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pain sensitivity

DOMS vs injury

July 29, 2025 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

DOMS vs Injury: What Your Body is Really Telling You

You crushed your workout and now your muscles are letting you know it. Now the question starts rolling around in your head: DOMS vs injury? Is this normal soreness or…

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pinching in the shoulder

July 1, 2025 · In: Body Region Support, Science-Backed Education, Shoulder

Understanding Pinching in the Shoulder When Lifting Your Arm

Have you experienced pinching in the shoulder when lifting your arm? It’s a discomfort that many of us can relate to. Pinching most commonly occurs when reaching overhead and can…

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bulging disc

May 20, 2025 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

I Have a Bulging Disc. What Do I Do Now?

A bulging disc is when an intervertebral disc extends beyond its usual boundary. There are varying degrees to how severe a bulging disc may be. More severe cases result in…

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shoulder impingement exercises

March 11, 2025 · In: Pain Science and Healing, Science-Backed Education

The Truth About Shoulder Impingement

Understanding the biomechanics behind shoulder impingement exercises will reveal why shoulder impingement is an outdated diagnosis. Shoulder impingement, now known as subacromial pain syndrome (SAPS), involves pain under the acromion,…

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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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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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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 testing a gentle movement baseline during a slow walk

What is Gentle Movement? (And Why Most Advice Gets It Wrong)

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)

woman managing push crash cycle chronic pain fatigue

The Push-Crash Cycle: Why High-Achieving Women Keep Falling Into It

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Somewhere along the way, gentle movement became a Somewhere along the way, gentle movement became a genre instead of a description. A category of things, restorative yoga, gentle stretching, slow walks, that you’re supposed to do when you’re not up for a “real” workout. This means most days you either skip movement completely because nothing on that approved list sounds appealing or you push straight past it into something your body wasn’t actually ready for because gentle felt like admitting defeat.

Here’s the part nobody explains. Gentle was never supposed to be a fixed list of activities. It’s a match between whatever movement you’re choosing and where your nervous system actually is that day. On a Green Light day, a hike can be gentle. On a Red Light day, five minutes of walking around your kitchen can be more than enough. Calling it gentle isn’t you being soft, it’s you reading the room your body is actually in.

That’s the piece the standard advice skips. You can’t match movement to capacity if nobody’s taught you how to read your own capacity in the first place. That’s what the Traffic Light System is for. Not a chart to memorize, but a way to actually check where you are before you decide what “gentle” looks like today.

So the next time someone tells you to “just do something gentle,” ask yourself what your system needs today, not what the label says gentle should look like. Some days that’s a walk. Some days that’s getting down onto the floor and back up. Both count.

Comment “red” or “green,” whichever one today actually is. There’s no wrong answer.
It’s been sitting there for months. Maybe it was a It’s been sitting there for months. Maybe it was a gift or maybe you bought it yourself in a burst of “this year I’m going to actually rest.” Then, work picked up or one of the kids got sick, and the book stayed closed...same bookmark, same page, for weeks.

Every productivity hack tells you to schedule yourself in like an appointment. To block the time and treat it as non-negotiable. That misses the real problem. You can put an hour on the calendar and still not open the book because the block was never the missing piece. What’s missing is a nervous system that has to believe stopping is actually safe before any schedule works.

You’ve told yourself it’s because you’re busy. And if you’re honest, it’s quieter than that. Every time you chose between something for yourself and one more thing for someone else, someone else won. Not because you’re weak, but because somewhere along the way, your body learned that stopping wasn’t safe, so it stopped asking to be prioritized at all.

That’s not poor time management. That’s the sign. The women who are just busy find the five minutes. The ones who take care of everyone else first, don’t. Their own needs stopped registering as needs a long time ago and “later” became the answer to everything that was actually about them. And right now, with school starting back up in a few weeks and every calendar about to fill in again, this is exactly the season it gets worse, not better.

You are not broken. You are dysregulated. The order matters and the fix isn’t a better system. It’s teaching your nervous system that it’s allowed to stop before it’s forced to.

Open the book tonight, even for two minutes. Not to finish it, just to prove to your body that stopping doesn’t cost you anything. Then, save this for the next time you need the reminder.
Everyone treats the moment pain stops as the finis Everyone treats the moment pain stops as the finish line. It’s not. I’m currently two weeks into the longest pain-free stretch I’ve had in a long time, and this afternoon, I still braced myself to load the dishwasher. I had hands on the counter and on my thighs doing everything I could to avoid just bending forward. Then I stepped back and stood there and nothing hurt. So I bent down again, without any support, and it still didn’t hurt! My brain and movements are still anticipating what I’ve grown accustomed to.

So if you’re still bracing for a pain that already left, try this: next time you catch yourself hesitating, stop and ask, “is this pain or is this the memory or anticipation of pain?” That’s the whole gal. You’re not imagining it and you’re not behind. You’re just not caught up yet.

Save this for next time you catch yourself doing it. And follow along if you want to hear me talk more about this topic.
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