037: How to Release the Chronic Pain in our Body

The podcast discusses methods for managing and healing chronic pain. The hosts share personal experiences and insights on how movement, nutrition, and mindset play crucial roles in pain management. They highlight the importance of maintaining physical activity tailored to individual needs, consuming a balanced diet, and cultivating a positive mindset to support the body's healing process. Additionally, they discuss the significance of meditation in alleviating psychological aspects of pain.

Connect with Mike Chang:
- Instagram: @mikechangofficial
-Youtube: Mike Chang
- Website: www.flow60.com

Connect with Stephen Yeh:
-Instagram: @iamstephenyeh
-Twitter: @iamstephenyeh

Transcript

Stephen: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Body Over Mind. This is your host Stephen Yeh with your co host Mike Chang. And today we're going to be talking about how to release the chronic pain inside of your body. And, this is something that comes up for me specifically right now, because I'm experiencing some extra pain in my neck and my shoulders.

Mike and I went on a little adventure a couple of days ago. We took out scooters and bikes and motorcycles and I was being a bit brash and almost like a little kid again and try to, hold on the back of Mike's bike with a scooter. And then eventually the front wheel kind of slipped a bit and I had to just, uh, like, really, I didn't fall down, but the body took a lot of impact trying to stay up.[00:01:00] 

And so you were holding on to my motor shortly after that, just like, just hold on to your motorcycle. So they know it wasn't like 

Mike: a bicycle. Like I'm, it was, you're holding on to my motorcycle, which also I mentioned that, Hey, let's see, luckily we went pretty slow because it was a very, yeah, it was pretty sketchy.

Stephen: I mean, I got very fortunate. With the outcome, because it's not bad at all, it'll take maybe a week or so where most of it is going to be, back to normal. Um, but I got very fortunate because I, I was also doing, another stupid thing, going downhill on the scooter and with no lights, and especially on Bali roads, you never know when there's just a crack in the road.

And so, regardless, there's a small accident, and one or two days later, I'm experiencing like whiplash, where one morning I just woke up, and , my neck was, just felt like it [00:02:00] was in agony. And so today's day two of the pain, it's kind of starting to get better, but yeah, what I've noticed is I can feel I'm much less energized and I'm much less productive.

You know, I want to get stuff done today, but it just also feels like it is challenging because that kind of pain signal is just constantly there. And, even when I'm diving into work , it's still there and then I could feel kind of more tired throughout. So, I've been doing different things to, to help relieve it.

Um, but I'd definitely love to hear your perspective as well what would you say would be best to get rid of and, and to heal at a faster rate and be able to get rid of, let's even say chronic. pain 

Mike: Well, so, so this pain is not chronic, correct? Cause this one's [00:03:00] from like a recent injury.

Stephen: Hmm. 

Mike: So then there's. So there's two different kinds, right? There's like the recent ones, like the one you have now. And then there's the chronic ones. Chronic ones are the ones that's been around. They don't go away. And, they're just always there. They're lingering. So let's talk about the recent ones. So new pain, new injuries, which by the way, luckily you train like every day.

And even though you took that fall, it took that fall where that scooter swing Really hit your ankle pretty hard because Steven's got like a, uh, like a small gash on his ankle. But he managed to run afterwards up the hill. So I want to add in that another added motivation for training is even when you do get injured, it's minimum.

We recover really fast and we just don't get as injured most of the time. Now it just depends on the situation. But I can imagine that same situation for somebody who just doesn't train every day like [00:04:00] you, they would have, not only would they have fell, but they would have hurt themselves much, much worse for you.

You just, that scooter swaying around and hit your ankle, you lost your balance a bit and then you caught your balance and then you just ran up the hill. Like it would just stop you a little bit. So that's big. And then that adds into the next thing, which is always be exercising, even when you're injured, the importance is just tailoring the exercises, tailoring the workouts to fit how we feel and to fit the particular injury and the reason why is because we got to make sure we're keeping the circulation.

Going in our body, we are also making sure that we are releasing stress. So that's why we have to listen to our body because if let's say we're injured, like, and then we become kind of energetically drained, right? Because the pain is lingering and then it creates headaches or it creates just, a lot of, frustration, that frustration that gets created.

