prehab

prehab Sarah Burrows

Chronic Pain and Symptom Recovery Coach
Nervous System Regulation

Pain Reprocessing Therapy
Movement Education

11/03/2026
I remember waking up during my recovery with intense pain and thinking: that's it. Another failure.I had been making rea...
08/03/2026

I remember waking up during my recovery with intense pain and thinking: that's it. Another failure.

I had been making real progress. And overnight it felt like it had all gone.

But here is what I've learnt: a setback is not a sign the treatment has failed. It is often a sign it is working.

The nervous system resists change. Even good change. A new way of being, even a healthier one, can be sensed as dangerous by a nervous system that has spent years in protection mode.

It was pushing back. That is not failure. That is part of the process.

One more thing worth knowing: pain and symptoms that move around is good evidence of neuroplasticity. A nervous system that can shift its signals can learn something new.

Recovery is not a straight line. Sometimes going backwards is actually moving forward.

Stay with it.

Ten years ago, I was lying on a treatment table wondering if chronic pain was going to be my life forever.I had seen eve...
05/03/2026

Ten years ago, I was lying on a treatment table wondering if chronic pain was going to be my life forever.
I had seen every specialist. Tried every treatment. Been given a diagnosis that led to surgery. And still the pain continued.

What changed everything wasn’t another treatment. It was understanding why my brain was producing pain in the first place. And learning it could stop.

Swipe through to read my story. If any of it sounds familiar, I want you to know that what you are experiencing is real, it is not your fault, and there is a way through it.

I now work with people living with chronic pain, long Covid, fibromyalgia, fatigue and a wide range of persistent symptoms. Helping patients understand and retrain the nervous system patterns that are driving their experience.

If this resonates with you, got to www.prehab.nz to book a free 45 minute discovery call.

No obligation. No hard sell. Just an honest conversation about whether this could work for you.

This message from my patient reminds me why I do this work. The ripples of fear-based messaging reach further than most ...
03/03/2026

This message from my patient reminds me why I do this work. The ripples of fear-based messaging reach further than most people realise. Being told your body is damaged, that surgery may be your only option, that you should be afraid to move. These words don’t just affect your mind. They live in the body and the nervous system.

When this patient came to me, she had been told to fear her body. She left every previous healthcare appointment in tears, convinced she was permanently broken.

She wasn’t. She healed. From chronic pain and skin conditions that hadn’t been connected to her nervous system.

But here’s what I want you to know: she did this herself. I didn’t heal her. The capacity to heal was always there. The ability to heal is in all of us.

I was just the guide.
Swipe through to read her story.

When I was at my worst, no one ever asked me what was going on in my life.No one asked about my stress levels. My past. ...
25/02/2026

When I was at my worst, no one ever asked me what was going on in my life.

No one asked about my stress levels. My past. My relationships. The weight I was carrying on my shoulders. The experiences I hadn’t processed.

The way my nervous system had been running on high alert for years.

Just more tests. More referrals. More focus on the what, never the who.

And I think that’s one of the most important things missing from how we treat chronic pain and persistent symptoms. Because the body doesn’t exist separately from our experiences, our stress, our emotions. And our history.

This is for anyone who has ever felt unseen in their pain. Your story matters.

Swipe through to see how Hippocrates had it right all along.

Bloating after a stressful meal isn’t a coincidence.Your subconscious brain doesn’t know the difference between danger a...
22/02/2026

Bloating after a stressful meal isn’t a coincidence.

Your subconscious brain doesn’t know the difference between danger and dinner.

Swipe to see why.

When I came across a mind-body approach to healing pelvic pain, I never expected to also recover from Irritable Bowel Sy...
21/02/2026

When I came across a mind-body approach to healing pelvic pain, I never expected to also recover from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and food sensitivities.

For years, my gut symptoms had worsened - to the point where I was excluding more and more food groups. And the more I excluded, the worse I seemed to get.

About six months into my journey of pain recovery, I realised something had shifted. My gut symptoms were disappearing.

IBS isn’t just a gut problem. It’s a brain-body problem. Which also means, it can have a brain-body solution.

If your gut symptoms have you frustrated and confused, put a comment below or reach out via message.

Modern neuroscience has a lot to offer.

18/02/2026
Fear and pain aren’t the enemy - they’re messengers.Not that they seem like that at all!When we treat them as signals to...
17/02/2026

Fear and pain aren’t the enemy - they’re messengers.

Not that they seem like that at all!

When we treat them as signals to open our eyes wider, we begin to understand the full conversation happening within us.

Our thoughts are speaking the language of the mind.
Our emotions are speaking the language of the body.

True healing happens when we don’t need to run from discomfort and start listening to what it is trying to teach us. Not with judgement, but with curiosity.

What if these signals were something you didn’t fear? But something that has a lesson. The sub-conscious speaking to you, helping you, protecting you. Loving you.

What would change if you listened to your fear and pain with curiosity instead of resistance?

During my ten years of chronic pelvic pain, I saw many, health professionals.All of them were focused on looking at what...
10/02/2026

During my ten years of chronic pelvic pain, I saw many, health professionals.
All of them were focused on looking at what was wrong with my tissues, what was wrong with me structurally.

It turned out that we were all looking in the wrong place.

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Pewter Place
Christchurch
8051

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