Many of you know I’ve lived with chronic pain for a long time. Like so many people, I’ve spent years searching for answers, trying different treatments, asking difficult questions, and looking for ways to keep moving forward even on the hardest days. My guest, Dr. Perry Nickston has dedicated his career to helping people understand pain differently, and our conversation challenged some assumptions I didn’t even realize I was still carrying.
Dr. Perry is the founder of Stop Chasing Pain, creator of the Big Six Lymphatic Mojo system, an internationally recognized speaker, educator, and clinician who has spent nearly three decades helping people understand chronic pain, nervous system regulation, movement, and whole-body healing. His work challenges many of the traditional approaches to pain and offers a perspective that is both practical and empowering.
Here’s what landed most for me from our time together.
Pain Isn’t Always the Problem
One of the most interesting perspectives Dr. Perry shared is that chronic pain often isn’t the place where the real problem begins. We’re naturally drawn to focus on the area that hurts. We want to fix the painful spot, calm the symptoms, and make the discomfort go away. But Dr. Perry explained that when pain has been around for months or years, the body is often responding to something deeper. Instead of viewing pain as punishment or evidence that our bodies are failing us, he encourages people to become curious. What if pain is communication? What if it’s the body’s attempt to get our attention?
The Meaning We Give Our Experience Matters
Dr. Perry talked about the difference between what happens to us and the meaning we assign to it. As someone who has spent years navigating physical challenges, that really resonated with me. None of us can change what has already happened. We can’t erase an injury, a diagnosis, or a difficult season. What we can influence is the story we continue telling ourselves about it. The way we think about our circumstances affects far more than our mindset. According to Dr. Perry, it can directly influence how our nervous system responds and how our bodies function day to day.
Healing Doesn’t Always Start With Something Complicated
One thing I love about Dr. Perry’s approach is that he doesn’t immediately point people toward complicated protocols or endless interventions. Instead, he often starts with the basics: breathing, movement and connection. Sometimes the goal isn’t adding more to our healing journey, sometimes it’s learning how to support the body in simple ways that help it feel safe again.
If you’ve been told there’s nothing more that can be done, or if you’ve tried everything and you’re starting to lose hope, please listen to this episode. Dr. Perry’s approach is grounded, compassionate, and genuinely life-changing. I can’t wait for you to listen!
About Dr. Perry Nickelston
Dr. Perry Nickelston is the founder of Stop Chasing Pain and creator of the Big Six Lymphatic Mojo system. For nearly three decades, he has helped people better understand chronic pain, nervous system regulation, movement, lymphatic health, and whole-body healing. Through his teaching, courses, speaking engagements, and online education, he has become one of the leading voices helping people move beyond symptom chasing and toward a more complete understanding of health.
Connect With Dr. Perry Nickelston
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Transcript:
Amberly Lago (00:00)
For people who man, they’ve tried every kind of treatment. I mean, they’ve tried everything and they are losing hope. What do you want them to hear today?
Dr Perry Nickelston (00:09)
I use the word re meaning now. You can’t control what happened to you, but you can control the meaning of what happened to you. Right? Like with change. Like if something has happened to you in the past, the only way you can make a change for it now is to change the meaning of what that did for you, even with that pain. And it’s it’s really difficult to do that sometimes in a support group because support groups can be like a crab in a bucket syndrome where you’re trying to get out.
And everybody else is gonna pull you back in to keep you in that that misery part. Right. And sometimes it’s the people closest to you that actually keep you there.
Amberly Lago (00:47)
Thank you for tuning in to the Amberly Lago show. ⁓ I have someone back on the show. He was on my show, gosh, it’s been a few years ago or more. And I was like, can you please come back and share your wisdom? Especially you’re gonna want to tune in and take a note, get a notepad and pen. Because if you’ve ever been told that pain is all in your head, or even worse, that nothing can be done, this episode may just change everything. I am joined.
by the one and only Dr. Perry Nicholson. He is the founder of Stop Chasing Pain and Big Six Lymph Mojo. He has got nearly three decades of just what? How many?
Dr Perry Nickelston (01:34)
No, no, I was just saying big six. But I don’t have six decades. ⁓
Amberly Lago (01:39)
I got fury. I was like, I need to know your your how your how do you stay so youthful looking. But I you’re amazing. I learned so much from you the first time you were on the show. And I love that you know he challenges the traditional pain model and offers a completely different perspective, one that puts power back in your hands. This is not about quick fixes.
It’s about understanding your nervous system, rebuilding resilience, and discovering that healing is possible, even when you’ve lost hope. So, Dr. Perry, thank you for being here and thank you for all that you do with your platform, with webinars, with speaking all over the world to really give us hope and some real things that we can start doing today.
⁓ for pain. And I know a lot of people listening to the show experience pain, especially with complex, you know, complex regional pain syndrome, like I was diagnosed with. And so I’m of course selfishly can’t wait to just ask you some questions because pain is just so exhausting.
