January 15, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, Dr. David Hanscom talks with Mags Clark Smith, a specialist in somatic work and mindfulness, and a contributor to a textbook on psychophysiological disorders. She discusses her unique approach to chronic pain and body awareness. Inspired by identifying her twin brothers through their gaits, she developed a fascination with movement, realizing early on how subtle physical cues can reveal individuality and inform body awareness, a theme central to her current work. As a lecturer at Lancaster University, she used somatic methods, including guided movement exercises and mindfulness practices, to help rugby players and individuals with eating disorders connect with their bodies through internal awareness. By focusing on movement quality and sensations, she encourages individuals to reconnect with their bodies, reducing stress and fostering self-awareness, which are key to achieving both mental and physical healing. Download the transcript. Mags draws on her extensive knowledge of the body through dance, psychology and non-verbal communication to empower people to move with confidence and resolve chronic pain. Mags offers one-to-one Resolving Chronic Pain consultations and Body Control Pilates classes, as well as taking part in chronic pain research and giving guest talks and lectures on chronic pain. Mags lectures on University Edinburgh Dance Science Masters course. For more information, visit: https://www.resolvingchronicpain.com/teaching-movement Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The following podcast is part of the Mind, Body, Spirit
dot fm podcast network.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to Back in Control Radio with Doctor
David Hanscombe.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Back in
Control Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe. I'm your host, Tom Masters,
and our guest today is Mags Clark Smith. She draws
on her extensive knowledge of the body through dance, psychology
and nonverbal communications to empower people to move with confidence
(00:45):
and resolve chronic pain. She offers one to one resolving
chronic pain consultations and Body control plates classes, as well
as taking part in chronic pain research and giving guest
talks and lectures on chronic pain. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I'd like to welcome Max Clark Smith to the podcast today.
She is a good friend of mine. I've known her
now for a lot of years, more than we both
care to remember, and she is somebody else remember exactly
where we met her, but I do know. We worked
on the PPD eight Board associationing O that's the psycle
Pie's Alotic Disorders Association Board, which has now turned into
(01:24):
the Neuroplastic Pain Society, and she and I had an
idea years ago of creating a textbook on mind body
syndrome type pain, so she's one of the co editors
of that book. She also has an extensive background in
working with people in pain, both mental and physical. And
what's intrigued about her approach is she is twenty five,
(01:45):
she's lectured, she teachers, but she also does a lot
of somatic work with non verblic communication and dance. And
it's hard to introduce her because she has so many
different talents. So Max, welcome to the show, and i'll
let you there's the introduction. So did I cover some
of it?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
And you did cover some of it? And if I
remember correctly, I think it was twenty and fifteen that
we met, but I might be wrong, so who knows. Anyway,
it's a long time ago, and we had quite a
few conversations in those initial stages of thinking about the
(02:26):
textbook and the direction it would go, and we obviously
had a lot to say to each other because we're
still talking about it, which is great. But where I started,
I think it's it's good for me to think back,
starting with my interest in how the body moves really
(02:49):
came from having older brothers who were adopted and they
were identical twins, and interestingly, no one could tell them
part at all, like no one my parents could not
tell them apart, and my mother, blessed her in her innocence,
would knit them a jumper every Christmas, and one brother
(03:12):
had blue and black and the other one had brown
and orange. And of course everyone out there knows exactly
what they did, because they did swap them every time.
And we had a silver birch tree in the garden
and it was a double one, and they'd climb up that,
and my mother was convinced that one went up one
(03:33):
tree and one went up the other. Of course they didn't.
