TED Talks For You, Understand Pain Better (Part 2)

For a massage therapist and massage patients, understanding pain is absolutely essential. Reading books and research papers is not for everyone, and that is what makes TED such a great concept. Here are some quick and interesting videos to help you get a better grasp on the often head-scratching reality of pain.

To understand pain, it helps to understand what is going on inside the brain.  Pain is first and foremost a brain state which can be altered by input from visual, psychological cues:



How one perceives their pain, and whether or not one feels in control of it is directly correlated to how much one suffers.  At the PNMT Colloquium, David Flueke spoke about psychosocial aspects of pain, one point he made was that pain feels threatening to quality of life, but when that pain begins to threaten ones identity it becomes suffering:


Past and present pain states are altered by memory and expectation. The amount of happiness and the intensity of pain that one experiences and remembers can change based on how we interpret and define the story around these experiences.

TED Talks For You, Understand Pain Better (Part 1)

For a massage therapist and massage patients, understanding pain is absolutely essential. Reading books and research papers is not for everyone, and that is what makes TED such a great concept. Here are some quick and interesting videos to help you get a better grasp on the often head-scratching reality of pain.

Pain is an output from the preconscious brain, not an input from the tissues:

The amount of pain is not always related to the amount of damage:

Pain is subjective, personal, and complicated. (and massage works to decrease it):


... and for bonus, here is Radiolab's interesting podcast on understanding pain: