Check out these quotes from leading scientists

Not feeling is associated with pain, anxiety and major health issues:

‘Some of the most devastating medical and public health problems of our time – depression, substance addiction and intractable pain – are centred on pathologies of feeling’

Damasio A and Carvalho GB (2013) The Nature of Feelings: Evolutionary and neurobiological origins. Nature Reviews Neuroscience Vol 14, Feb 2013, 143

Feeling is hard, our brains can create a disconnected, virtual body:

‘We don’t need a body to feel a body.’

Melzack R, and Katz J (2013) Pain. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:1–15

You can learn to feel more:

‘Your interoceptive awareness is key to everything … It can be trained.’

Craig AD (2015) How Do You Feel? Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Check also http://bit.ly/2lqjZvZ

Learn to feel lots of detail:

‘A strong, refined, detailed and coordinated representation of information from any given region of your body is, by its fundamental nature, anti-pain’

Merzenich M (2013) Soft-Wired. Parnassus Publishing. See also Merzenich M (2012) Dr. Michael Merzenich on Neuroscience, Learning and the Feldenkrais Method. http://bit.ly/2bssAY6 accessed 2013-05-01

Focus on feeling safe and try to avoid worrying about intense sensations:

Studies ‘suggest that individuals with non specific low back pain are over-responsive or over-attentive towards sensory inputs that potentially signal ‘danger to the lower back’ and require action to protect the spine.’

There is a paradox for people in pain of not being aware of the slow-background tone of body sensation (interoception), and, at the same time, being hyper-sensitive to potentially threatening sensory inputs.

https://bodyinmind.org/sensorimotor-impairments-non-specific-low-back-pain/

Science backed goals for working with back pain:

– Develop skills to feel more connected to the body
– Learn to feel safe with intense sensations
– Become a ‘movement optimist’

http://www.greglehman.ca/blog/2019/1/30/the-wedge-that-divides-what-creates-a-movement-optimist