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body awareness

neck pain and tension

April 15, 2025 · In: Nervous System Regulation

How to Relieve Neck Pain and Tension

In the modern age of long work hours and constant screen time, neck pain and tension have become all too common for us. Developing from various sources, such as poor…

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EDS

March 18, 2025 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

Understanding Hypermobile EDS and How Physical Therapy Can Help

Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, or EDS for short, are a collection of connective tissue disorders. This connective tissue is affected throughout the body. Symptoms can range from hypermobility to digestive issues and…

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anterior pelvic tilt

March 4, 2025 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

Do I Need to Fix My Anterior Pelvic Tilt?

Anterior pelvic tilt. It is often a buzzword tossed around. Fun fact: anterior pelvic tilt is NOT a diagnosis! So if it isn’t a diagnosis, then what exactly is it?…

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gut brain axis

January 21, 2025 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

The Important Connection Between Exercise and the Gut Brain Axis

The gut brain axis refers to a communication pathway between the gut and the brain. More specifically, it refers to the communication between the central nervous system and the enteric…

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exercises for knee pain when walking

January 7, 2025 · In: Body Region Support, Knee, Science-Backed Education

Knee Pain When Walking? How to Walk with Pain Free Knees

Walking should be a welcome daily activity that doesn’t come with discomfort. Yet, for many, daily steps can come with either a sharp or throbbing sensation of knee pain. Knee…

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engage your core

December 3, 2024 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

What It Actually Means to ‘Engage Your Core’

We’ve all heard it before. You’re in a fitness class or you’re working out with your trainer and you hear, “Engage your core.” But what does it really mean to…

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Meet Tera

Meet Tera
hi friends!

I'm a practicing physical therapist based out of sunny SoCal who loves to educate others and share information and knowledge. You can typically find me hard at work trying to manage normal life or cuddled up under a blanket enjoying coffee or desserts I can never seem to get away from!

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Featured Posts

woman experiencing pain that moves around the body, chronic pain explained

Pain That Moves Around Your Body: What Your Nervous System Is Trying to Tell You

woman practicing real rest for chronic pain, calming her nervous system

What Real Rest Actually Looks Like for Chronic Pain (And Why Sleeping More Isn’t the Whole Answer)

Woman experiencing the freeze response, a dorsal vagal shutdown pattern linked to chronic pain and nervous system dysregulation

The Freeze Response in Chronic Pain: When Your Body Shuts Down Instead of Fighting Back

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terasandona

Chronic pain coaching for high-achieving women
Licensed DPT • Regulate first, rebuild second, then layer
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I hear this one on repeat. It started in your shou I hear this one on repeat. It started in your shoulder, now it’s crept into your shoulder blade, and maybe down toward your mid back. And the first thought is always the same: something new is wrong now or something else is breaking down.

But that’s not usually what’s happening. Pain that spreads to the region right next door isn’t a new injury announcing itself (unless you legitimately injured yourself again).

When pain spreads without a new injury behind it, it’s been part of the picture for a while, and showed up out of nowhere, it’s usually the same alarm system that’s been running in the background. It’s now been ringing long enough that the areas nearby started picking up the signal too.

Think of it less like a break and more like a smoke detector that won’t stop going off until the whole hallway of detectors starts sounding along with it. Nothing new caught fire. The system’s just been on for a long time.

If you’ve already had this checked and nothing new turned up to explain it, pay attention to that. It’s usually your best clue that this is your nervous system spreading the pain to a new area, not a new injury needing its own workup.

Comment “MINE DID THIS” if pain has crept into the area right next to where it started. I’ll send you my blog post I wrote on this exact topic that goes more in depth on what’s actually going on.
But here’s what’s actually true. You’ve probably But here’s what’s actually true.

You’ve probably been told for years that any movement counts as building strength, and in the very beginning, it kind of does. If you’re coming from little to no activity, walking, Pilates, biking, or yoga will strengthen you…at first. Your body is adapting to a demand it hasn’t had to meet before.

But that adaptation has a ceiling. Once your body reaches its load tolerance for that amount of activity, doing more of the same thing doesn’t build you past it. You’re not getting stronger anymore. You’re just maintaining the level you already reached.

This is where cardiovascular and endurance work split from strength work. Walking and biking stay focused on the cardiovascular system. They’re not increasing the load on your muscles. You’re training your heart and lungs instead.

Pilates and yoga work your muscles through holds, which builds muscular endurance and helps your muscles sustain a position under fatigue. That’s a real adaptation. It’s just not the same one as strength.

Real strength requires loading a specific muscle heavy enough, and consistently enough, that it has a reason to adapt again.

If you keep exposing your body to the exact same stimulus, no further change happens. The muscle already met that demand. It has nothing left to respond to.

Comment “MAXED OUT” if you just realized you’ve been maintaining instead of building for a while now.
Everyone sees you making it through the day just f Everyone sees you making it through the day just fine. They don’t see what it’s costing you to get there or what happens once you finally stop.

You show up. You answer the emails, sit through the meetings, keep your voice even when it needs to be, and nobody watching would ever guess anything is off.

They don’t see how tirelessly you work the second you walk back in the door, taking care of everyone else before you’ve had a single second to take care of yourself. They don’t see whatever you’re quietly carrying right now…the thing nobody’s asked about because you never said it out loud.

But your nervous system has been working the entire time to keep you looking like that. Holding the line through every part of the day you couldn’t afford to fall apart in.

And by evening, when nothing else is asking anything of you, it finally stops pretending. Not a dramatic collapse, just a flatness. It’s in the plans you cancel, the conversation you can’t hold, the two hours you lose staring at nothingwhen there’s nothing left keeping the performance up.

Nobody sees the discipline it takes to hold that together all day. They only see the version of you that’s left once it’s finally safe to stop.

If this is you, let the plans stay cancelled tonight. That’s not falling behind. You’ve already asked enough of yourself today.

Send this to someone who’s fine all day and disappears the second it’s finally safe to stop.
It’s Friday night. The week is finally behind you. It’s Friday night. The week is finally behind you. And you still don’t feel like you got anything back.

You’re not lazy. You’re using the wrong tool for the kind of tired you’re actually experiencing.

I know why you think something’s off. You slept enough. You even took the whole day off. And your mind still felt like it never turned off, replaying the week, running tomorrow’s list, and staying half on alert even while lying still.

The only explanation that makes sense is that you’re bad at resting, or too wound up to relax, or just built wrong.

But here’s the truth: physical stillness only covers one kind of exhaustion. If your eyes, ears, and screen never got a break, that’s sensory depletion still running underneath you. If you spent the day holding everything together for everyone else, that’s emotional depletion still running. If your brain never stopped making decisions, that’s mental depletion still running.

You didn’t fail at resting. You used the right tool on the wrong job…the screwdriver when you needed scissors.

So if you want to try this differently tonight, here’s where to start:

First, name which kind you’re actually short on (sensory, emotional, or mental) instead of defaulting to more sleep.

Second, match the rest to the deficit. Sensory rest means screens off and quiet, no noise. Emotional rest means nothing that requires you to hold anyone else up. Mental rest means no decisions, not even small ones, for one hour.

Third, expect it to feel smaller than you think rest should look like. It still counts and it adds up over time. Small consistencies matter here.

You’re not lazy. You’ve just been resting the wrong thing.

Save this so you know which kind of rest to reach for tonight.
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