Introduction (00:00.00)
You are listening to From Pain To Possibility with Susi Hately. You’ll hear Susi’s best ideas on how to reduce or even eradicate your pain, and learn how to listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to hear it scream. And now here’s your host, Susi Hately.
Susi (00:23.19)
Welcome and welcome back. I am so glad that you’re here because today I want to dig into a very common question I get from teachers.
But before I get to the question, a little bit of context.
So, teachers when they work with me, they hear me talk about how important awareness is. How the initial exercises that I offer are small and require awareness.
And the yellow lights part of the process of helping people to truly, truly retrain and get out of pain, well, that requires awareness.
Awareness is fundamental to the process of helping someone reduce pain.
So, if awareness is so fundamental, what do you do when clients aren’t aware?
What if when you ask, “So, all right, what do you feel?” and they shrug their shoulders and say, “I don’t know, I don’t feel nothing,” or “I feel good,” or “I don’t know, not much,” like all the things, right, that we’ve seen people do, hear people say.
What do you do in those situations? And that’s what this episode is really going to be about.
I want to cover why awareness matters so much in this process, and why some people don’t have very much awareness yet, and how do we help them build it.
So, just to reiterate, and especially if you’re relatively new to this podcast, my focus—my real stake in the sand—is that I help people to reduce and eliminate physical pain. And I do it through the combination of yoga, biomechanics, kinesiology. I’ve got a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, and I’ve been doing yoga for a really long time, and I’ve blended the two as part of my therapeutic modality.
My point here is that in order to help people reduce and eliminate pain, a change needs to happen. And in order to have change, you need to have awareness.
So, this isn’t awareness just for the sake of awareness. It’s awareness that has a purpose.
And in order to change, it helps us to know what to change and whether change is actually happening, and if not, where to direct next.
All of this requires awareness.
Let’s consider a visit to a practitioner or say you’re using a ball, you’re rolling on a ball, or you’re doing a yoga pose, and you get some relief.
Relief proves that possibility exists. It doesn’t prove permanence or that there’s been a fix.
It does show us that something important happened. Relief happened.
So, when someone leaves the physical therapist, or any type of bodyworker, osteopath, chiropractor, massage therapist, Reiki practitioner, you know, whatever the modality, and they feel different, that is significant.
Their system has demonstrated another state is possible. And in that moment, there’s opportunity.
This is an example and highlights how relief is a doorway. It’s evidence that something has shifted.
But now, in order for that shift to be maintained, to grow, retraining has to happen.
You can get an adjustment whether it’s a skeletal or muscular or myofascial or all the different ways that a bodyworker or hands-on bodyworker or any of the ball techniques can work, but in order to facilitate change, you need to retrain the patterns that led you to needing that input in the first place.
Now, you might be, or your client might be someone who is okay with going back to using a yoga pose or a ball or the physical therapist or the chiro or the osteopath in a very regular process—so pain comes up, have an adjustment, pain comes up, have an adjustment.
But you also might have a client who doesn’t want to have that. They want to build upon the opportunity that’s provided.
And again, that’s why awareness is necessary.
Relief is information. Something is different, something might be easier, something might be quieter, something has changed. And when you can name those things, when you can notice those things, now you got something to work with.
So, the progression is this: Relief is an event. Change is a process. Every intervention, whether it’s a physical therapy session, osteopathic treatment, bodywork, Reiki, any type of exercise that’s used as quick relief, creates the possibility of change. Relief is evidence that something has shifted. That moment is an opportunity.
The opportunity is to help that shift become more consistent and more lasting. Awareness is what allows us to capture that opportunity instead of letting it disappear.
When we can recognize it, repeat it, refine it, and evaluate whether what we’re doing is actually helping, now we’ve got something to truly work with. That’s retraining.
So, that’s awareness and the importance of it.
So now let’s get to the meat of the episode. What about people who can’t feel? The students who shrug their shoulders when you ask?