And can cause brain fog. And we were just talking before we started recording, and it can be a very humbling experience. And so before we get into this, you started Stop Chasing Pain, which is a very like, y’all got to follow him on Instagram. ⁓ he’s a legend. On Instagram, he’s a legend also. But where did you come up with Stop Chasing Pain? How did that all start?
Dr Perry Nickelston (03:21)
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me back. You know, I love to spend any time with you and be able to connect with your listeners. ⁓ and I love the intro, beautifully said. Thank you. ⁓ yeah, you know what? I was thinking about that. It’s this two journeys. One was a personal one because I was just myself
kept going after on myself and other people, doing lots of things that I’ve learned over the years in my schooling and my training and certifications, you know, two areas of pain where where people were hurting. You know, and and sometimes it helped, ⁓ sometimes it didn’t, ⁓ a lot of times it helped, but this is what kept driving me bananas is why does it keep coming back all the time? Like there’s there’s gotta be something
I’m missing. So I think somewhere in my own body I was starting to get this feeling of there’s gotta be more. Yeah. Not just treating where the side of pain is. That’s a good place to start. So you always want to start there, first of all. Okay, because sometimes it is just that. All right. But I specialize in chronic pain. And chronic pain is anything ⁓ that’s greater than three to four months long that’s not going away.
And the one thing I’ve learned over the years is if it’s chronic, you will never find the answer at the site of pain. It’s not there. It’s going to be somewhere else included. Okay. ⁓ but the universe has a way of sending people across your path when you need to find them and see it. So along this time when I was thinking it’s gotta be more, there’s gotta be more, I went to a workshop. And I was sitting in the workshop and
Three words came up on the screen. It was they were red and the screen was white. And the three words were this stop chasing pain. And I said, that’s it. That that’s what I’ve been searching for. And the guy teaching it is one of my dearest friends now. And ⁓ they they were teaching this concept called ⁓ regional interdependence.
So I’m going to explain that. That means that the body is all connected. It’s not just one piece. And their whole mantra was do something to where it hurts, but look somewhere else in the body where you find some type of dysfunction. Maybe it’s excess tension, maybe it’s tightness, maybe it’s a lack of movement, or sometimes you can’t control movement. And that and do something there. And then what you’ll find is.
the sight of pain gets better. So I’m looking for ⁓ I don’t like the word dysfunction anymore, but you’re looking for an area where you’re finding something that is quote unquote like dysfunctional, but not painful. That was the takeaway. And if you treat that, the painful spot gets better. And wouldn’t you know it? It actually did. And then what I did is I went up to him, it’s a funny story. ⁓
I stopped listening to the lecture when I saw those three words and I went right on the internet and I secured the domain name on Google for Stop Chasing Pain. Yeah. And then I went up to my friend Gray Cook afterwards, because Greg Cook is the one ⁓ who was teaching it. And then I said, Hey, do you mind if I use this name for for my business and education? And he No, not at all. Right. And it was a classic case of ⁓ do something and ask for forgiveness later, you know.
Amberly Lago (06:43)
Smart man.
Dr Perry Nickelston (07:03)
Then I got it. And that was the beginning of this journey. And then I I haven’t looked back ever since.
Amberly Lago (07:10)
Well, and you and I, I think, were at some conferences, maybe even together, and I studied from Gray Cook. He’s a genius. He’s amazing. He’s a genius. Yeah. That was cool that you he was like, ⁓ by the way, can I use that? And so now y’all are good friends. Does he see like how you have just blown this up?
Dr Perry Nickelston (07:33)
Yeah, we’ve become very good friends. And and I’ll tell you another personal story if you want to hear it. ⁓ how how we became friends. I read his book, Athletic Body and Balance. It’s one of his first books, and I think it’s still 20 years old or something like that now. And I read it and I thought, this is amazing what he’s doing. And I started to introduce his concepts into my treatments. And I worked up the nerve to send him an email and just to say, thank you.
For for your work, not expecting anything. And then one day, my three or four days later, I get a call. And this is back in the days when I had you had a flip phone, you had to flip it over. Right. And then I saw this number coming through. I’m like, where in the world is this number from? I don’t, I’m not picking it up. And once I got done with a patient, I listened to the message that, hey, Perry, this is a great cook. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your message, you know. And ⁓ I love that you’re introducing the
The work into your practice. And I told him I was doing a lot of laser therapy work using his concepts, basically taking laser therapy and putting it over places beyond where the pain is. So for instance, like if your lower back hurts, I would laser the lower back, but then I would move and laser your middle back too, like to help the lower back. And he said, you know what? I’ve been looking to learn a lot about laser therapy. I don’t know anything about it.
Would you like to fly down to see me here in Virginia and we could spend like three days together? And of course I said, Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then here’s the personal part. ⁓ I’m from Virginia. I originally grew up in the South. You know, I’m a I’m a Southern guy, even though I live in New Jersey now. I moved up here when I was 14 years old. The reason I moved up here is because my father died from brain cancer, and I was living with him after my parents were divorced. And I had left.
In 1980, and I hadn’t been back in twenty five years because it was just too painful. He lives the town over from where I grew up. And he said, come on down and visit. And when I went to visit him, I still kind of get emotional about it because I used that opportunity to go back and visit my father’s gravesite for the first time since he left.