They swapped it around. And what's the connection with my
interest in movement? I realized after a while. And I
was a considerable I am much younger than them, but
I knew by the gate, looking at them from behind,
who was who. And that information was sometimes very useful
(04:01):
and also sometimes not great for me to know, because
they knew that I knew who was who, and I
was their little sister, so sometimes they silenced me to
make sure that I didn't spill the beans to people.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Wow, I didn't know that part of the story. That's fascinating,
But what it it?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Engendered in me was a lifelong interest in how we move,
because as a really young child, I couldn't understand how
everybody else didn't know who they were because I could
see it. And what we realize now, of course, is
that all children assume that everybody else is the same,
(04:45):
and they had the same experiences as them. So it
seemed to me that everybody was playing a game and
they were pretending they didn't know which brother was which.
But obviously, as I got older, I began to realize
that actually they really didn't know. But obviously also I
(05:07):
didn't actually understand how I could exploit the potential of
that knowledge. They were much sharper than me and realized
that they needed to keep me quiet. But for me,
it was only later that I thought, actually, I really
could have got up to quite a lot of mischief,
but I was just too young. And the end of
(05:28):
that story is that when they were eleven, they were
caught by somebody trespassing and one of them fell off
the gate and he ended up with a gold tooth,
and from then on their cover was blown. Because I
could still hear my mother saying smile because she wanted
to see which brother was which so that is the
(05:51):
story of how I got into movement and then went
on to do a degree that was looking at dance
movement and worked as a lecturer in dance a movement
at Lancaster University.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Okay, so backwards for a second. So you had that's
really fascinating. So your capacity to pick up subtleties in
movement and expression was really really high from a very
young age, probably in a way a genius level because
you started so young. And so what I know now
is that I have patients that are sort of stuck
(06:30):
with sort of thinking learning type thing, and your approach
helps people heal. So I'm curious from your perspective how
you start to figure out your knowledge and semantic work
would help people heal. And I'm assuming you have a
bit of your own story also about how that applies
to you. Can you give me some backd about your
(06:52):
evolution from that knowledge into understanding people's pain and how
to heal. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So when I started lecturing at Lancaster University, one of
the responsibilities I had was to take the master's class
in movement. And every year there were big, burly rugby
players who were not interested in movement or dance, and
(07:24):
there were a sprinkling and I don't understand, like I'm
making too many assumptions here, but there were people with
eating disorders that came to light too, and that's the link.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So the.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
People with eating disorders, I noticed that their understanding of
their body and the shame around that was something that
we could work with over the year. And it was
a year long master's program and it was practical, and
they were doing practical work with me, and some of
(08:01):
those people still keep in contact with me because it
transformed their understanding of their body. We didn't use mirrors.
We worked from the internal sensations of how you feel,
and that improved their self confidence and that then had
(08:21):
an impact on how they conducted themselves, not just physically,
but mentally too. And so there that was the beginning
of the link.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Okay, well, you and I both have talked a lot,
and we do know that mental pain i e. Body
misdisorders and your thoughts about yourself is a big deal
and that humans don't really tolerate mental pain. And what
I found out in the work that I'm doing that
mental pain is actually a bigger problem than physical pain.
And you get these crazy intrusive thought patterns that don't stop.
(08:56):
And in the mental health world those are considered unsolvable.