I have found over the course of the over three decades that I’ve been helping people to reduce and eliminate physical pain, there are two broad categories.
The first one is that no one has actually ever asked them to pay attention. They get the adjustment, they get the needling, you roll on the ball, and then that’s it. They haven’t been taught. They’ve never been invited to notice.
They think there might be a right answer. They think it’s a test. They think you’re looking for a specific sensation.
I bring these up because what’s important here in all of what I’ve just said is this isn’t a deficiency; it’s a literacy issue.
So, when I can teach someone how their body is moving, when I can teach that someone to pay attention to what they are feeling interoceptively and proprioceptively, now they simply need to notice—they don’t need to perform.
They recognize the only right answer is the answer that they are experiencing. There is no actual test.
This invitation to notice is simply that. They no longer need to dismiss sensation. They start to recognize that change doesn’t have to be dramatic, and that the 2% shift actually matters.
By teaching someone about awareness and how to feel and what to notice, you’re giving them the opportunity to begin.
The number of times I’ve worked with people who have simply not paid attention because no one either asked them or taught them, it’s astounding.
And that’s where we can work here.
Now, the second category is that people don’t have the bandwidth. They might have too much stress or overwhelm, they might be in a survival strategy.
It’s not that they can’t feel. It’s not that they can’t learn. They don’t quite have the capacity in this moment to direct attention inward.
And an example of this is I trained a psychologist years ago, and she shared with me that this kind of work of paying attention to one’s movement and one’s breath and to really guide their attention inward is not something she would do with her patients right away. Because when her patients—these are all of her words that she is saying to me—her patients, when they first come to see her, are venting. They need someone to listen to the scenario and the story of their life.
And at some point through that conversation, she provides them with resources so that they can cope.
And then from coping, they gain more energy and a greater container for them to kind of live in. And then, when they’ve got that stamina, now, at that point, they can start to direct the attention inward.
She told me a story about a patient she had who did have that stamina, and this patient had a tendency towards anxiety.
And there was one moment before they actually started in on the session where she brought her patient into a wall sit and had her pay attention to parts of her body, to her breath.
And the person started to notice different things going on somatically in herself, and then noticed that the quality of the therapy session changed.
This is where something like psychology and this type of work blend beautifully, and there’s a requirement of someone being able to have the stamina and capacity to be able to do it.
So in the case of category one, where someone does have the stamina, it’s now a matter of teaching them.
How do we help them?
The metaphor I’m going to use to highlight this is a teaspoon versus a cup. And I was sharing this inside of the certification program the other week, is that when someone has a teaspoon of awareness, there’s not a lot that we can do with it. Versus when someone has a cup of awareness, there’s a lot more that can be done, right? They’re both awareness, they’re just different amounts.
So if someone only has a teaspoon, it doesn’t make sense to ask of them for a cup.
So if we keep asking the person who has a teaspoon of awareness, “What do you feel? What do you feel? What do you notice? What’s changed?” over and over and over and over and over again, and there’s only a teaspoon, then it’s—it’s not going to work. There’s not enough awareness there.
The key here is it’s not about beginning with perfect awareness. It’s beginning with the awareness that’s available, and then we help build it. Not force it, not demand it, not assume that it should already be there, and then from that, we help it grow.
So I will admit there was a period of time early-ish in my career where I would say to my clients, “Listen, I need for you to express to me what you feel because your awareness guides me as to what we do next. I can’t help you change what you’re not aware of.”
And that worked for a long period of time until I had a number of clients say to me, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And I was like, “Oh, interesting. Okay.”
How do I help this person become aware?
And so I would do something really simple.
So I would have a sequence—a simple, safe sequence—and as the person was moving through the sequence, I wasn’t getting particular or deliberate with a lot of the cues, but rather as they were moving, I would guide their attention to a part of their body away from the joint that was moving.
So let’s say they were moving their arms overhead, I would say, “Hey, can you just notice your feet on the floor? Notice your big toe on the floor. Notice your pinky toe on the floor.” Or I’d say, “Notice yourself inhaling and exhaling.” Or “Imagine the spaces between your fingers.”
