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Habits for Healing

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  • Burnout and Fatigue
  • Habits for Healing
  • Navigating Long-Term Pain
  • Rest and Recovery
  • woman taking a planned rest break while pacing an activity with chronic pain

    Pacing for Chronic Pain: The Skill No One Teaches You (And How to Actually Start)

    tips to break sedentary habits

    7 Tips to Break Sedentary Habits Without Overhauling Your Life

    body awareness

    Body Awareness: The Foundation of Movement, Regulation, and Healing

    back pain travel tips

    Back Pain Travel Tips: A Physical Therapist’s Guide to Long Drives and Flights

    managing arthritis pain in cold weather

    Managing Arthritis Pain in Cold Weather with Simple Daily Strategies

    add more movement to your daily life

    Simple Strategies to Add More Movement to Your Daily Life

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    Follow Along

    @teravaughn22

    terasandona

    Chronic pain coaching • Ditch the push-crash loop
    Licensed DPT • Regulate first, rebuild second, then layer
    👇🏻 Free nervous system workbook

    On a good day, it’s tempting to do everything you’ On a good day, it’s tempting to do everything you’ve been saving up, and that’s usually when the crash comes.

A good day can be a test, just a small one. Add a little more than your usual (a few extra minutes, one more set), then notice how you feel that night and the next morning. If you’re steady, you have information about what your body can take. If you’re not, you have that information too, and it points to a smaller step next time.

Everything on this list comes from the same idea: strength gets built at the speed your body can absorb.

Save this for your next good day, or send it to the friend who goes all out when she finally feels good, then pays for it later.

#chronicpain #painscience #strengthbuilding #returntostrength #chronicpainawareness
    September 🏝️👙🌊☀️⛱️🍾🍋🥝🥑☕️ Filled with one amazing t September 🏝️👙🌊☀️⛱️🍾🍋🥝🥑☕️
Filled with one amazing trip and tons of food
    When you’ve been hurting long enough, your body ge When you’ve been hurting long enough, your body gets very good at saying stop, and it doesn’t always say it because something is being damaged. Sometimes it’s the pain and sometimes it’s the fear the pain left behind (both are real, and they can feel identical from the inside).

For years you may have moved around one movement, avoiding the exact position that causes pain, and sometimes you’re still doing it after the movement has stopped hurting (I still catch myself doing it too).

That makes sense because your body learned the pattern while the pain was real. It can keep bracing before you’ve even started moving. Sometimes you recheck and the pain isn’t there.

What I see clinically is that stop signals get treated as pain by default, when some of them can be learned protection that’s outlasted the pain. The two can feel identical from the inside. Both deserve respect.

Sometimes the useful move is a small, careful test: try the movement once, slow and small, see what’s there. If the pain isn’t there, keep going. Stop if the pain is there and sharp or progressively getting worse.

Telling them apart is a skill (and a slow one for most people).

Save this for the next time you catch yourself moving around something that used to hurt.

#chronicpainlife #nervoussystemsupport #painscience
    I’ve taken three weeks off working out between tra I’ve taken three weeks off working out between travel and getting sick, and then life just picked back up again before I felt ready for it.

The whole time, my body has been stressed in a way sleep hasn’t fixed, wired and on edge, snapping at small things that shouldn’t be a big deal.

I kept telling myself I’d feel better if I just sat down and worked instead. Sitting still felt like the safer choice.

It wasn’t. It was just a different kind of stress with nowhere to go.

Exercise is technically a stressor too, but the right amount of it can help a nervous system come back down instead of staying stuck in high alert. Too much too fast just adds another demand on a system that’s already maxed out.

This is something I watch play out constantly. Someone’s system is already maxed out and the instinct is to either push through anyway or stop moving completely. Neither one actually gives the nervous system what it needs.

So today I did something easy instead: an arm workout, kept light, with nothing that leaves me flattened afterward.

It’s still real strength work. I’m still showing up. It just doesn’t have to be all or nothing to count.

Starting is usually the hardest part and you’re allowed to start in the messy middle instead of going all in or not at all.

If you’ve ever put off the small version of a workout because part of you decided it didn’t count unless it was the hard one, tell me. I want to know I’m not the only one.

#capacitybuilding #pushcrashcycle #chronicpainawareness #regulateandrebuild #chronicpaincommunity
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