Soma Flow

Your Body Was Designed to Feel Good: Escaping Chronic Pain Through Intuition

• Tabitha MacDonald • Episode 55

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Chronic pain often persists because the brain misinterprets normal signals as dangerous, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that conventional medicine struggles to address. Neuroplastic pain is real, valid, and responds to mind-body approaches that recognize how emotional stressors, unresolved trauma, and unconscious beliefs amplify pain signals long after tissue healing should have occurred.

• Neuroplastic pain occurs when the nervous system stays in a heightened state of alert after an injury
• Emotional stressors and unresolved trauma amplify pain signals in the body
• The subconscious mind reinforces pain patterns through deep-seated fears and beliefs
• Dismissal by the medical system creates additional stress that can intensify pain
• Understanding the mind-body connection doesn't invalidate pain but provides new pathways for healing
• Asking "what would you like to do in your body if it felt good?" shifts focus from what's wrong to what's possible
• Validation through skilled touch provides both confirmation that pain is real and hope that it can be solved
• Addressing unconscious patterns through tools like hypnotherapy and superconscious recoding accelerates healing
• Trauma stored in the nervous system often emerges as physical symptoms decades later
• Your body was designed to feel good and last—pain patterns are learned responses that can be unlearned

Get a free 14-day trial to the SomaFlow Library of Healing with modules specifically addressing pain, including recodes and hypnotherapy sessions.  To book an in person session, visit www.soma-massage.net.


Are you ready to feel supported on your healing journey?  The Soma Flow Library of Healing is now available.  With a powerful meditations, hypnosis sessions and Superconscious Recodes to restructure your unconscious patterns, this is a must have tool to your journey back to you.  

About Tabitha
Tabitha MacDonald is an Intuitive Coach and Bodyworker committed to helping people overcome their pain as fast as possible so that they can have the love, success, freedom and fulfillment they truly desire.

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Speaker 1:

Have you ever experienced real pain, chronic pain, pain that's lasted over three months or pain that keeps coming back? I used to have chronic back pain, like my back would go out at least once a year for a long time, and when I mean out, I mean I couldn't walk. As a body worker, I use my body to make money, so I would also have to go to work with my back killing me. I've always believed that there are solutions to pain outside of what we currently know, and I believe during COVID was when I really saw it escalate because people did not have access to healthcare. They did not have access to their normal providers and when they started coming back in after the lockdowns were released, their pain was so much greater than before and it really got me examining the mind-body connection between pain, physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain and spiritual pain.

Speaker 1:

If you haven't met me, my name is Tabitha MacDonald and I am an intuitive coach and a body worker. I love solving pain. I love helping people out of pain. It is what gets me going, what gets me excited in the morning and what I absolutely love talking about that and intuition. But today I want to talk about something called neuroplastic pain. There is a new book out. It's called the Way Out and it's by Alan Gordon and I just got it and I don't know how new it is, but if you're really looking for a solution to pain, this book is fantastic. It basically put research and science to everything that I have seen in my clinical practice and just intuitively known for a very long time. That pain that has been with you for a long period of time has now created an addiction to itself in your mind, and I know I talked about this on the episode where I talked about my step mom and her journey with chronic pain and when it was the end of her life and I could see the addiction to the pain medicine actually amplifying pain so that she could get more pain medication. And trust me, I'm not saying that from a blaming way at all. It was a vicious cycle that I don't think anybody ever really talks about. But that's not what I want to talk about right now. What I really want to talk about is understanding neuroplastic pain.

Speaker 1:

Neuroplastic pain occurs when the brain misinterprets normal signals from the body as dangerous, keeping you locked in a loop of pain and fear. This happens when the nervous system stays in a heightened state of alert after an injury. Emotional stressors and unresolved trauma amplify pain signals and the subconscious mind reinforces pain patterns due to deep seated fear and beliefs. Does that mean that the pain that the person is experiencing is not real? No, that does not mean that at all, because all pain happens in the mind, because the receptors in the body communicate to the mind to let you know how much pain you're in. Why does that matter? Because I think when a lot of my clients come in, they have felt very dismissed by the medical system and I know they're doing the best they can. I think everybody's doing the best they can. I think everybody's doing the best they can with the information that they have, but they feel very dismissed by the medical system. And when they feel dismissed by the medical system, it actually creates a whole new loop that creates even more pain, so that somebody will finally validate the experience that they are having in their body when they come in.