But what happened is that they are solvable. What is
happening in medicine. They're not addressing the physiology, the fight
or flight physiology that drives the thoughts. And so by
I'm gonna make an assumption here on how you correct
me a little bit, is that by teaching people to
be with their sensations, not fight them, learn to truly relax,
(09:20):
then the thought patterns drop down. And of course as
the thoughts drop down, the physiology drops down. So I mean,
I think what you of course you know, I think
what you're doing is brilliant anyway. But that's my basic
assumption about how these thoughts are driven by the physiology,
and you have to calm in physiology in order to
calm down the thoughts. If you try to work on,
(09:44):
you know, developing more self esteem and feeling a bit
about yourself, et cetera, it doesn't work as you start
monitoring yourself even more, and just learning how to calm
down to what you do is really a huge aspect
to actually successfully solving chronic pain, including eating disorders.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And so allowing people the opportunity to actually be within
their own body was the first step here, and that's
relevant to the eating disorders, but it's also relevant to
the big rugby players who tended to solve problems by
(10:31):
using brute force. And I could see the frustration and
anger that was going on, and they weren't, to my mind,
occupying their bodies. They weren't within their bodies. And so
the course that they did with me took them to
(10:53):
opened up the possibility of them actually occupying their own bodies,
feeling those sensations, as you said, but also recognizing through
appropriate options where they were placing body parts in space,
understanding the different qualities of movement. So if I go
(11:16):
back to the rugby players as an example, there, they
had a sort of on off mode, and so I
learned a lot about rugby to try and help them
to understand that even though their role might be at
the front pushing through, you needed the fast, slim players
as well. And what quality of movement would they bring
(11:40):
and could we get them these large, burly rugby players
to consider moving in that way and all that focus
on the physicality. In response to what you've just said,
helped enormously because then the thoughts were we're not playing
(12:02):
a part at all. They were in the moment and
it was basically a form of mindfulness, but somatic mindfulness
that taught them so much.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I think, can we stop just for a seconds. I
think the other word in mindfulness is tossed around a
lot and it's not really defined very clearly, and the
somatic is also tossed around a lot. We also don't
know check what that's like. So could you define each
of those words a little bit for us and also
what they together?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So mindfulness to me very simply, I always explain it
as just being in the moment, noticing that tiny bit
of dew on a flower, seeing it, being aware of it.
So if you're moving, noticing how your body is moving,
the quality of the movement, so that would be the
(12:57):
mind mindfulness fit, bringing in the smatic bit, which is
how your body is feeling and how this is moving.
So you put them together, Sorry, you.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Become very aware of your place in this moment in time.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Absolutely, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
But here's the part. Here's a tricky question which I
think is a big one for everybody. So we talk
about deep healing versus self help. With self help, we're
going to get an armor terim of tools so we
don't feel pain. But pain is still running the show.
So inadvertently, by trying to have less pain, we actually
end up fighting it and actually reinforcing it. So self
(13:44):
help helps, but the real answer is deep healing, whereas
you learn not to fight the pain, to be with
the pain. So it's one thing to be with political sensations,
but it's another thing to be with the pain, because
when you fight the pain, you've actually reinforced it. So
what are your comments about that, because obviously a lot
of the sensations you're trying to work with our unpleasant sensations,
(14:07):
especially with eating disorders.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
So if we just backtrack slightly, and I've kind of
focused on this moment in time when I was actually lecturing,
but if I take it forward to how I use
that information now. Bringing people to a point where they
are following a series of suggestions that prompt them to
(14:44):
move fully occupies their attention, and by fully occupying their attention,
their focus is on the movement and the quality of
the movement, rather than the fight or flight. That sense
of fear dominating in the moment.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Okay, that's brilliant. I like that a lot. Can you
say that again that because that's really critical and I'll
tell you why in a second. But in other words,
you're I've also said to have a good life, you
have to live a good life, no words, you have
to live what you want to live, which sort of
crowds out the negativity. So instead of trying so, I
wrote a website post called quit fighting darkness, just turn
(15:32):
on the lights. And so what you're seeing is by
focusing on the current moment, whatever it is, you're sort
of crowding out all these random crazy thoughts catastrophizing or whatever.
You just get to connect to the moment and which
takes a lot of mental energy, not energy, but space.
And so in a way, you're crowding out the negativity.
(15:55):
Is that a way of saying this?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I wonder if that would help If I give an
example for the movement of the arm and taking it
out to the side. Now bear with me, because I'm
trying to describe, and I know if people are just listening.