And I said, this is calling that I’m coming back to Virginia. This guy could live anywhere. And he lives there. And he’s a good old boy like me. And we went out hunting and fishing and you know, doing all sorts of stuff after that. But I thought I healed some deep wounds in my life then, but then I discovered the pathway that I’m supposed to be on. And that’s when stop chasing pain was ⁓ created.
And that’s why it means so much to me now after all these years.
Amberly Lago (10:34)
Wow, that is such a beautiful story. And that really, I was just talking to my dad a couple of days ago. And I’m sorry for your for your loss. ⁓ my stepfather passed away, and that was he was like a dad to me, but I still have my biological dad. And we were talking and we were just talking about the power of gratitude, like what that does. And here you were just grateful and reached out.
To say thank you for the work that he does and look at what transpired from that. Just from appreciating him and taking the time to leave a thoughtful email. He picked up the phone and called you. I mean, that that is amazing. And it I can understand the passion that’s driving this more clearly now because
I see all the things that you’re doing and I am always blown away with all the webinars, with all and you have a book coming out. What’s the name of your new book?
Dr Perry Nickelston (11:37)
It’s a working title. I haven’t formulated that yet, but ⁓ it will be I’m just finishing up the last chapter of it now. So the tentative release date will likely be in ⁓ early 2027. So we have a little bit of time for it to come out, but it’ll finally be a dream come true. And what I’m gonna do in that book is basically share to everyone in the world my approach of looking at the body and what I
Teach my own patients and my own clients to help themselves heal and stay healthy in between seeing me. So you you learn the stop chasing pain body system approach, looking at the whole body.
Amberly Lago (12:24)
That’s amazing. And by the way, I didn’t my first book, I didn’t have the name of the book until I think I’d written about ninety percent of the book and then I finally came up with a name and I was like
Dr Perry Nickelston (12:35)
I think that’ll come. Like I’m I’m just letting everything flow naturally, not not forcing anything. Right. And I th you know, I was supposed to write this book five years ago, honestly. I had got accepted for publication five years ago with a different publisher. And I never finished the book. And I I was thinking to myself over all these years, well, why did you not finish it? Well, what’s the mental barrier? And I think
I needed to learn some other lessons along the way and that I needed before publishing that book because that’s when I actually started to experience a lot of underlying health issues that I didn’t have before. And I looked at everything in a completely new lens that I would not have seen if I published the book the first time.
So I actually think it’s a case of where you know how people say you through your suffering is where you gather a lot of your wisdom and you see maybe where your destiny and your purpose lies. I firmly believe that something, whatever you want to believe in, said it’s great that you got accepted for the book, but it’s not your time. I’m gonna send you a lot of hardship your way. I’m gonna kinda break you. I’m gonna take you to the edge.
But I know you’ve got the strength to come back from it ’cause that’s one of the reasons I’m giving it to you, because you can take the lessons that you learned there to not only help yourself, but you’re gonna share this with everybody else so you can help them.
Amberly Lago (14:07)
wow, I believe in that too. And in fact, ⁓ I but I did feel broken after my motorcycle accident. Yeah. And living with the this pain all the time from CRPS. And I remember one of my clients, ⁓ she was a client of mine for 20 years and she said, Amberly, you’re actually a better trainer now because you understand the pain that I live with and can better help me.
So I do believe that we go through things, we heal, and then we help others. ⁓ what are some of the ways that you have with own pain, physical pain in your life, some of the ways that you’ve noticed that have really helped? Because do you believe that some pain is caused by underlying ⁓ trauma, unhealed trauma?
maybe not so great things that maybe we’ve been through. Do you think that’s often pain shows up when those things are unresolved? Yeah.
Dr Perry Nickelston (15:09)
Yeah,
I find that a lot in my world because I have people who’ve suffered for years, if not decades, in chronic pain. And they’ve tried the you can list off every single therapy or intervention or surgery or medication. They’ve tried to help themselves and maybe it helped a little bit or it hasn’t. And they’re really struggling and they’re in what I call the quicksand or the abyss. And it’s usually tied to some type of you know e emotion, emotional trauma.
Even from that experience itself of the pain or something that they had before that that they weren’t even aware of that could be contributing to that. Because everything in your life, your nervous system, I heard this once. It said your nervous system and your immune system never forget anything. So I want you to think about that for a second. The nervous system and immune system never forget anything, even when you haven’t even you know started to live it, like even in utero, you absorb.
what your mother is experiencing. And you sense and you hear things around you. And I always I added on to this phrase is that they rem they remember everything even though you forget. That’s the that’s the subconscious part. And those two systems are are the primary systems that are supposed to keep you alive and they go into lockdown mode. They go down in protective mode.