Well, if we don't move, if we [00:05:00] don't exercise. We end up holding on to it, so it's really good to go and help with healing with very light exercise. , I think the last podcast I was talking about an injury that I had. And that was the injury when I was talking, I don't know if it was the last one or the one before, but we were talking about, how I was doing like just jumping, spinning kick thing.

And my leg was hurting afterwards. So it's been now about two weeks. And, , I've been training still every day, but heavily about five days a week. The last two days, a little more easier and, and I just work around it. And even today , in our workout, that was just about two hours ago. I still took it a little easier on my thigh, but everything else I was going regular.

That is so helpful for healing because it allows the body to be in balance. Oftentimes when someone gets injured, and I talked about this before, people, they, they have this all or nothing mentality, right? They, they either stop, they stop doing everything that [00:06:00] was helping their health because they think I am injured and therefore I should just completely rest, right?

It's, it's that old school mentality of when you're sick, when you're injured, stop everything until you get better. That is completely false, 100 percent false. The only time you stop everything is when you can't do anything, fine, stop everything, because you can't do anything.

What can you do? You know, both your legs are messed up and your arms, I mean, you're just in bad shape. The idea of just lay down and rest because you're injured, that is so general and it is very inaccurate. In reality, what someone should do is do what they can and listen to their body. So if I injured my leg, then see if I can do some easy things that has to do with my legs.

If you like you and you injured your ankle, right? Okay. So then you don't do the running, jumping, that type of stuff, but there's still some upper body things that you can do. You can still walk and take your time and just slow it down. And if it hurts a lot, right? [00:07:00] Take it easy. How much maximum five out of 10, because if you go over five in pain threshold, you may risk re injury.

And so 5 out of 10 is a safe place. So when we're moving, that 5 is up to each person, right? If somebody has a high pain threshold, that's out of 10, then their 5 is where it's at. And once they hit that 5, then they don't push it anymore. So let's say, for example, I know it's not really happening to you, but let's say if your ankle was hurting when you walk.

Right. But then if you walk slow and you feel that it hurts at about a five, but it doesn't get any worse than that, then you stay at that speed. Now let's say you want to walk faster and then now it's at a seven or eight, you have to slow it down because there's now a chance of re injury.

Right. And so, that right there is huge for, recovery. 

Stephen: Yeah. So all of this is just recent. It's just new injury. I'm experiencing that a lot. Yeah, cause, first, first day I, , I [00:08:00] could barely move my neck. And I had a, class to teach and I was like, Oh man, , so, I just shifted the exercises and just made it a lot more yin, a lot more relaxing and just doing much more subtle movements, raising the arms and even raising the arms, I could start to feel it shifting and moving.

And what it feels like you said, I think generally when people kind of get some, any type of injury, they don't do anything. But for me right now, I feel like if I don't do anything, that whole area is just going to lock up and it's going to become more chronic over time, and it's just going to stay there.

And so, for me, moving right now is Just in slower ways, for sure, like you said, not above a 5, like for me, I, I like during these states, I can maybe test out going up to a 5, but generally I'm staying [00:09:00] around like a 2 or a 3, just to move the body, just to move the energy around. And I could feel that that's also helping to recover faster, you know, just 

Mike: Well, remember you said earlier that your energy feels drained. So this is, then that's the thing, right? You know, when we don't exercise, we feel drained and tired. So that's why it's important to, to move because the lack of movement, because we have the drain coming from the pain. Because it's energetically draining and plus the body needs to recover, so that takes energy.

But then if we don't move, there's also the lack of movement, which then also keeps our energy low. So it's like this double negative, so that's why it's really important to, to move to our capacity. And that's why if we don't move on a normal basis, then, and then a person decides that they're injured, it's time to move, , that's going to be tough because your muscles, your body is not used to moving.

So the last thing you want to do is kind of [00:10:00] experiment with exercise itself when, you know, when you're injured, that's a no, , that's why we got to urge I gotta urge everybody, don't wait till you're injured, don't wait till you're sick, move, exercise, enhance your energy, get it up and going, and then when you do get sick or you run into injury, at least you're not starting from the beginning.

