Pain 101: The Threat Neuro-Matrix
The blog mentioned in the video can be read here:
https://www.matrix-pf.com/blog/2017/3/24/pain-101
0:00
Hey everybody, it's Shane here at MATRIX Personalized Fitness. As you can see, I'm back in the studio this week. We're on the wi-fi, so hopefully the video won't be kicking out like it was last time. Hopefully, this week on Facebook, you saw that I posted my blog. It was on Pain-101. Today I'm just giving you some more information about where pain actually comes from. Even though there's lots of different types of it.
0:21
Here in the studio, with our Brain-Based Training, we look at pain from what we call a Threat Neuro-Matrix. That's a really complicated word to say that a lot of things matter when it comes to pain. The first thing I'd like to talk to you about in this concept, though, is that pain is not just that physical hurting that you feel. We also look at pain as being a decreased range of motion in your joints. Or a decreased strength in your musculature that you wouldn't normally have, if something wasn't there causing this pain.
0:50
When we talk about the Threat Neuro-Matrix, it's something really simple to think about. You can imagine it as a bucket, okay? In this bucket goes all the different stressors that you have in your life. Your environment, your relationships, your work, business, friends, family, and environmental factors. Cultural factors, things like the way you were brought up. Being male and female we have different interpretations of the way the world works. So, there's all these different things that are getting fed into this bucket.
1:22
In addition, going into this bucket are internal sensations. Our eyes should be telling us the same thing that our inner ear is telling us and that our body is feeling and sensing. If there's discrepancies between these different things, then the result can be pain. Now, why is this important? The way we like to think about it here is our brain has two different parts. There's the Old-Brain. And there's the New-Brain.
1:50
The Old-Brain is the part of the brain that controls our breathing, our bodily functions, all of these subconscious things. And the whole point of this part of our brain is to keep us alive. It's geared towards survival.
2:03
Then there's the New-Brain. That's our conscious part of the brain. The part of our brain that says, "I'm going to jump off that building and pull this rip cord, and it's going to be awesome!" Or "I'm going to go shooting myself off this ski jump, and we're going to have a blast!"
2:15
And the thing about the Old-Brain and the New-Brain is that because one's about survival, one's about performance, they can be in conflict a lot. Usually, the New-Brain is able to override the Old-Brain. But this isn't always the case. Sometimes, when our Threat-Bucket gets super filled up, and it begins to overflow, the survival mechanisms of the Old-Brain kick in and start putting limits on the body that the New-Brain doesn't necessarily want.
2:43
And so again, this is where pain comes up. Pain is one way of the Old-Brain, getting the New-Brain's attention. Putting limits to our strength, so that we don't jump as high, so that when we land, we won't hurt our ankle as we fall. That's the Old-Brain putting limits on the New-Brain and the body. Where all this ties back in with the Threat-Bucket, is that as these threats start to build up in our body, the Old-Brain starts winning, and we experience things that limit what we really want to do.
3:12
Now we come to MATRIX. The training that we do here, helps us to start taking away some of these stressors. Things like relationships, business, life, I can't help you with that. For those types things on your own. And some of them you're just stuck with. But we can limit other factors of the Threat-Bucket. For instance, we can work on your vision training, so that what you're seeing is matching the things that you're feeling. We can work on your movement, so that your movement is sending the proper signals to your brain. And your brain actually knows where your different limbs are in space. We can work on your inner ear, so that it knows that your body is vertical and level. And it doesn't always feel like you're falling over. That's just the some of the reasons why we work on all these different sensory inputs and why we work on things on the brain. Because it can help reduce pain by reducing the threats in the bucket. Additionally, it can also help improve your performance because the New-Brain gets to win over the Old-Brain.
4:07
So that's it for this week. Go ahead and read the blog, if you haven't already done so, and watch this video again. If you have questions and comments, please post them. I'd love to hear from you. And I'll answer any questions that you have. Take care and I'll see you next week.