Because if you have emotional trauma or physical trauma, your immune system and your nervous system will respond the same way. Yeah. So that’s thought. Like you could sit in a room by yourself and think of a situation in your past or even happened yesterday and you feel it physically. And what’ll happen is Yeah. So true. What’ll happen is those past traumas or things that you’re holding on to, they will send your
Autonomic nervous system, your sympathetic nervous system, into what’s called fight or flight is the common word that people hear. Another term is hypervigilance. You’re just always ready for something because the primary goal of your body is to not die. Survival is the top of the food chain. And when you are in that hypervigilance for a long period of time, that’s what breaks the body down. Mm-hmm.
Amberly Lago (17:32)
Well, why is it that the nervous system prioritizes survival, overcomfort, and how can that keep people trapped in pain? Yeah.
Dr Perry Nickelston (17:42)
well I read a quote once by Robert Sapolsky. You ever heard of Robert Sapolsky? That sounds ⁓ he yeah, he he is a professor. He wrote one of the best books ever. The title is called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Did you ever hear that book? No. I want everybody to go buy that book. Why zebras don’t get ulcers, which what a great thing. And I’ll give you the primary answer is because ⁓ zebras and animals do not ruminate.
They let stuff go, right? They survive, they shake it off, and then they move on. Humans don’t do that. You hold on to everything. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, right? That sort of thing. And then that keeps you in this survival loop. And he said this: your nervous system only cares about the next three seconds of your life.
So why is that? And I tongue in cheek say because it’s hard to heal when you’re dead. Like your nervous system doesn’t care, honestly, if you you have pain or you don’t have pain. Because if if you have pain, that’s a survival strategy because it’s trying to protect you from something, to keep you from repeating something. You may not understand what the protective strategy is for, right, or what it’s trying to protect.
But that’s the layers that come on in time through life. That’s compensations and adaptations that stack on top of each other because your body’s actually trying to prevent you from having pain. So when you feel pain, it’s the last symptom you feel, not the first. Because it’s doing a lot of stuff in the background. So you don’t have pain. So I already know if you have pain, it’s been trying to do a lot of stuff on its own to prevent that. You know, except like traumatic pain. Like if you get punched, that’s an easy
Explanation for why you have pain. But what if that area you didn’t have anything happen to you, and then all of a sudden today it starts to hurt and it didn’t hurt yesterday? That’s a completely different approach that you need to take to that pain. And so the reason that the body does that is this that’s how we’re wired. It it’s life. And it whether you are happy or whether you feel joy, the body doesn’t care. It it just
wants you to not be dead. And then all these things that it’s doing, that that really honestly helped me reframe something. So I said to myself, if the nervous system only cares about the next three seconds of your life, why is it giving me this symptom over here? Like like one of my biggest things was I had a lot of mucus infections, post nasal drip, sinus infections, and you know a lot of swelling and inflammation and bloating.
And I thought to myself, well, why would the body do that? What’s their protective strategy for that? Because I know it’s not trying to punish me for something. And I thought, I said, ⁓ okay. Well, my lymphatic system has been back up for how many years? And this is the only strategy it has to protect me because my lymph system is a hot mess. And then once I cleared my lymphatic system, guess what went away? All those other things.
Amberly Lago (20:56)
the other say. Yeah. And I like just reframing it from fighting the pain to looking at it as what is this teaching me? What lessons? What how is my body trying to protect me? How is my body working for me instead of looking at it as your body is going against you? That gives hope right there.
Dr Perry Nickelston (21:17)
Yeah, that’s a big because I’ll tell you right now, if you come up with that mindset, you’re c you’re gonna struggle forever. Uh-huh. Th these words, the the meaning of the words are very powerful to your nervous system. Right. I mean, words change your physiology. And if you can look at pain as ⁓ not punishment, which is very difficult to do when you’re in it, because I was there.
I look at it a pain as one protective, but it’s also ⁓ an I looked at it as an unmet need. There there’s something that your body needs. And this is when people say, Well, what does it need? I said, I don’t know the answer to that, but I just know that there is something. It could be physical, spiritual, emotional. Maybe it’s not the exercise that you’re missing, but a toxic person you need to remove from your life.
And maybe you need to look in the mirror because maybe you’re the most toxic person around you. Cause your self talk will keep you mired in that pain as well, for sure. And then pain is your body just saying, I need you to change something. And here’s what I tell people just change the meaning of pain. Like if you can just change the meaning of pain, pain changes.
Amberly Lago (22:45)
Powerful. Well, I know like I used to do back in the day. Were you ever on Clubhouse? yeah. Back in the day, and I ran a room. I wanted to create like a room for people who experience chronic pain just to be seen, heard, get some answers. I would have some doctors come in and talk, and I wanted it to be a very
Dr Perry Nickelston (22:53)
yeah. yeah I remember that one.
Amberly Lago (23:09)
uplifting place. So I didn’t want people to compare how bad their pain was and my pain’s worse than yours and my no my pain’s were you know, I don’t even like to say my pain. I like to say the pain.
Dr Perry Nickelston (23:20)
Yeah,
at ownership when you say my you gotta watch those slippery slopes right there.
Amberly Lago (23:26)
Yeah,
I d I don’t want to own it. ⁓ but I noticed it was very, very hard to keep the room like up lifted. There was a lot of sadness, there was a lot of anxiety, frustration, ⁓ and not a lot of hope. ⁓ for people who man, they’ve tried every kind of treatment. I mean, they’ve tried everything and they are losing hope. What do you want them to hear today?
Dr Perry Nickelston (23:55)
Well, first of all, that re re me I use the word re meaning now. I because ⁓ it’s you can’t control what happened to you, but you can control the meaning of what happened to you. Right? Like what with change. Like w if something has happened to you in the past, the only way you can make a change for it now is to change the meaning of what that did for you, even with that pain.
And it’s it’s really difficult to do that sometimes in a support group because support groups can be like a crab in a bucket syndrome where you’re trying to get out and everybody else is gonna pull you back in to keep you in that ⁓ that misery part. Right. And sometimes it’s the people closest to you that actually keep you there. Mm-hmm.
Amberly Lago (24:41)
Yeah. So it was really hard. I’m not in any support groups because I noticed that it it was not a very it was just brought me down, made me feel more pain actually. Yeah.
Dr Perry Nickelston (24:53)
Two two things that I tell people is that the most powerful way that you can change your autonomic nervous system, there’s a few ways. One is how you think. You can flip it on a dime. The other one is changing how you breathe, because breathing automatically influences the autonomic nervous system. So what I tell people is don’t try to try to change your breathing first, because that’ll relax the system physiologically physiologically, and then you’ll find it easier to think better.
Amberly Lago (25:23)
I I it’s there is power in just breathing. I do use a meditation app every single night when I go to bed. And part of it is ⁓ like a natural sedative for your nervous system. And you breathe in four counts, you hold it for seven counts and breathe out for eight counts. And I literally can feel like my whole just system just kind of my my breathing changes after that.
I feel more relaxed. I feel more in like touch with my body instead of just my, you know, cer nervous system just like vibrating. so do you do mojo breathing as well? Do you have any of those webinars coming out? Yeah.
Dr Perry Nickelston (26:10)
Mojo breathing, I do have a course in that. Here’s what I found is that many people are trying to get into breathing to decrease stress, but they get stressed about breathing because so many people have a different answer for how you’re supposed to breathe. Yeah. And then they’re like, don’t breathe this way, breathe that way. And then you get anxiety and you’re like, I don’t know what to do. Cause this person says breathe this way. And they said, no, no, don’t do that, breathe this way. And then you’re overloaded. I say it’s what can freak out a nervous system are not enough choices or too many choices.
So what I do is I tell people in the beginning, just take try to breathe through your nose primarily, not your mouth. Your mouth should be used for eating, drinking, or talking. In through your nose and out through your nose is preferable, or in through your nose and out through your mouth. Don’t breathe in through your mouth when you’re trying to come for the people that I work with, when you’re in hypervigilance fight or flight and you’re stuck with poor lymphatics and poor blood flow and chronic pain, you got to go into more of a parasympathetic state.
Okay. So when you go four seconds in, and then I just say six seconds out. I don’t tell them to hold in or out. I just say in the beginning, four in and six out, you automatically change your body chemistry because longer exhales have been shown to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the relaxation one. And when you do that, you automatically calm the body and your breath holds are great because you
You’ll hold your breath and you’ll build up carbon dioxide in the body. And most people don’t have enough carbon dioxide because they breathe too much too many times per minute, and they expel too much carbon dioxide. They’re breathing high and tight in here, which automatically puts your nervous system into fight or flight. So you feed the quicksand like this. You need to go low and slow. But what happens is that.
Physiologically, you change your body because you’re changing chemistry. You’re increasing ⁓ the carbon dioxide in your body, and that’ll change other chemicals that will actually help dilate, open up blood vessels. And when you open up dilate blood vessels, you get better blood flow. So you automatically increase oxygen delivery.
To your brain for sure, but all other areas of the body. Because here’s what happens is when you get in hypervigilance, hyper-arousal survival mode, your breathing becomes too much per minute. You get really tight everywhere, you get increased tension. And when you get increased tension, you decrease how well things move in the body because everything’s too tight.
So it constricts everything, fluid flow, and then people get the stagnation, and then they end up getting inflammation after that, and then they end up getting sick. So breathing is a no-joke thing. Like if you can change that one thing, it takes practice. It’s not easy because you’ll find yourself falling back into some of these breathing patterns you’ve had for.
Decades. But you can make a big difference.
Amberly Lago (29:40)
So you sh like for instance, sometimes this pain from CRPS gets so intense that it makes me like physically nauseated and vomit sometimes, just not to be too graphic. But and I find in those moments that my breath is very short and sh it’s like very short and shallow. Should I intentionally focus on the breathing and even though my body
is like I’m wanting to just breathe short and fast. I should intentionally slow down, breathe in for four, breathe out for six is to the best of my ability.
Dr Perry Nickelston (30:20)
Yeah, yeah, do that because what happened I I studied what influences the the stress response in humans. And one of the things that increases stress in the human body or in a person is uncertainty, ⁓ not knowing or lack of control. So think about that. Like if you don’t know what’s coming around the corner.