So if you bring the hand up in front of
your face, then I would ask people to track the
hand with their eyes and move the head from the
(16:21):
neck out, so that they're watching the hand the whole
time and the shape of the arm. They're also aware
of that because their eyes are following it. That takes
them to a point where they are really concentrating on
what is moving, how is it moving, what's the pace,
(16:41):
what's the quality of the movement, And there is no
room to be thinking about pain as well. It's like
there's too much information, there's too much stimulation there that
you're creating in the movement in that moment time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
No, it does a lot. And now talk about my
experience in a second. So then you add in things
like music and rhythm and dance and other movements. Correct,
it gets more complex. But I want to talk about
that in the second celebary, the second half, the half
of our podcast when we actually talk about what you
actually do. So the thing is about pain. We don't
(17:26):
like pain, we want to fix it, get rid of it.
Then you're saying just be at the moment with without
the pain. And if you're trying to get rid of
the pain, the pain's running the show, then you're saying,
connect with what is right in front of you, no
matter what. So I've said this for a long time
that there's no goal to my process or other people's processes.
Like the doc journey, the only goal is the only
(17:48):
goal is to connect to the moment you're in. That
is it. Because if you're starting to measure your own progress,
then the pain is still running the show, and so
you're just connecting, connecting, acting, and so again, I'm just
curious about the eating disorders, which I want to talk
about also the next podcast. That's a big one. I mean,
(18:09):
it's a very rampant problem. And my hypothesis is that
everybody has some degree of a body image disorder, only
because everybody is some part of the body they don't
particularly care for. If you think about it, it becomes
a problem. If you try not to think about it,
it's even worse. As some tiping point for many people,
depending on their backgrounds and stresses, et cetera, I turn
(18:31):
to do a body dysmorphic disorder or eating disorder. So
I'm extremely interested because the general Chrieber eating disorders is
pretty marginal. I mean, the prognosis is not great. So
I'm guessing you have a fairmount of success with this
as you principles are pretty deep. You've had. I'm guessing
(18:53):
quite a bit of success with this. Can we just
backtracking about the eating disorders a little bit, I mean,
pre big realization in awareness that you figured out pretty
much on your own.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I'm guessing absolutely, And that's the point I didn't. I
sort of stumbled across it. And that's the reason why
I wanted to give the two different illustrations, because that
gives an insight into how I was definitely stumbling across it.
(19:24):
I was certainly shocked by the eating disorders and receiving
letters from GPS and people saying that they might have
to sit out because they would find it too challenging.
But gradually they didn't. They wanted to get involved and
they wanted to move And I think the key was
(19:45):
that we took the focus from external to internal and
that is equally true with the representation of the rugby
player too, So rather than the focus being on what's
happening and what other people might see the external, we
(20:07):
went to the internal and would do sessions inviting the
students to close their eyes to note that therefore their
appropriate section is really important in that moment for them
to understand where they are and to be able to
move awareness of the environment is definitely important, but coming
(20:34):
from a sense, an internal sense of where they were
in space, and that is connected to a really strong
understanding that their body is what their body is. There's
(20:55):
no expectation for it to be anything other than what
it is. But we're just interested in how it might
move and observing the internal sensations and whether they promote
a moving in one direction or in a different direction
as opposed to moving because there's an external reason to
(21:20):
reach over and pick something off the shelf.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Well, what I'm really fascinating with is this commonality between
a rugby player and somebody with an eating disorder. I mean,
I'm just I'm blown away because so what were the
changes Let's call the rugby players just for a second.
What changes did they notice by doing this, because they're
(21:48):
obviously in some way to go through that much pain
of a match, don't you have to sort of dissociate
from your pain. I mean, I've always went to why
an NFL player or rugby player or cage fire can
take so much pain, and so you're saying to be
with the pain. It's just really an interesting concept about
what happens to them as they learn to internalize all
(22:11):
these differentsentations.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
So again I might give you an example. At the
beginning of the course, there would be much raucous laughter
because I'm not as tall as I might be, and
you recognize that, but I'm an average height, and I
would say to everyone in the room, by the end
of this course, I will be able to pick up
(22:36):
every one of you and give I will move you
into a lift, I will raise you off the floor,
and then I will place you down, and it will
be done smoothly and with grace, at which point there's
tremendous laughing because the rugby players clearly thought this was
absolute hooped that this little thing would be able to
(22:59):
do that. And by the end of the course, that's
exactly what happened. But we worked together to make it happen.
