Ben Fedrick Injury Therapy

28/11/2025

26/11/2025

Series two of five on why we suffer chronic pain (3–6 months+)

🧠 The Role of Thought & Meaning

Pain isn’t just a physical sensation, the brain interprets it based on context, memory, and meaning.

If we’ve had pain for a long time, the brain can start to predict danger even when there isn’t any:
• Past experiences (“This always flares up”)
• Fear (“What if this means damage?”)
• Hypervigilance (“Is it getting worse?”)

These thoughts aren’t your fault — they’re your brain trying to protect you. But when the brain believes you’re under threat, it can increase the pain message to keep you safe.

➡️ Key idea: The brain learns pain just like it learns anything else… and with the right input, it can learn something new.

25/11/2025

🌿 Your Nerves of Social Engagement & Chronic Pain 🌿

Did you know that the way you connect with others can directly influence how much pain you feel?

Our social engagement system is the part of the vagus nerve network that helps us feel safe, connected, and understood. This plays a huge role in how our body processes stress and pain. When this system is activated, our heart rate settles, our breath softens, and our nervous system shifts from “survive” to “restore.”

But when life gets overwhelming?
We withdraw.
We tense up.
Our nervous system goes into defence mode… and chronic pain can increase.

The good news?
❤️ Gentle connection - eye contact, supportive conversation, shared laughter, mindful breathing with others can literally turn down the volume on pain signals.

At Ben Fedrick Injury Therapy, we build these moments of connection into our sessions alongside our movement work. Small, repeated practices that calm the nervous system, boost vagal tone, and create real change in how your body feels whilst moving will make a huge lasting change to chronic pain.

✨ Because you’re not meant to heal alone.
✨ Safety is medicine.
✨ And your nervous system can learn a new way.

If you’re curious about how social engagement and vagus nerve work can support your chronic pain, or overall wellbeing, reach out. Your body will thank you.

20/11/2025

💭 Ever had this happen?
You wake up in the middle of the night, reach for your glass of water on your bedside table… and realise your arm’s completely dead.

No feeling. No movement. Nothing.

The strangest part about this is that you think you’re moving it, you can feel it reaching out in the darkness, but then… thud 💥

Your arm lands heavy on your lap, and you realise it hadn’t been moving at all.

Weird, right?
That’s your brain at work. 🧠

Even when your arm’s “asleep,” your brain still feels like it’s there! The brain still sends and receives messages as if everything’s normal.

This same process helps explain phantom limb pain, when someone feels pain in a limb that’s no longer there. The brain’s neuromatrix still holds a map of the missing limb, and that map can produce very real sensations, even pain, without any tissue damage.

Pain isn’t just about the body. It’s about the brain’s interpretation of what’s happening.

That’s why pain can persist long after an injury heals, or appear even when there’s no damage at all.

The good news? 🧘‍♀️
If the brain can create pain, it can also learn to calm it.

Movement, breath, awareness, positive reframing, they all help reshape those brain maps.

19/11/2025

🧠 My Favourite Thing About The Brain Is It Can Rewire Itself and Here’s How!

Did you know your brain isn’t “fixed”? Every time you learn something new, practice a skill, or even change the way you think, your brain is rewiring itself, a process called neuroplasticity.

✨ What this means for you:
• You can strengthen positive habits and thought patterns
• You can retrain your nervous system after stress, pain, or injury
• You can improve focus, memory, and emotional resilience

💡 Simple ways to harness neuroplasticity:
1. Repetition: Practice the new skill or habit consistently – I often say consistency is key, tasks and exercises don’t need to be time consuming, but they do need to be done consistently!
2. Challenge: Push yourself slightly out of your comfort zone if you want to see change, but DO NOT overdo it. More isn’t better, better is better.
3. Mindfulness: Notice your thoughts and how they impact body sensations, including pain
4. Positive Connection: I often get clients to think of anything positive in their life whilst practicing rehab drills, this way your brain associates movement with a positive instead of a negative

Your brain is like clay, it is soft, adaptable, and ready to change. Every small effort shapes it. 🧠💪

13/11/2025

Series one of five on why we suffer chronic pain (3-6 months+)

🧠 Sensitisation (Peripheral & Central)
When pain persists, the nervous system can become overprotective.
• Peripheral sensitisation: local nerves become more sensitive after injury or inflammation, they fire more easily.
• Central sensitisation: the spinal cord and brain amplify signals, turning up the “volume knob” on pain.

Result: pain can persist or spread even when tissues have healed.

➡️ Key idea: the system is “stuck on high alert,” not necessarily “broken.”

12/11/2025

🧠 Your Brain Does Three Things: Input → Interpret → Output

Everything your brain does starts with input - what you see, hear, feel, or sense. Then it interprets that information: is this safe, or is it dangerous? Finally, it creates an output, how your body responds.

If the input signals danger, one common output is pain. Chronic pain often isn’t just about tissue damage it’s your brain saying, “Something’s not safe!”

The good news? You can calm the input. Gentle movement, mindful breathing, soothing environments, or even changing how you think about sensations can tell your brain, “All is safe,” reducing pain over time.

✨ Chronic pain isn’t a life sentence it’s a signal your brain can learn to interpret differently. Calming the input is the first step to changing the output.

06/11/2025

🌿 Client Question: Does Working on Your Physical Balance Improve Your Mental Health?

Deep inside your brain sits a small but mighty area called the insula.

It’s your internal translator, the part of the brain that turns body signals into felt awareness.

🧠 The insula helps you:
• Sense your heartbeat, breath, and gut feelings (that’s interoception).
• Stay emotionally steady when life wobbles.
• Feel grounded and connected in your body.

Here’s the cool part:
Every time you work on your balance (whether it’s standing on one leg, turning your head, or closing your eyes while you breathe) you’re doing more than training your core.

You’re feeding rich information to the insula, helping it integrate signals from your body, emotions, and environment.
Over time, this improves:
✨ Self-awareness
✨ Emotional regulation
✨ A calmer, more connected sense of “me”

So next time you’re wobbling in single-leg stance, remember that gentle shake isn’t weakness.
It’s your brain learning you.

🦶 Try this:
Stand on one leg, soften your breath, and notice what you feel inside — heartbeat, sway, breath, emotion.

That’s your insula in action.
💫 Small, repeated tasks. Big internal change.

04/11/2025

✨ Why Sometimes Pain Feels Louder Than It Should ✨

Ever noticed how pain can feel worse on some days even when nothing physically has changed?

That’s your nervous system’s gate control mechanism at work.

🧠 Gate Control Theory suggests that pain signals travel through “gates” in your spinal cord before reaching the brain.

Those gates can open wider when you’re stressed, tired, anxious, or feeling unsafe, amplifying pain.

They can close when you’re calm, moving gently, breathing well, or feeling supported, reducing pain.

This means pain isn’t just about what’s happening in your body. It is also shaped by your thoughts, emotions, and environment.

💡 The empowering part? You can influence those gates.

Through practices that calm your nervous system such as breathwork, vagus nerve stimulation, gentle movement, or mindfulness. You can help “close” the gates and dial down pain messages.

Small moments of calm, repeated often, can literally change how your body experiences pain.