That’s going to put you into hypervigilance because what’s around the corner could kill you. So you’re programmed to like, I don’t like this. You’re trying to predict what’s coming, right? Also, ⁓ lack of control when we feel we don’t have agency over ourselves. And that’s kind of how pain feels. That’s also a very big stress response.
And not knowing, not having enough information coming in doesn’t give you the ability to make ⁓ a decision. So I thought about this for a second. Uncertainty, lack of control, and not knowing.
Breathing, you can have absolute 100% control over. So if you control your breathing, you automatically decrease what? Stress because now you’re controlling something in your life, which is the breathing. So your nervous system automatically goes into a safe mode because you’re in control mode. And you’re also at the same time physiologically changing the body, because I told you what happens.
anatomically and physiologically through the chemicals when you breathe. So you’re getting the anatomical side, and then you’re also getting this autonomic side of control. So that’s when I say control your numbers, control your pace, control your sound.
And then you’ll notice things begin to drop.
Amberly Lago (32:27)
That’s something that we can all use starting today is just to really look at the way we think about the pain, but also doing something that doesn’t cost you anything. Breathing. Just focus on your breathing. That is so good.
Dr Perry Nickelston (32:47)
Breathing can ch breathing is the number one way to change your autonomic nervous system. So just that and an air. And another powerful way is changing how you think. And when you change your blood chemistry by your breathing, you make your brain easier to function better so you can think better. Cause it’s hard to think good thoughts when you’re in survival mode, right? Because everything is doom and gloom and everybody’s trying to take me out. So you’re very reactive. So the breathing comes down.
then the thinking can come back up. And then the b other best way is to just change physically change your environment whenever you can. Put yourself in different places than you’re used to being. So environmental change is a huge one.
Amberly Lago (33:31)
That is huge. I mean, I just the importance of getting outside and getting some sunshine. I know you go for walks with your cute pup and I love getting outside with Nugget. It really does help just it re-energizes you as well to move however you can. Even when I was, you know, just recently in the hospital.
When I got out, I couldn’t wait to just go sit in the lounge chair in the sun for a little bit just to get outside. So much better than a hospital bed. Yeah.
Dr Perry Nickelston (34:05)
Absolutely.
Well, you know, decades ago, they used to have hospital beds ⁓ outside. So people could go outside when they’re staying at the hospital and spend several hours out in the sun. There’s some old-time black and white pictures of like lines of beds with patients in them outside on this special roof that they designed, and they found
Holy cow, that this thing called the sun actually helped people that were sick heal faster and feel better. And somewhere along the line, we fell into this matrix, and then now everything is inside in some cold, dark, dreary room, and you’re nowhere near that. It’s the complete antithesis to where we should be. And I’ve seen articles where there’s several hospitals that are.
Reintroducing this of getting people out into the sun. And you know it. Listen, you know it as a human being. If you step outside and you feel that warmth on your face, and then you do your breathing, or you put your feet on the ground and you ground to this the energy, magnetic ⁓ energy of the earth. Or I learned this in Eastern medicine. I go out and I
Physically touch nature. It’s called tree hugging. Like you actually physically hug a tree and touch a tree. And ⁓ you one of my favorite books is called The Hidden Life of Trees. If you haven’t gotten that book, it’ll tell you the magnificence magnificence of trees and how they communicate with each other and talk with each other and the fungi underneath feed. It’s just like out there in nature is how life is human beings stuck inside.
We’re not, we’ve we’ve lost that connection. And it’s nice that you know, neuroscience and research comes out and now they say, ⁓ walking in nature, neuroscience proves that it’s good for you. I’m like, Well, no duh. Like, I don’t need you to tell me something that’s straight up common sense, like newly discovered exercise is good for your brain. No.
Amberly Lago (36:24)
Yeah.
⁓
Dr Perry Nickelston (36:27)
I
honestly think sometimes research and science has become a parody of itself. It’s ridiculous.
Amberly Lago (36:33)
Well, I d I I feel blessed that I knew how much movement really moves my mind. I had a friend reach out to me today and she goes, What do you do when you have like a really bad flare up with pain? What do you do? And I said, Well, I try to focus on what I can do and move my body however I can. even if it’s
walking slower. If I can walk to her uncry off of the sofa, heck yeah, I’ll take it. Great form why movement such a powerful form of medicine. Even when it feels scary or uncomfortable, ⁓ why do you think it’s such a great form of medicine? Yeah.
Dr Perry Nickelston (37:19)
Well, movement is life, right? I mean, ⁓ what’s a lack of movement? Well, you’re pretty much dead, right? I mean not nothing’s happening. There you’re going. So they’ve even shown that when you’re sedentary, you’re you’re you’ve got different parts of your brain. You’ve got the the mind to move this frame, right? Yeah. What’s in my brain is you’ve got an I
Amberly Lago (43:00)
I am gonna try that. I am gonna try that
Dr Perry Nickelston (43:03)
Tell you now this is gonna be a big one for you.
