In our group sessions we practice various forms of exercise ranging from holding postures to slow, gentle movements and walking. Most people who attend the program, especially newer participants, want to do well and try hard to do the exercises well. Yet, we keep telling everyone not to try too hard and instead stay relaxed as much as possible.

How do you know when you are trying too hard? It is when you start tensing muscles that aren’t necessary for doing the exercise or tensing the necessary muscles too much. Muscle tension can aggravate your pain and if an exercise always aggravates your pain then why on Earth would you keep doing it?

We know that exercise is good for people and that includes those with pain. But too often we assume the harder we exercise the greater the benefit. This may have a little truth in it up to a point, but for people with pain, the harder they do some exercises (if not most exercise), the more it hurts. The more it hurts the less likely they are to keep doing that exercise no matter how beneficial it is supposed to be.

Therefore we show participants how it is possible to maintain a posture using only those muscles needed to stay upright while relaxing everything else. We teach movement based on the same idea of relaxing all unneeded muscles. Going slowly helps one relax more deeply and signals when a movement becomes painful in enough time to stop. Our training methods are rooted in the same principles found in such Chinese internal arts as Taijiquan and Baguazhang. The masters of these arts were reputed to be great fighters and we feel some of their methods can be enlisted in the far more difficult fight against pain.

We believe it is better to do a little bit of exercise with as little pain as possible instead of doing a lot while struggling with pain. We want people to come away from our sessions feeling more relaxed and in less pain. After all isn’t that the point of pain therapy?