongside. So each week we'll have a sleep, a look at our sleep. And that way.
My belief is that we can really make a difference to your experience of living with pain. So I just kind of ask you, this is my poll. Have a think where you are right at this moment now, .
Is it A, I'm reluctant about working towards an outcome where pain impacts less on my ability. To live a full and meaningful life, and your reluctance might be just because, you know, I, I wanted to come on a course like this to make the pain go away. Sorry.
Or are you in a bee place? I'm willing to work towards an outcome where pain impacts less on my ability. To live a full and meaningful life.
You know? Or are you in this one, and I'm not convinced yet that I've got the motivation that Mike's telling me I'm gonna need to . Really make this work for me.
To see where you think you might be on that, because I would just take us back. I would really Heartily sanction this slide here, that we do need that level of commitment. And if we have that level of commitment, you can get to a place where pain impacts less on your ability.
To live a full and meaningful life. You know, you can get there. You really can.
So thank you all so much for being on this journey with me over the next 6 weeks. I love this stuff. I think it's just the most fascinating.
Some of the most fascinating work I do is around this stuff. And if anybody's. Any thoughts at all, just come back, so.
Greg's just come back. What would you do for someone who's in acute pain from a slipped disc, who cannot get surgery for several months? Because with a slipped disc, you know, .
Your nerve endings with with the slipped disc will be getting activated time after time after time. I would say there's as much reason. For somebody like yourself to really, really, engage with, particularly, I would say, the, the somatic tracking at this stage, not because it will take away that pain, but I tell you what, it'll make those several months before the surgery is due so much more livable with.
You know, it might make you more livable with, Give it a go, Greg, cause a lot of the people on that come to me and. The courses I run and the work I do here come to me with this sort of acute. Pain, and although you say it's acute, you know, you, you're gonna have to live with this for a couple of months.
So live with it well, you know, enter into this with a spirit of hope with commitment, because we can make a shift to your experience. Yeah, Catherine's come in firmly on the B. Lovely to hear.
Sophie's come in saying, I want to be a bee, but I think I'm a C. Do you know, if you think you're a C, but all I'd say is give this a real go, and if you put your time, effort, and headspace into it, I reckon you'll be. You'll be able to be in no time.
Justine's there with a B. Shannon's a B, Lisa's a B, this is great. And don't worry, if you're coming in, Sharon, I've got nothing left to lose by trying.
Yeah, I get that. Do you know I would change that and I'd say I've got so much to gain. Potentially by giving this a go.
You know, just language is so, so important. Rebecca's come there, Alison's come in with a B. We've got an awful lot of bees.
In tonight and that's music to our ears, so. I'll send out the somatic tracking and the two. And the two audio files straight away to Dawn, and thank you all so much.
And if you have any questions for me that you feel, you know, I can answer, I'll hang on a bit, we're going to finish now, but I will hang on and get back to you if there's any sort of specific questions. If in between you have questions or doubts or something you want to ask me, if you contact the webinar that they will always just email me on your, your questions, your queries. And I will always come back and get there.
Greg, this was me 20 years ago and I lost 3.5 stone. The GP just said lie in bed for 6 weeks, but I had to work to support the family, and finally had to bypass and call an ambulance to go to the hospital where they kept me in bed for 1 month.
Finally operated on Millennium Eve and the pain went away. Do you know what? I'll lay money, you know, Greg, that that in itself is a pretty traumatic memory.
Don't know what you think, but I think it probably is. And that memory might well be still significant and playing a part in the pain that you're experiencing right now, similar to Moseley and his carpet snake. Yeah, interesting stuff, fascinating stuff.
Greg, you might, well, all of you, have a look at the Plain is weird website. It, it, it's so fascinating, and you'll come away from that with a real hope that, you know, as nice guidance, National Institute of Clinical Excellence have realised, the brain is where it sits, you know. Pain in the brain is where this stuff sits, and we can make a difference.
So thank you all so much to everybody. Have great weeks, and I look forward to seeing you all back next week. As you know, you can always access the recordings via the webinar that.
I think they'll probably take a day or two to get up. I'm not sure how long that takes, via the webinar that, but you will be able to access recordings. So if you need to go back and look at what we've done, just do it.
Yeah. Catherine said tens may help, and it might. Yeah, tens machine have a pretty good evidence base.
When we finish the course, I'm going to introduce you to, some of the really very, very newer, pain devices on the market that are a bit splendiferous, but I don't want to go there yet, because that would be more about making the pain go away, and that really isn't the philosophy of our course. You know, so I'm gonna resist the temptation to go there today. But thank you all so much, sorry I went over a bit, I think Dawn, I said 45 minutes, well, I think you know by now that.
It goes on a bit longer. But thank you all so much. And, see you next week.
Thank you so much, Mike. Today's session was really informative, and I personally enjoyed the somatic tracking, and it's not something that I've actually tried before as well, so it'd be interesting to see how many people have actually tried it as well, so you can obviously find out next week anyway. Well, do you know, a lot of people use it to sleep, a lot of people use it just cos it's rather a lovely thing to do, so you're right, it's a great thing to do.
Yeah. Yeah. And obviously it was really good to see a lot of, a lot of bees on that pole, you know, wanting to work towards an outcome where, you know, the pain.
Impacts less. So, obviously it would be good to see feedback for next week as well on what everyone has done. So if everyone wants to give us some feedback next week in the, Q&A at the end or in the chat, whatever works, that would be amazing.
So, just to obviously join us next, next Tuesday, same time next week. Like you say, we can email, any questions that you might pop up, and we can obviously go through them as well. .
And then yeah, go, go from there, but obviously any, if you guys can't make it next week, don't stress, we will put it up on the website the next day anyway, as well, so we can do some catch up. But thank you so much again, Mike for for tonight's pleasure. I enjoyed myself as always.
Thank you. Thank you. Have a good evening, everyone.
Yeah, bye bye now.