Amberly Lago (43:06)
Yeah, I really want to try that. I mean, I have tried so many different things, but there was something inside me that knew that I needed to move. ⁓ I remember I w even after I had a cesarean and I couldn’t run, couldn’t really I was supposed to not do exercise for six weeks after the cesarean.
And I was going a little nutty. I mean, I was not all my husband was like, You have got to go talk to a shrink because you’re driving me crazy. And so I did. I went and I talked to Shrink and I said, you know, I know that as soon as I can start running again and working out, I’m gonna feel better. And she said, Well, anybody that has to work out to feel good.
There’s definitely something wrong with you. You need to be on antidepressants. And I cried all the way home. And nothing against antidepressants, because I know it really does help some people. But you know what? I was okay as soon as I could start moving again. And even when I was in the hospital bed after my motorcycle accident, I was moving however I could because it made me feel like I was moving in the right direction. So for those people who have said, well, I I can’t work out.
I I am gonna share this with them and tell them to go look at the YouTube, but also to look at your your tongue mojo. You’ve got so many videos from the lymph node mojos to the that I saw one on your site about tongue. Maybe I’ll have to try that on days where I’m
Dr Perry Nickelston (44:47)
I’ll tell you what, if you go to my YouTube channel, Stop Chasing Pain on YouTube, I have lots. I’ve had that YouTube channel for I don’t know, 16 years. I’ve been tubing for a long time. I have different playlists on there. There’s a playlist for lymphatics. There’s a playlist for your diaphragm and breathing. There’s a playlist for your tongue. If you just start to make your way through some of those and watch them and implement just one or two.
And I really want you to pay attention to something in there called the morning flow routine. It’s called a morning flow. ⁓ if you can do the morning flow every single day of your life, you’ll change your life. And you don’t have to do the whole thing. You just start with a little bit at a time and you do what you feel is comfortable for you. ⁓
You’ll feel different. And it’s really important that people understand there’s a difference between movement and exercise. Exercise is a term that humans made up. ⁓ and like people have you say that, and there’s this meaning that’s attached to it, right? You feel like you have to go to the gym, you have to be like reps, you have to do these structures, you have to follow somebody else’s program.
But you do movement, exercise is just a subcategory of movement. So when people say, How should I move? It’s an easy answer. First of all, the answer is yes. But the second one is move more of yourself, more often, more ways, more environments. That’s it. So you you choose it. And if you can do something called making it fun, huh.
Right? Like play, like like kids used to play. So you’re that also has been shown to decrease ⁓ pain and help fight or flight is the act of play, or usually you’re playing with another person. So then you have that ⁓ connection that you’re going on with someone. But it it doesn’t take much to change the body with movement, just a little bit. And that’s why
Some of my fate when you watch the morning flow routine, some people will say, Yeah, I’ve seen some of those moves and Tai Chi and Qi Kong. And I’m like, Yes, that’s because where they came from. That they’ve been teaching those moves for thousands of years, which makes me think, well, they probably work. Yeah. And they’re slow movements.
They’re you’re controlling your breathing, but you have this thing where you’re actually paying attention, like they call it interoception, feeling what’s going on inside of your body. And when you first begin these moves, what I want you to notice is your speed and your tempo. So just slow it down and watch your breathing, because you may have seen this yourself. The first thing people lose when they begin to breathe.
Again, again to move or exercise is breathing. They actually physically like stop breathing. They’re moving, but they’re not breathing. If you do that, that’s going to put a hard stop break on your nervous system relaxing. You need to make sure you can continuously breathe through that movement. I learned that from Greg Cook. One of the first things I learned from him is that.
Amberly Lago (48:19)
You don’t see
Dr Perry Nickelston (48:29)
If you cannot breathe through a movement, then your nervous system is in fight or flight, and you will not change your nervous system or the brain because it’s in fight or flight. You have to be able to breathe through the movement. And maybe you can only get two or three moves, and that’s it. You just start there. The longer you’ve been overwhelmed and the longer you’ve had inflammation, the longer you’ve been in fight or flight.
The easier it is to overwhelm the systems. So I’m going to give you something I’ve learned in my 30 years of practice. One of the reasons that people don’t get better is they’re doing too many things at once to try to get better. So what happens is they’re overloading the nervous system and the immune system’s capacity to tolerate what you’re doing and change something. So it’s called a threshold. You go beyond it.
The nervous system goes into protective mode. It goes back to prior habits of protection. Guess what a prior habit of protection is? Pain. So then you’ll, you know, so you have to know where that line is. So I have some people that are doing doc. I do like 20 different exercises a day to try to get better. And I then say, I’m just not getting better. I’m hitting a wall. Then I say, go and do two.
Amberly Lago (49:55)
Yeah, I love that.
Dr Perry Nickelston (49:57)
Two, that’s not two is not gonna do anything on my, you wanna bet?
Amberly Lago (50:01)
My whole motto this year is about keeping it simple. Like I you know, so many people, ⁓ put these patches on, do this, do that, no, n take all these millions of different supplements. I mean, I’m just like I’m tired of being a guinea pig. I want to get back to basics and keep it simple. And
Go look up the YouTube and do the morning flow and maybe do a little dancing, singing, and move my tongue and and I’ll let you know how it goes. You mentioned something that I love that you mentioned, and it’s about having fun and really connection with others, because I think that connection is the opposite of addiction, of a lot of pain that comes into play, whether you know, emotionally.