Speaker 1:

And usually people will come see me when they have kind of reached the oh I was going to cuss, but I'm not going to when they have reached that like that point where they don't have any answers and they're kind of desperate. Usually that's when they'll come in and see me and I like taking a science and an intuitive look at their pain. So I look at things like okay, are we dealing with postural distortions? Are we dealing with trigger points? Are we dealing with a tear or some of the more standard like nerve pinching and things like that that will increase physical symptoms of pain, are we? And then, if that's not resolving, then I look and go okay, well, is this an old belief pattern that you know, maybe inherited from the parents, for instance? You know, after 40, your body falls apart. That's a really common one that I see a lot of. Or maybe a doctor told them when they were 30 that they had the spine of an 80-year-old, and now they have this unconscious pattern that says they're really 80 instead of the youthful body that they have.

Speaker 1:

So when we're looking at neuroplastic pain, if you've had an injury and that pain has not resolved itself over a long period of time, the mind-body approach is what you need, because the drugs will eventually stop working. And I'm just going to say this I am not telling you not to follow your doctor's advice. I am not telling you to walk away from the Western system. If that's what you're in, I am saying that there needs to also be included an additional level of support to help you on your journey, and the neuroplastic pain is what we really need to address Now.

Speaker 1:

If you've ever done any work with like NLP neurolinguistic programming, you would also have been exposed to parts. Parts are aspects of our consciousness that are trapped in moments in time, and sometimes a pain pattern might have been created as a way of keeping you safe. For instance, I had this old pattern where every time it was time for me to break up with someone, my left calf would become so injured I couldn't walk and I'd be like oh great, it's time to break up. Like my body never lies. So you know now that I've been doing super conscious work for a long time. I no longer have that issue. Now I use intuition, but your body might have an old pattern trying to communicate with you the only way that it knows how, for instance, my low back used to go out because of many reasons, but one was fear, financial fear, and the more I had financial fear and worry, the more my back would go out, which then created more financial fear and worry, which is ironic. But that's the pattern that my body was in.

Speaker 1:

So when we're looking at your pain, I want to ask you a couple of questions. Do you have pain that has either repeated itself over the years or been chronic, meaning it has been over you know three months that it has been present and not resolved? If the answer is yes, then this is for you 100%. I have a free access, like 14-day access to my Somerflow Library of Healing and I have a whole module on pain and it also includes some recodes for pain and hypnotherapy sessions to help resolve the underlying cause of chronic pain. If you're interested, the link is down below in the show notes. You can also go to soma-massagenet that's my clinic's website and there will be a link off of there to get a free trial. And I just invite you to be open-minded, to try something different, to be open to the possibility that maybe there is an aspect of your mind that is trapped in pain and it doesn't know how to get out. That is trapped in pain and it doesn't know how to get out. That's where super conscious recode, structural integrity and also hypnotherapy can help With structure and that's like structural alignment not physical structural alignment, but more like visualization and goal setting can really play a huge part in healing and recovery.

Speaker 1:

One of the first questions I ask my clients is what do you want to do with your body when you feel good in it? And I can always tell the people who have been in pain a long time because they look at me very confused, like I can't even fathom feeling good in my body. Confused Like I can't even fathom feeling good in my body. And so I say, okay, well, what would you like to do? Or what would you have envisioned your life doing if you never had pain? What would you have done? And sometimes it might be, especially with my older clients, like I just want to play golf, or I retired and I want to go on vacations in Europe and be able to walk on the cobblestone streets and enjoy myself without worrying about falling or breaking a hip. It can also be things like activities of daily living, like I want to be able to get off the toilet and not have my back go out or my hip give way, and you know it could be getting out of the shower with ease or in and out of the car without pain. It doesn't always have to be some grand adventure horseback riding, it could just be. I want to be able to go from sitting to standing and not feel like I'm 105 years old.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to think about what you would like to do If you're someone who's had chronic pain. What would you like to be doing in your body if it felt good? What would you be doing If you didn't have headaches every time you were in burnout, if you didn't have low back pain every time you played pickleball? What would you be doing in your body? What would you want to do? How would you want to experience life? What would bring you joy and purpose and meaning life what would bring you joy and purpose and meaning?

Speaker 1:

I had a client come in the other day who was just doing his honeydew list and carrying cement in it through his back out. He also uses his body for work, and so there amplifies this pain, because not only are we now like oh great, we're disappointing the family, but now we're also not going to be able to go to work. That's stress, and that stress creates extra cortisol in the body. And then now we are actually increasing pain even more. So when I asked what would you want to be doing when there is no more pain in your body.

Speaker 1:

As always, confusion set in and I said I bet you'd like to be fishing more. And the smile came across his face and obviously that's what he would want to be doing with his time is spending more time fishing and, you know, enjoying life, not always worried about, oh my gosh, if I go out on a boat, is my lumbar spine going to be compressed and then my back's going to go out? Do I have to pay for my body not cooperating every time? I want to have fun, so think about it. What would you like to be doing For me?

