An interest in body building led Jeff Blanchard to love anatomy and kinesiology. That, in turn, led him to a career in Physical Therapy. His biomedical model PT training taught him to understand pain as “injury A, signal B, pain C.” Given his focus on diagnosis for choosing the appropriate treatment, he pursued a lot of continuing education over the course of his 25+ year career. Yet he noticed that–particularly with chronic pain patients–it seemed like his exercise skills and manual therapy tools were not enough to provide long-term benefits.

When his son required treatment for cancer, the emotional pain Mr. Blanchard experienced led him to practice meditation and to a counseling/coaching approach called “Healthspan” (pillars: nutrition, movement, sleep, mindfulness).

He went on to focus his study on chronic pain and realized that people are programmed from a young age to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy despite getting inconsistent benefits.

He integrated ideas from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and from the ACES research study of the impact of adverse childhood events into his PT practice. Dr. Kevin Cuccaro’s PAIN TRIANGLE and Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv’s book “The Way Out” gave him greater insight about the complexity of pain  He uses the analogy of a Venn Diagram for understanding the blend of biological, social, and psychological factors that produce pain.

His experiences al;omg with listening to his physical therapy patients has led Mr. Blanchard to boil the interaction down to “increasing safety and increasing love.”  He listens. Then he teaches his patients that inflammation is linked to their minds, not just their bodies.  When he sees that a patient’s needs are beyond his Physical Therapy scope of practice, he refers them to an appropriate practitioner.

He also uses patient education resources such as “What We Say Matters” from “Oregon Pain Guidance” and its website. When his patients describe their pain experience using nocebic language, he tries to gently have them consider how their thoughts and beliefs about pain increase their fear of pain.

Additional educational/treatment methods he used include teaching (1) parasympathetic breathwork (drawing out the exhalation), (2) loving kindness meditation, and (3) self-compassion (reference given to a book by Kristen Neff). He may suggest that patients keep a journal to help them identify how their thoughts and beliefs are holding them back.

Over the last year and a half, he developed a series of classes to provide patients with more in-depth education. Topics include: Understanding pain; The pain neuroscience; What is neuroplastic pain?; Understanding how stress and lack of safety negatively affect the mind and the body; How important it is to calm the brain in order to calm pain; The importance of understanding mindset and being able to hear your thoughts in order to recognize what you’re thinking and start making a shift in the way you think about your body; Quality of habits; The power of self-compassion; The power of appropriate nutrition; The power of movement; and The power of sleep.

In Summary: (1) pain is not just a bodily sensation and (2) the level of depression, stress, and anxiety people are experiencing in today’s world makes chronic pain more prevalent and a bigger issue for practitioners with chronic pain patients.