⁓ how does community and human connection influence healing?
Dr Perry Nickelston (51:00)
that’s a big one. Right. ⁓ human beings are designed to co regulate with each other, be with each other. And and ⁓ when you have that disconnect, they’ve got a lot of research to say that depression sets in, you know, loneliness, detachment sets in, and that’s a form of survival mode. And then pain amplifies. Pain y you get worse with that, right?
And that’s why these some of these small group settings when you begin to do movement is fantastic. And I’ll tell you something. I mentioned the haka before, right? If you do a haka with another person, you’ll be you’ll be hysterical on the floor. You will laugh like you would not believe. ⁓ because when you do it yourself, you’re gonna feel it.
But when you do it with another person, that’s the magic. Because you’re kind of being silly, playful with another person. And then when you’re like that, what are you usually not paying attention to?
Your pain. It’s kind of like what they call a distraction method, right? I mean, like if something really, really hurts, I just grab your attention over here, then all of a sudden that doesn’t hurt. Mm-hmm. Because you got the the over here. They do that with kids all the time, where they’re gonna give you a shot. And so they just say, look at the little butterfly over here, and they don’t feel anything. So that’s my point is that the same sensation went into that shoulder.
Like if if they were looking at it and they gave a shot, same exact sensation, but it hurts more because of the meaning that you’re giving it by looking at it. But I’m over here, it this the brain is getting the same information, but the output’s different. So what’s the difference? The difference is what you focused on.
Amberly Lago (53:14)
For sure. I mean, with my daughter, she just terrif has this I mean, she’s scared to death of needles and she had to give blood. And so I sat on the doctor’s table with her and I was like massaging her feet and telling her jokes. And you know what? It’s the first time she gave blood and didn’t like turn ghost white and go throw up.
It was just distracting her, you know, by rubbing her feet, making her laugh, telling her stories. So I do believe in that. And I think that’s one of the reasons I love speaking at events so much is because I love connecting with the people and it brings me so much joy that I’m not even thinking I don’t feel pain. I feel no pain. So ⁓ I think that I I love I love what you share about everything from the joy to the
What’s it called? The hawk?
Dr Perry Nickelston (54:09)
Haka, yeah. You can type in like ⁓ Hakka just on the ⁓ YouTube and you’ll have a lot of ⁓ that show up and just try a couple of them of the moves, particularly with the so if you’re if you have a lot of pain, for instance, and you know you can’t move and you can’t do some of the stomping stuff, I mean you can just lay in bed and first of all move your arm, you move your fingers and your toes and
You could do a couple little bit of breathing things and then just do some of the facial movements. And what you’ll notice is they move their tongue a lot. It’s going out, it’s going sideways, and they’re making lots of voices like. And what you’re doing there is you’re stimulating your vagus, cranial nerve nine and ten, and twelve. Nine, ten, and twelve. And if you turn your head like this.
You do it, you get cranial nerve 9, 10, 11, and 12 that live on the medulla in the brainstem, and that’s the most powerful part of the brainstem to decrease pain. Wow. So it sends inhibitory signals down to the rest of the body and calms the sympathetics. Like it tells the sympathetics, chill out. And then when you get the other nerves above that, on what’s called the pons, those are linked to.
Movement of the face. ⁓ yeah, the muscles of the face, that’s cranial nerve number seven. And then when you move your eyes, you make big eyes, bug eyes, and then you look le you’re looking all over the place. You’re getting cranial nerves all over the place with that one. Number three, number four, number six. So like four of the 12 cranial nerves are devoted to your eye. Wow.
So I know what’s happening. People look at that and think it’s silly. And I say, it yeah, but that’s a good thing too. But I know what is happening in your brainstem there, and I know pain goes down because that’s how it works. So that’s what I try to explain to people in my classes. I take these anatomical things, these physiological things, I put it together, and then I help you see how.
now I understand why something like that could make me feel better, but I make it really simple. Like that, back to basics. So I have a fundamental rule for all of my work. I have like 15 courses. They’re based on two principles. Actually, you could say three. Calm the body down. Take the body out of fight or flight. What’s one of the best ways to take the body out of fight or flight?
Breathing. And now you know making crazy faces. Right. ⁓ and then second, move the fluids of the body, the lymphatic flow and the blood flow. Two biggest ways to do that are do my big six lymphatic mojo reset. And the other one is movement. So if you go on my YouTube thing there, you do a couple of the breathing exercises, you do the big six.
Morning Flow and Haka, you’re gonna feel different, I guarantee.
Amberly Lago (57:40)
my goodness. Head over to Per Dr. Perry’s YouTube channel, Stop Chasing Pain. Give him a follow on Instagram. You’re gonna want to know when his book comes out. And so ⁓ also stopchasingpain dot com is his website. We will put all the links in the show notes ⁓ so you can easily find Dr. Perry at Dr.