You've got a foundation of what you can do, you feel a little comfortable in your body. Now you're able to tailor your exercise accordingly to, whatever injury and pain. 

Stephen: And that makes a lot of sense and I told you a couple days ago as well where I feel like where I'm feeling the most like pain and tension right now is places where I still have some chronic tightness and I have been finding that it's areas where it's already like not so mobile that is much More exposed in terms of getting [00:11:00] injured or in terms of getting sick or whatever it is.

And so this is why, , I would say not super young anymore. I'm 36. So I'm starting to get up there, but my, one of my main goals is, is to be as mobile and free in the body as much as I can right now while I'm still young. And then that way. , I can preserve the body for a long time, like I was just today.

I saw a random Instagram real. It's this 60, maybe 65 year old, , Chinese guy who used to do martial arts when he was younger. And at 65 he had a bamboo in his hand. He was doing the spins and then, he's out in nature. There's a pretty large pool of water on the floor and he was doing the moves and stuck the stick on the floor and did a cartwheel with the [00:12:00] stick.

And got to the other side. And he's like 60, 65 years old. I was like, that's badass. That's like how I want to be when I'm that old as well. To be able to still be that mobile and be able to move well at an older age. Mm 

Mike: hmm. Yes. Well, I think you're, I think you're on track, , you move every day.

And we just keep it up. Something I wanna mention is, you know how injuries, a lot of times people become a little impatient. They want to heal quickly, but sometimes it just takes time. A really good indication of healing is every day our injury is improving, getting a little bit better.

Just as long as it's getting a little bit better, we're on the right track, right? Sometimes people are really good at healing or their body's really fast at healing and it gets a lot Better in one day, which is great But if it improves by a little bit every day that [00:13:00] still means a person is doing well And just as long as that's happening, now, vice versa, how do we know if somebody's doing the wrong things?

Well, the opposite, if the injury is getting worse, right? If I turn here and it hurts, and then tomorrow I can turn a little farther, that's good. Vice versa, if I turn here, hurts, and then tomorrow I can barely even turn at all, right? Then that means something was wrong. Most likely, cases like that is either a re injury, somebody moved too much, And, they re injured it, uh, B, they, they had a really bad diet, C, they didn't get enough sleep, which means they didn't allow the body to just recover in general.

Now, a lot of times it's also just a multiple of those factors. So just as long as a person is improving every day by at least just a tiny bit. It's good to go. My thigh has been like that. I have done nothing special. Nothing special. All I did was I just do my same exercise I do every day except I modify.

I skip ones that hurt. [00:14:00] I move a little bit differently to accommodate and every day it's gotten better and better. Now I sprint upstairs. The only thing I'm not doing now is jumps. I do little jumps, but I don't do big jumps because I tried it two days ago. I did one round of 30 seconds of just a decent height of jumps.

And then after that, my thighs started hurting. So I said, that's enough. I already know , I did one round. That was all I can handle. And then after that, I didn't do any rounds since then, and that was about two days ago. It was kind of like my test to see where's my healing at right now. And it's got to the point to where I can do one round, and then after that it was hurting.

So don't need to push it, you know? but That's a big improvement from not being able to jump at all. And I can tell every day when I take those stairs, how much stronger I'm getting. I can do lunges now and all of that. So having patience, I say this because so many of us want to heal really fast and then, so instead of actually [00:15:00] waiting for the body to heal, we push ourselves And see what we can do, see what we can do.

And we keep pushing ourselves. Like when I did that one round of jumps, I pushed myself a little bit. And then the next round, when it was hurting, could I have jumped? Yes. There was some pain. That's not actually what we want to do. You don't want to get to the point. To where we started to experience a little re injury because two days ago I was borderline on re injury borderline I caught it and realized no, that's it And then I actually scaled back on my workout for the rest of that that workout We did four rounds of six minutes for the strength part of the practice You see I was borderline a re injury because I tested it out.

It's not something that's really necessary And luckily, I caught it early, I took it really, really easy the rest of the day as if I re injured. Now, did I re injure it? There was a chance that I probably did a small re injury. But, [00:16:00] Because I took it really easy the rest of the day and I got decent sleep next two days after.