Speaker 1:

I'm going to be 50 this year and my big goal and what gets me to the gym every day is I want to go on a backpacking trip for my 50th birthday, thinking 50 miles, but I also am not sure about that. I really just want to be someplace beautiful and to challenge my body physically and to let go of the identity of someone who has ill health, who's obese and who doesn't feel athletic and fit. So this is my year of really focusing on finally crossing the finish line of no, I feel good in my body and my body actually feels better as I age because I have been using the hypnotherapy and recode to tell myself that and it's interesting because I actually feel younger and I feel stronger and I look younger than I did 10 years ago. So I know mindset works, I know super conscious recode works, I know intuition works and I know body work is an important part of that. Part of the reason body work is so important is because touch is healing Like having someone put their finger on your body or their hand and that's your pain is probably one of the most validating experiences for our clients, because the minute you find their pain, they know, one, they were not making it up and two, that it's solvable because you found it and something that can be found can be solved.

Speaker 1:

And something that can be found can be solved. That is hope, and I would say hope is probably the first stage of overcoming chronic pain issues. Now, if you're not in the Portland area and you can't come into SOMA, I encourage you to read the book the Way Out and I encourage you to still download the free trial to my app because you can still receive the benefits of retraining the unconscious mind outside of those pain patterns. You're not alone. There are a lot of people suffering with pain and there's not a lot of great solutions out there except oh, you're getting older, get used to it, your body's falling apart. That's terrible advice and also not true. It really frustrates me when I hear people saying that over and over again. And yeah, I like all the funny memes on like, you know, facebook or whatever that you know have the like over 40 problems at the gym.

Speaker 1:

But I also think that it normalizes not taking care of ourselves over a certain age, not understanding that our body and the chemistry of our body is changing and that the needs of our body is changing. Instead, we tend to try to block it out and pretend like it isn't happening and then slowly we stop moving and stop taking care of ourselves and that's how we become old. Not because we become old, but because we stop caring. So when we look at neuroplastic pain, getting back to that, I want you to also think about the effect of long-term trauma on the body. If you had a lot of abuse in your childhood or in your early adult, maybe you had an abusive relationship. I just want to offer that that trauma gets stored in our nervous system and I would say in your 40s is when it really wants to be released and there are so many tools to do that faster than you were ever told possible. I know because I found out during my own journey through pain and through losing weight that I had so much trauma that I had to recover from. That.

Speaker 1:

I really didn't think was affecting me or my body and it wasn't on a conscious level. It's what it was doing on an unconscious level. Unconsciously it was creating horrible relationships, it was creating a complete disconnection from my physical body and it was creating addictive patterns with, like social media or you know, periods of binge drinking or binge eating or binge lazying I don't even know if that's a word, but I don't think it is but just not taking care of myself because I didn't prioritize or value my body. And it's interesting coming up on 50 because I'm so excited about taking care of my body. And don't get me wrong, I have bad days Like I don't think you could not have bad days. Maybe you could, I don't know, maybe I look forward to that one day. I do have bad days where I'm not in full alignment, and that's just when I lean into my tools and I use my intuition or I'll listen to a hypnotherapy session and just get my mindset back where I want it to be, which is health and vitality. So when we look at like structural alignment and I ask someone, okay, well, what would you like to be doing with your body, then we have to go and say, well, what is it like now? What is it like to be in your body now?

Speaker 1:

And I know at the beginning of the year for me, I had gained so much weight and I had become so immobile, I just stopped moving. I was not walking very much, I was eating a lot of junk food at night. Probably when my daughter moved out, I don't think that I realized how difficult it would be for me when she left the house. I mean, part of me was like, but then the other part of me was like, oh no, what do I do? I'm so used to worrying about her, like no, she's not here. So I kind of went into a deep funk of I think that empty nester is the term, but I didn't really consider myself an empty nester, but I guess technically I was. And it made me feel a little bit lost and I really stopped taking care of myself and, you know, sitting on the couch at night, eating and watching TV and not really caring anymore, made me gain more weight and then also just stop moving. And then it started hurting to move and so I just stopped moving more so that I didn't have to really be aware of how much my body hurt. You relate to that. I know a lot of people who they just slide into it and they don't even realize they've done it.

Speaker 1:

So I want to ask you, like what is it like now to be in your body? So I want to ask you like, what is it like now to be in your body? What are you ignoring, what are you not paying attention to? Is it sluggish, is it heavy? Is there pain that you pretend isn't there and work through? And a lot of us are just afraid to look at the pain because we think that it means we have to acknowledge defeat or we don't have the solution to it. But that's where, like recode, superconscious recode is probably the most magical tool on the planet that I have found, because what we do is we go into the field and intuitively, I'll go into the field and connect in and I'll like scan your body and scan your field. So I look at, like, the spiritual body the mental body, emotional body, the physical body, your family history, past lives, timelines, all that kind of stuff and I just look for the biggest boulders of resistance to you having a life that you love, to you feeling empowered with your health and to you feeling good in your body. And we just start removing the boulders using your superconscious, and when that happens, we can then step into an intuitive state and say, okay, what is the next aligned action to feel good in your body? Now it might not make logical sense. It might go against all of the things that you thought you needed to do. However, the information that comes in intuitively is usually the answer that's going to create the fastest result for you.

Speaker 1:

So with me in particular, my intuition said to do isogenix, which is a shake program, and I thought, wow, like I've had so many people tell me that that was not safe and there was all these issues with it and maybe that product wasn't great. But I decided this year to trust my intuition and then I had like three synchronicities and signs that validated the intuition I got, and I always trust those way more than people's opinions. And since I started Isagenix, I feel younger, stronger, fitter. I have lost 18 pounds, I've lost a lot of body percent of fat and I'm less hungry, which is fascinating. And I love it because I don't think about food as much, because I find it easier to just do the shakes and the isogenic program without having to like meal prep and plan, and I can just drink them between clients. And for me it fits into my lifestyle, which is probably why my intuition told me to do that. Also, adding in creatine supplements has helped tremendously with my muscles, especially since I'm working out four or five days a week at Orange Theory. That's what my intuition also told me to do.

Speaker 1:

So when we get the intuitive guidance in that's step four and then step five we have to follow it. And if we're not following the guidance that we're receiving, then we have to look and go. Why not? Do I not trust myself? Am I listening to people outside of me? Am I not prioritizing my needs still? And then we go back in and we look for more boulders, unconscious patterns, beliefs, family history, um, and we just keep chipping away until you start taking action towards feeling good in your body, towards feeling good in your life and to be really empowered and purpose-driven.

Speaker 1:

So that is what I wanted to talk to you about today as far as pain goes, because so many of us, especially the over 40 market, are struggling with pain or old injuries and really don't feel supported, seen, heard or even know where to turn to resolve the pain. And I believe that the new science of mind-body medicine and energy healing and body work, massage, hands-on therapies are going to transform the world of pain care. Therapies are going to transform the world of pain care, and I really hope that you take at least a small step on that journey. You have nothing to lose by trying out my 14-day free trial. You have nothing to lose at all. It's a gift that I would love to share with you, and you can just go through the pain module in there. I have other hypno recodes around obesity, weight loss relationships and autoimmune disorders, things like that, so feel free to check it out.

Speaker 1:

But if you're really struggling in your body and you're not feeling good in it, it's time that we start listening to your intuition. You start listening to your intuition. You start listening to your intuition and connect in and figure out. What is it going to take for me to feel good in my body? And that is my favorite question to ask what is it going to take for me to feel good in my body today? You get really quiet and you just listen and start writing.

Speaker 1:

If you're a writer I'm a I'm big into automatic writing. I love it. I do it every day. It's where I get the best information. Um, that's just how my intuition is strongest.

Speaker 1:

Um, some people just see like a visual. Maybe they might get, like a you know, a visual of their chiropractic friend and then they might call them and make an appointment, or perhaps a friend later that day might give them my card, or they might reach out and give them someone else's card who helped them out of pain. Perhaps it's an acupuncturist or someone else, maybe it's a physical therapist. Listen to your intuition, because your body was designed to feel good, your body was designed to last, and there's just something in your unconscious programming or your patterns that are getting in your way and blocking you. And if I could gift the world something, it would be the knowledge that we've got to look at pain in a new way. We really do.

Speaker 1:

We've got to address all four layers of pain so that people can really choose to feel good in their body, because it is probably I think one of the things that gets stolen from us when there's pain or illness is that connection to our body and getting to feel good and walk around and feel confident in it and to, you know, evict the mean person in your head that says, you know, you can't do it, that this is just your lot in life. It's time to just get them out and leave the prison of pain. My favorite quote from Rumi, the one that really changed my life, was why would you stay in prison when the door is wide open? Changed my life was why would you stay in prison when the door is wide open? So I'm going to invite you to check your pocket for the key to your personal freedom, so that you, too, can feel good in your body. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day.

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Tabitha MacDonald

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