So they started to understand how they could make their
body into to be filled with tension so that I
(23:21):
could pick them up easily. And I would always use
the example of a sleeping toddler. If you try and
pick up a sleeping toddler, they're really really heavy because
they're so relaxed. But if you want to pick someone up,
you need them to actually use the tension in their
body to allow you to lift them up. And so
(23:42):
what we learnt through the year, what I got lots
of feedback on, was that the rugby players had no
idea of what their body was capable of, and so
then they'd learnt new techniques apparently on the rugby field
as part of that. So I hope that explains it
(24:03):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, that's really interesting. So by connecting to what's actually
going on, you actually can work with it, that is
what you're saying. Yeah, anyway, So by the way, I
didn't say this. Magis lives in Scotland and just across
the southern part of Scotland. You were, Ireland's your home though.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Right Island is my home. I'm Irish.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, And so she does work. She's worked with patients
of mind and had some nice successes. And so Max,
let us know how we can get a hold of
you because you do online work. Obviously, she lives in Scotland.
And what's the town you're live in again, because we
saw you a few couple of years ago.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
So I lived just outside Edinburgh and I live in
a little tiny village just outside Edinburgh, and in fact,
one of the people that I've worked with today is
from the States in the Midwest, so there you go.
I have people every day from the States and different
(25:05):
parts of the States. So people can get hold of
me at resolving Chronic Pain dot com. And if you
can't remember Resolving Chronic Pain dot com, then you can
get hold of me at mas Clarksmith dot com. It
feeds into my website, which is Resolving Chronic Pain dot com.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Right, and she's also on my website on backincontrol dot
com and under clinical Resources, she's under health Coaches and
life coaches, so and we manage. Thank you very much.
You open up a whole nother line conversation we can
talk about in our monthly medius and stuff. So I
appreciate this very much. Well, thanks for being on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'd like to thank our guest Mags Clark Smith for
being on the show today and sharing the experiences and
insights that led her to use somatic awareness and mindfulness
to help giance heal from chronic pain. I'm your host,
Tom Masters, reminding you to be back next week for
another episode of Back in Control Radio with Doctor David Hanscomb,
(26:09):
and in the meantime, be sure to visit the website
at www dot backincontrol dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Thanks for listening today and join us next week for
Back in Control Radium
The following podcast is part of the Mind, Body, Spirit
dot fm podcast network.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to Back in Control Radio with Doctor
David Hanscombe.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Back in
Control Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe. I'm your host, Tom Masters,
and our guest today is Mags Clark Smith. She draws
on her extensive knowledge of the body through dance, psychology
and nonverbal communications to empower people to move with confidence
(00:45):
and resolve chronic pain. She offers one to one resolving
chronic pain consultations and Body control plates classes, as well
as taking part in chronic pain research and giving guest
talks and lectures on chronic pain. Welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I'd like to welcome Max Clark Smith to the podcast today.
She is a good friend of mine. I've known her
now for a lot of years, more than we both
care to remember, and she is somebody else remember exactly
where we met her, but I do know. We worked
on the PPD eight Board associationing O that's the psycle
Pie's Alotic Disorders Association Board, which has now turned into
(01:24):
the Neuroplastic Pain Society, and she and I had an
idea years ago of creating a textbook on mind body
syndrome type pain, so she's one of the co editors
of that book. She also has an extensive background in
working with people in pain, both mental and physical. And
what's intrigued about her approach is she is twenty five,
(01:45):
she's lectured, she teachers, but she also does a lot
of somatic work with non verblic communication and dance. And
it's hard to introduce her because she has so many
different talents. So Max, welcome to the show, and i'll
let you there's the introduction. So did I cover some
of it?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
And you did cover some of it? And if I
remember correctly, I think it was twenty and fifteen that
we met, but I might be wrong, so who knows. Anyway,
it's a long time ago, and we had quite a
few conversations in those initial stages of thinking about the
(02:26):
textbook and the direction it would go, and we obviously
had a lot to say to each other because we're
still talking about it, which is great. But where I started,
I think it's it's good for me to think back,
starting with my interest in how the body moves really
(02:49):
came from having older brothers who were adopted and they
were identical twins, and interestingly, no one could tell them
part at all, like no one my parents could not
tell them apart, and my mother, blessed her in her innocence,
would knit them a jumper every Christmas, and one brother
(03:12):
had blue and black and the other one had brown
and orange. And of course everyone out there knows exactly
what they did, because they did swap them every time.
And we had a silver birch tree in the garden
and it was a double one, and they'd climb up that,
and my mother was convinced that one went up one
(03:33):
tree and one went up the other. Of course they didn't.
They swapped it around. And what's the connection with my
interest in movement? I realized after a while. And I
was a considerable I am much younger than them, but
I knew by the gate, looking at them from behind,
who was who. And that information was sometimes very useful
(04:01):
and also sometimes not great for me to know, because
they knew that I knew who was who, and I
was their little sister, so sometimes they silenced me to
make sure that I didn't spill the beans to people.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Wow, I didn't know that part of the story. That's fascinating,
But what it it?
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Engendered in me was a lifelong interest in how we move,
because as a really young child, I couldn't understand how
everybody else didn't know who they were because I could
see it. And what we realize now, of course, is
that all children assume that everybody else is the same,
(04:45):
and they had the same experiences as them. So it
seemed to me that everybody was playing a game and
they were pretending they didn't know which brother was which.
But obviously, as I got older, I began to realize
that actually they really didn't know. But obviously also I
(05:07):
didn't actually understand how I could exploit the potential of
that knowledge. They were much sharper than me and realized
that they needed to keep me quiet. But for me,
it was only later that I thought, actually, I really
could have got up to quite a lot of mischief,
but I was just too young. And the end of
(05:28):
that story is that when they were eleven, they were
caught by somebody trespassing and one of them fell off
the gate and he ended up with a gold tooth,
and from then on their cover was blown. Because I
could still hear my mother saying smile because she wanted
to see which brother was which so that is the
(05:51):
story of how I got into movement and then went
on to do a degree that was looking at dance
movement and worked as a lecturer in dance a movement
at Lancaster University.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Okay, so backwards for a second. So you had that's
really fascinating. So your capacity to pick up subtleties in
movement and expression was really really high from a very
young age, probably in a way a genius level because
you started so young. And so what I know now
is that I have patients that are sort of stuck
(06:30):
with sort of thinking learning type thing, and your approach
helps people heal. So I'm curious from your perspective how
you start to figure out your knowledge and semantic work
would help people heal. And I'm assuming you have a
bit of your own story also about how that applies
to you. Can you give me some backd about your
(06:52):
evolution from that knowledge into understanding people's pain and how
to heal. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
So when I started lecturing at Lancaster University, one of
the responsibilities I had was to take the master's class
in movement. And every year there were big, burly rugby
players who were not interested in movement or dance, and
(07:24):
there were a sprinkling and I don't understand, like I'm
making too many assumptions here, but there were people with
eating disorders that came to light too, and that's the link.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
So the.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
People with eating disorders, I noticed that their understanding of
their body and the shame around that was something that
we could work with over the year. And it was
a year long master's program and it was practical, and
they were doing practical work with me, and some of
(08:01):
those people still keep in contact with me because it
transformed their understanding of their body. We didn't use mirrors.
We worked from the internal sensations of how you feel,
and that improved their self confidence and that then had
(08:21):
an impact on how they conducted themselves, not just physically,
but mentally too. And so there that was the beginning
of the link.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Okay, well, you and I both have talked a lot,
and we do know that mental pain i e. Body
misdisorders and your thoughts about yourself is a big deal
and that humans don't really tolerate mental pain. And what
I found out in the work that I'm doing that
mental pain is actually a bigger problem than physical pain.
And you get these crazy intrusive thought patterns that don't stop.
(08:56):
And in the mental health world those are considered unsolvable.
But what happened is that they are solvable. What is
happening in medicine. They're not addressing the physiology, the fight
or flight physiology that drives the thoughts. And so by
I'm gonna make an assumption here on how you correct
me a little bit, is that by teaching people to
be with their sensations, not fight them, learn to truly relax,
(09:20):
then the thought patterns drop down. And of course as
the thoughts drop down, the physiology drops down. So I mean,
I think what you of course you know, I think
what you're doing is brilliant anyway. But that's my basic
assumption about how these thoughts are driven by the physiology,
and you have to calm in physiology in order to
calm down the thoughts. If you try to work on,
(09:44):
you know, developing more self esteem and feeling a bit
about yourself, et cetera, it doesn't work as you start
monitoring yourself even more, and just learning how to calm
down to what you do is really a huge aspect
to actually successfully solving chronic pain, including eating disorders.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And so allowing people the opportunity to actually be within
their own body was the first step here, and that's
relevant to the eating disorders, but it's also relevant to
the big rugby players who tended to solve problems by
(10:31):
using brute force. And I could see the frustration and
anger that was going on, and they weren't, to my mind,
occupying their bodies. They weren't within their bodies. And so
the course that they did with me took them to
(10:53):
opened up the possibility of them actually occupying their own bodies,
feeling those sensations, as you said, but also recognizing through
appropriate options where they were placing body parts in space,
understanding the different qualities of movement. So if I go
(11:16):
back to the rugby players as an example, there, they
had a sort of on off mode, and so I
learned a lot about rugby to try and help them
to understand that even though their role might be at
the front pushing through, you needed the fast, slim players
as well. And what quality of movement would they bring
(11:40):
and could we get them these large, burly rugby players
to consider moving in that way and all that focus
on the physicality. In response to what you've just said,
helped enormously because then the thoughts were we're not playing
(12:02):
a part at all. They were in the moment and
it was basically a form of mindfulness, but somatic mindfulness
that taught them so much.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I think, can we stop just for a seconds. I
think the other word in mindfulness is tossed around a
lot and it's not really defined very clearly, and the
somatic is also tossed around a lot. We also don't
know check what that's like. So could you define each
of those words a little bit for us and also
what they together?
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So mindfulness to me very simply, I always explain it
as just being in the moment, noticing that tiny bit
of dew on a flower, seeing it, being aware of it.
So if you're moving, noticing how your body is moving,
the quality of the movement, so that would be the
(12:57):
mind mindfulness fit, bringing in the smatic bit, which is
how your body is feeling and how this is moving.
So you put them together, Sorry, you.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Become very aware of your place in this moment in time.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Absolutely, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
But here's the part. Here's a tricky question which I
think is a big one for everybody. So we talk
about deep healing versus self help. With self help, we're
going to get an armor terim of tools so we
don't feel pain. But pain is still running the show.
So inadvertently, by trying to have less pain, we actually
end up fighting it and actually reinforcing it. So self
(13:44):
help helps, but the real answer is deep healing, whereas
you learn not to fight the pain, to be with
the pain. So it's one thing to be with political sensations,
but it's another thing to be with the pain, because
when you fight the pain, you've actually reinforced it. So
what are your comments about that, because obviously a lot
of the sensations you're trying to work with our unpleasant sensations,
(14:07):
especially with eating disorders.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
So if we just backtrack slightly, and I've kind of
focused on this moment in time when I was actually lecturing,
but if I take it forward to how I use
that information now. Bringing people to a point where they
are following a series of suggestions that prompt them to
(14:44):
move fully occupies their attention, and by fully occupying their attention,
their focus is on the movement and the quality of
the movement, rather than the fight or flight. That sense
of fear dominating in the moment.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Okay, that's brilliant. I like that a lot. Can you
say that again that because that's really critical and I'll
tell you why in a second. But in other words,
you're I've also said to have a good life, you
have to live a good life, no words, you have
to live what you want to live, which sort of
crowds out the negativity. So instead of trying so, I
wrote a website post called quit fighting darkness, just turn
(15:32):
on the lights. And so what you're seeing is by
focusing on the current moment, whatever it is, you're sort
of crowding out all these random crazy thoughts catastrophizing or whatever.