Now today it feels fine and I'm still feeling like it's progressing. So just wanted to add add that in. Be patient and if we're progressing every day, great. The way that we know we're progressing every day is that we can do small tests. Small tests. I couldn't lunge five days ago. I couldn't do regular lunges.

My right thigh would hurt today. And today's training, I was lunging normal lunges, knees to the ground, you know, the back knee to the ground when I lunge, so I'm definitely improving. And that's all that matters.

Stephen: Another lesson here is, , it seems like we both got injured trying to be like, eight years old again, 

Mike: you know, that's the, you try 

Stephen: to, you're doing 60 jumping, spinning kicks, me on a scooter on, on the bike of your motorcycle, well, you know, once in a while, it's, it's good.

[00:17:00] Yeah. 

Mike: So let's talk about chronic injuries, right? So we've been talking about a lot about new injuries. So what do we do on chronics? I think it's important, to Oh, actually, and I think you can relate a lot with chronic because your hips, right? That that's a chronic one that's been around for ages, right?

Like, well, a decade, right? 

Stephen: Longer than that, I could remember even when I was like 10, my hips were super tight, so it's been a long 

Mike: time. So with chronic, that's an interesting one because it stays around for a long time. A chronic injury can come from, so first of all, habits. Habits that we have that continuously supports the injury, supports the pain, chronic pain.

We have to take a look at the habits. Habits could be from like the way we're constantly sitting, the way we sleep, the way we stand, to the type of movements that we repetitively, do because [00:18:00] there's something that we're doing that's supporting the pain. What we do can either promote healing or support pain.

It's one or the other. And then let's look at it on three levels, right? Three, we can say three levels, physical, emotional, or mental. Emotional is kind of a combination of physical and mental. So we can just say more physical and mental. So let's look at physical, right? the type of habits that we do. If somebody is constantly sitting in a slouch, for example, they may have some problems with back, right?

And then the back problems may create some problems in the hips, and then hips problems create some problems in the hamstrings, because everything is connected. If somebody is doing some type of, lift, like, you know, , There's a lot of women here in Bali. It's interesting because they carry a lot of things on their head.

So when they're young, you see their back straight as a board, because they're literally carrying things on their head. And then I know you've seen this before as well. Some older women, their back is like an L. [00:19:00] I mean, like they're just. You just see them like that and then you're wondering, well, what happened?

So then I noticed that they use very short brooms. It's like straws all tied up together on one end and then they use it. There's no handle. It's just the straws all tied up together. And so in order to get to the ground, you've got to bend over and I see many of them using this type of broom to sweep and I see them, they hunch over and they're just sweeping.

And my theory here is that they've been doing that for a long, long time. And therefore their back became slumped. And so now they've got, issues there in the, in the spine. So that's just a, it's an example of, well, there's a habit that they're doing that is supporting the pain that they have and that back like that.

Oh yeah. There's definitely back pain for sure. Because their back is literally at an L you see them walking, you know, they have their hands on their back constantly when they walk, but it's part of that is that habit. If [00:20:00] they got a longer broom, they will be able to stand up and sweep instead of having to bend over constantly.

It's not like they're sweeping a little area. I mean, they're sweeping large areas crouched over the entire time. Now imagine doing that for many, many years. Because these are usually older women, you know, probably at least in their mid to late 60s, you know. So habits, right, physical habits that supports chronic pains.

And then diet, nutrition. Sometimes like bodies, our bodies always want to heal. That's a universal thing. Our bodies want to heal. Our bodies are always doing the most that it can to heal. But we don't do the right things for our body to heal. If we don't move, then we don't unblock things.

that Allows the body to heal. If we don't go ahead and eat the right foods , it's not just about giving the body the right nutrition. It's also about not clogging up the body. Most people think they're, not getting enough nutrition. In reality, they're over [00:21:00] nutritioning. They're over nutritioning themselves.

They're over eating. And so therefore that overeating creates blockages in the body. It causes inflammation in the body, causes swelling in the body. So now the body can't transfer the nutrients. It can't have a strong flow of energy. So therefore problems, chronic pains can't get resolved. That's another thing.

So nutrition, and then again, people's nutrition may support, constantly support this pain. Then the last one is. Mind, right? It's mind. It's what are they thinking. A person who's constantly thinking about their pain, focusing on their pain, they create an identity of I'm a person with pain. And when they are constantly focusing on the pain, thinking about the pain, They bring more awareness.

They think more about the pain. They create more pain. It's like we want pain. We continuously attracting more pain in our life. And when we say you attract, it's literally, you can bring your [00:22:00] attention to an area of your body and think about pain in that body and that part of your body, watch what happens, imagine a place in your body, imagine that place with pain and watch what happens, whatever we are conscious of, we create.

So therefore we'll literally create pain in that area. That's the power of our consciousness, our mind. So sometimes a person starts off with temporary injury, temporary pain, and that temporary pain becomes chronic because they continuously support their identity with that pain. They go, I'm a person with pain.

I'm a person with this injury. I'm a person that's constantly dealing with this thing. And then they embody this new identity. And then now that. Supports the pain. So with chronic, uh, we talked 

Stephen: about emotions as well. 

Mike: No, actually I was talking about the two Emotions tie in right? So they're the joining factor it's the biggest factor because emotions energy and because everything is energy.

Our physical body is [00:23:00] energy So, therefore, we can look at emotions as not just bad or good, but we can look at it without so much of that judgment. Let's just look at it as high frequency and low frequency, because low frequency, we can characterize it as fear, fear type of emotions, and then high frequencies, we can characterize it as some sort of love, acceptance, peace, bliss, those type of emotions.

So, if our body, has low emotions circulating inside, Then, this low emotion causes the body to stay really dense, heavy. with a very dense body, the body does not heal. It does not stay very healthy. It's the complete opposite. The body needs to have a high frequency of energy instead of a low frequency of energy.

Low frequencies, sluggish, heavy, all that the body is not having much energy. It's low energy because the body is so dense. Energy does not circulate very well. When we increase the frequency, more [00:24:00] energy can be held in the body. It can exist in the body. The body is like a container of energy. We can say the body , it is made up of energy. So, if we have high frequency of energy in the body, then the body will thrive. Anything that is broken heals. Now, vice versa. If the body has low energy, whatever is there will break down. I experienced this personally when I changed the energy in my body back in February 8th of 2015 when I experienced my awakening and I shared this with many people and we talked about this early on for any of you that are interested, look in the early episodes of this podcast where I shared that, but I experienced firsthand it when I changed my energy frequency, injuries healed immediately, you know, injury that I was dealing with for over nine months, it healed in hours and only in hours because it took hours for me to get that energy up.

But as the energy rise, the pain decreased, and at the end point, the energy was so high, there was no [00:25:00] pain. Pain was gone, and after that, it didn't come back. So, that was my first hand experience of what happens when our body is filled with energy. Everything heals. And then, later on, I started to learn more about how this all works.

So, Anytime when our energy is low, the body can't heal. So then when we talk about these three basic things of, , movement, nutrition, and sleep it helps support a higher frequency of energy. It's not the only thing our mind makes a big difference, but that makes such a big difference on the general health of our body, all the organs on all the functions.

That is something that we need to continuously do. And if we can do that, then we've covered the baseline, the foundation of supporting high levels of energy. When it comes to injuries, whether it's chronic or just temporary, they heal faster. When it comes to our mood, we're in a better mood, right?

Cause we're [00:26:00] moving, we're eating clean, we're getting sleep, clarity of mind, all of these things, higher energy levels. And therefore the opposite is also true when we are not doing one or more of those three things. Everything decreases, general health decreases, injuries don't heal, and they get worse and worse.

And often times, people with chronic injuries have chronic pain, are basically people that have neglected one or more of these three things. Usually, at least two of these things. And they neglected it for so long, and now everything is just breaking down more and more. So, anybody who is dealing with chronic pains, Start off by just doing these three things.

I had a lady, her name is Bella. Such an awesome person, just full of life. She joined one of my programs. And she was dealing with pain in her neck for the last 15 years. It was like so long that she's just, she's, she identified herself as a person with [00:27:00] pain. And she was in the program and did practice every day, twice a day in three weeks.

