I have had a flexible body all my life. I was flexible as a child, like one of those weird ones that could do party tricks, and my friends would always be worried about my skinny arms snapping in half at any moment (they did not so far, Rujula, it's all good). I didn't have any big injuries, but I avoided playing rough at school. I had a rather pain free childhood. Fast-forwarding to right after COVID, my first work trip after a year of mostly sitting brought a herniated disc and debilitating back pain, and after it (somewhat) healed it turned into a recurring pain which came and went truly as it pleased. Lifted something heavy? Back pain. PMS? Back pain. A great day of focused work? Back pain. Maybe my back is weak, let's try to strengthen it with some exerci– back pain. I went to doctors who prescribed MRIs and X-rays and blood tests and ECGs but the back pain was smart enough to go away sometimes to trick me into reporting to the doctors that the pain was better and that their job was done, but it would come back always. I learned to avoid things that may trigger the Big Back Pain, and my brain began to anticipate a small pang of pain as a given whenever I'd bend down or sneeze.
Most recently I pulled a muscle in my hip and it was the most pain and weakest I had felt in a while. I decided to go to a different doctor, one who specialized in chronic pain, and he meant serious business. He identified that I was hypermobile, he prescribed physiotherapy and interferential therapy for the pain, and aquatic therapy and kinesthetic taping for the hypermobility and its complications. After a month of following everything to a T, it's the first time in years I've felt like I'm not constantly in pain.
Pain is a weird thing, it's made up by your brain. The wonderful Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens talked in their podcast about how pain is less an objective sensation and more a conclusion created by the brain to signify danger. The science behind it is very interesting: although it is of course more complicated than this, pain is felt in the body due to signals from a particular type of nerve called nociceptors which are specifically pain receptors, so a signal from these receptors make the brain sense pain regardless of if there is actually anything dangerous happening. But since these receptors often fire when there is something that could be dangerous, the brain looks for the source of danger and deals with it. It's as much an emotional experience as it is a physical one. It's why a band aid on a non-existent wound can alleviate pain for a child who has just stubbed their toe, or why we sometimes don't feel as much pain if we are distracted by the TV. So imagine my surprise when in my first session of physiotherapy my therapist massaged a knot out of my lower back and I instantly felt 80% of my pain disappear. I was suspicious. No way my pain went away in an hour. In my second session she told me that I don't have sciatica pain like I had told her previously, because if I did I would be exhibiting other symptoms. By my third session she had convinced me that most movements were safe to do and my body was just protecting me from the possibility of injury, especially because my first time injuring myself after the work trip was so bad. She reassured me that we had worked on waking up the right muscles so that I won't injure myself and that I should try to gently push myself, and by the end of that session had restored my range of motion to almost double of what I used to be able to do; I can almost touch my feet standing up now! No herniated disc related pain at all. The pain was structural at some point, but over the years it turned neuroplastic. My brain was perpetually sounding the pain alarm and I learned to avoid anything that might cause pain instead of avoiding anything that might cause damage. My brain was just holding my poor body hostage in panic the whole while since the herniated disc. My brain never needed pain killers and MRIs, it needed a hug.
Every day since then I have been rediscovering that telling my body that it is safe, it is cared for, and it can relax yields a deeper stretch and more movement. I have been experimenting with the awareness of pain too, as during my most recent period instead of resisting the cramp I just let it in and felt it in my belly (shoutout to Calra's post on unclenching) and the pain... was still there but honestly it was bearable. It felt like a slow, deep burning inside my belly and I watched it pass beneath me, and my body and brain reassured each other that it's not the worst thing in the world. I'm able to understand the mechanics of my back simply because I'm paying more attention and not freaking out at the slightest pain, and the understanding has lead to more exercises that actually work. Don't get me wrong, the whole process has been truly exhausting because it feels like I'm spending 80% of my time and energy being aware of and thinking about the sensations felt in my body, but I have faith that it's gonna become second nature. I will report back in a month or a year or a decade, but until then I am just grateful my sneezes don't hurt anymore.