So very benign type of comments. Nothing to do with fixing anything, simply: Let’s place our mind’s eye on a part of the body.
And sometimes taking it further away from the joint area actually worked better because there was no sense that I was suggesting anything was wrong. It was simply just noticing what was present.
And then as someone was able to articulate, “Oh, interesting, I’m noticing that my toes are gripping when I move.” It’s like, “Okay, great. So now can you move without your toes gripping?” Boom! Now we’re on our way.
Or a client that I remember, again, a client early, early on in teaching, he would always squint his face when he did anything.
And I’d say to him, “Hey, you know what? You don’t have to squint your face.” And he’s like, “Ah, that’s just normal. It’s what I always do.” I’m like, “Oh, great, okay. So, you know, why don’t you try not squinting your face while you do this?” And I didn’t quite say it like that—it’s been many, many years, the exact words I can’t remember.
And he kind of laughed at me, but low and behold, he was able to move—it was a bit smaller than what was available—but what ended up happening is his neck pain went away, and his back pain went away as he kept practicing.
So again, that was a win.
I also remember a client who came in and she really wanted to work on her sun salutations. So we started to see the sun salutation, and as I watched her, I was like, “Oh, goodness me, what are we going to do here?” Because the real core piece that will help her sun salutation is paying attention to more specific and deliberate joint movement, which is difficult when you’re doing a complex series like sun salutation.
And so I asked her, “Okay, of in this whole series, what position do you really want to work on?”
And she was including a Triangle/Warrior 1/Warrior 2 combination, and she said, “That’s what I want to work on, is this combination between Warrior 1, 2, and Triangle.” And I said, “Okay, great.”
“Now, as you move, pay attention to…” like, it was similar to what I said before, like noticing the feet as you move or noticing your breath as you move, noticing your eyes.
And that started to bring her into a quieter, reflective, inward space, which then enabled me to say, “Hey, you know what? I think you will get greater progress if we just focus on your hips.”
And that opened the door to being very deliberate and specific around growing her awareness about how her hips move, how the leg bones moved in the pelvis, which then showed what the compensation patterns were in her ribs and her shoulders and her neck.
And within a few short weeks, the quality of her sun salutation and how she felt and the strength that she had improved tremendously.
So those are a few ways of considering how to bring someone’s awareness up.
The key factor here is it’s not—it’s not about making them wrong for not having awareness, but rather it’s recognizing that there is some awareness present, or they wouldn’t be in class, and we want to help grow it.
So paying attention to breath, paying attention to a distal area of the body, paying attention to the same area of the body that’s moving.
So now, what if your client says to you, “I don’t feel anything,” or “I’m fine,” “I’m good,” “There’s nothing”?
It makes sense. The key is is that maybe no one’s really ever taught them about awareness and the power of awareness. Maybe they don’t have the bandwidth.
The key is our job is not to force awareness. It isn’t to keep asking “What do you feel?” hoping for a different answer.
It’s to meet the level of awareness they actually have, whether it’s a teaspoon or a cup, or somewhere in between, or even less or more.
The key is to start with the awareness that they do have, to help them notice just a little bit more, because awareness does grow.
And as awareness grows, people become better able to recognize change, repeat it, reinforce it, and then build upon it.
That is how temporary relief has the opportunity to become lasting change.
Now, if you want to dig into this further, I get into all the details of awareness inside of the Therapeutic Yoga Intensive that is happening this October. You can learn more over at functionalsynergy.com/intensive.
I would love to see you there.
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Hey, is this idea of growing awareness and having tools for supporting clients who have lots of awareness but aren’t getting better, or who have limited awareness and you want to support them in moving forward, all in the direction of reducing and eliminating physical pain? The Therapeutic Yoga Intensive is really where we dig into all of that and more. And you can learn more over at functionalsynergy.com/intensive.