She woke up the pain that was usually at a nine. She said it was about a two or three, three weeks. She'd been dealing with it for like 15, 17 years. And she says at a two or three, when she has a nine in pain every day, she was running around like a kid. She was like, Oh my gosh, she started doing cartwheels and doing all this stuff with her kids at the park.

And she was just amazed, absolutely amazed. And she was just sharing this on one of our calls, just so excited. She was like, Oh my God. And she talked to surgeons. She talked to so many doctors. They were going to cut her open because they couldn't figure it out. So the only thing we can do now surgery, she's like, no, , if you guys can't figure it out, why are we going to do surgery?

That doesn't make sense. And so that's why she joined the program. She's like, well, I, I don't have any other choice. Let me try something else. It's these docs aren't helping me. Three weeks, the pain dropped [00:28:00] down that much. And also here's another thing really cool. I'm going to share. She noticed that when she was in meditation, once she got deep into meditation, the pain disappeared altogether, no pain when she was in deep meditation, which helped her came to the understanding.

If I can be in deep meditation, there's no pain, and then I get out of meditation and there's pain, then what is happening when I'm in meditation? Because she's experiencing this. She experienced this every time when she gets into deep meditation, pain's gone, completely gone. You Then she comes back and then the pain's like a little bit there.

And so she started to connect the dots. And she understood that, well, this pain is psychological. And so when she's in deep meditation, she lets go of her sense of self. She doesn't become this person who has pain. And at that moment, the pain's gone. So she realized that. And now she focuses a lot on [00:29:00] meditation along with the other movements.

Because she realizes that this pain is equally psychological as it is physical. So powerful. So I hope our conversation can help any of you guys that have dealt with new pain or chronic pains. I think the main takeaways here are always make sure that when you're dealing with pain, move, do your exercises, maintain that circulation of energy, circulation of blood, everything that you need to create general health, make sure that you are very careful with your exercises.

And if you haven't exercised in a long time, you're Then take it really, really easy, you know, for those that decide that they want to start exercising, to try to heal faster, okay, but be very, very careful. Okay, be very, very careful. Don't take any chances. And then for those that have been exercising for a little while, all you do is do movements that has a maximum of five in pain out of ten, in [00:30:00] the areas of injury.

Okay. Don't go over that so this way you don't re injure yourself. And also, make sure you're doing the other two things. Eating clean, that means food that are easy to digest, food that doesn't create any bloatedness, food that doesn't have total gas, and things like that.

Typically, you know what's good for you. But it's now very, very important to eat healthy because you want your body to be clean. That's going to promote the healing. Sleep on an empty stomach. Okay, you'll realize that the advice for this is very similar to general health because that's what's needed for us to heal.

And get extra sleep, more sleep than usual, because that's when your body can really recover. Remember that our bodies always wants to heal. Our body's not trying to prevent us from healing. We are not doing the right things to support our body to heal. How does our body heal? If you are healthy, if you are a normal, healthy person, you get injured.

You will heal [00:31:00] every day. You'll become stronger and your injury would decrease every single day. That's what we call a normal, healthy person who's got normal, healthy lifestyles and habits. If you are not, then you're going to deal with injuries that take forever to heal. And some may even turn into chronic, chronic pains.

So the way to solve it is not some band aid solution. It is to. Do the habits that allow you to be healthy, right? Always start off with those three and maintain those three. And then the last takeaways of the chronic is once you are doing those three, you will find that healing would happen. However, the last thing is just making sure that emotionally and mentally you are at peace, you are letting go of the frustration.

Okay. That becomes important. But not before you take care of these three things. If you had to pick between those two and you were to ask me which one should I focus on my emotions and my mental thoughts or sleep, nutrition, and move. I will tell you 100 percent of the time, [00:32:00] take care of the sleep movement, nutrition first, because when you do automatically, your mood will change.

Your thoughts will change. Your perspective will change and your energy and emotion will change. All right. So that's it guys. I'll see you next time. Thank you for watching another episode or listening to another episode of Body Over Mind, and we'll see you guys next time. Alright, bye guys.