You just get to connect to the moment and which
takes a lot of mental energy, not energy, but space.
And so in a way, you're crowding out the negativity.
(15:55):
Is that a way of saying this?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I wonder if that would help If I give an
example for the movement of the arm and taking it
out to the side. Now bear with me, because I'm
trying to describe, and I know if people are just listening.
So if you bring the hand up in front of
your face, then I would ask people to track the
hand with their eyes and move the head from the
(16:21):
neck out, so that they're watching the hand the whole
time and the shape of the arm. They're also aware
of that because their eyes are following it. That takes
them to a point where they are really concentrating on
what is moving, how is it moving, what's the pace,
(16:41):
what's the quality of the movement, And there is no
room to be thinking about pain as well. It's like
there's too much information, there's too much stimulation there that
you're creating in the movement in that moment time.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
No, it does a lot. And now talk about my
experience in a second. So then you add in things
like music and rhythm and dance and other movements. Correct,
it gets more complex. But I want to talk about
that in the second celebary, the second half, the half
of our podcast when we actually talk about what you
actually do. So the thing is about pain. We don't
(17:26):
like pain, we want to fix it, get rid of it.
Then you're saying just be at the moment with without
the pain. And if you're trying to get rid of
the pain, the pain's running the show, then you're saying,
connect with what is right in front of you, no
matter what. So I've said this for a long time
that there's no goal to my process or other people's processes.
Like the doc journey, the only goal is the only
(17:48):
goal is to connect to the moment you're in. That
is it. Because if you're starting to measure your own progress,
then the pain is still running the show, and so
you're just connecting, connecting, acting, and so again, I'm just
curious about the eating disorders, which I want to talk
about also the next podcast. That's a big one. I mean,
(18:09):
it's a very rampant problem. And my hypothesis is that
everybody has some degree of a body image disorder, only
because everybody is some part of the body they don't
particularly care for. If you think about it, it becomes
a problem. If you try not to think about it,
it's even worse. As some tiping point for many people,
depending on their backgrounds and stresses, et cetera, I turn
(18:31):
to do a body dysmorphic disorder or eating disorder. So
I'm extremely interested because the general Chrieber eating disorders is
pretty marginal. I mean, the prognosis is not great. So
I'm guessing you have a fairmount of success with this
as you principles are pretty deep. You've had. I'm guessing
(18:53):
quite a bit of success with this. Can we just
backtracking about the eating disorders a little bit, I mean,
pre big realization in awareness that you figured out pretty
much on your own.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
I'm guessing absolutely, And that's the point I didn't. I
sort of stumbled across it. And that's the reason why
I wanted to give the two different illustrations, because that
gives an insight into how I was definitely stumbling across it.
(19:24):
I was certainly shocked by the eating disorders and receiving
letters from GPS and people saying that they might have
to sit out because they would find it too challenging.
But gradually they didn't. They wanted to get involved and
they wanted to move And I think the key was
(19:45):
that we took the focus from external to internal and
that is equally true with the representation of the rugby
player too, So rather than the focus being on what's
happening and what other people might see the external, we
(20:07):
went to the internal and would do sessions inviting the
students to close their eyes to note that therefore their
appropriate section is really important in that moment for them
to understand where they are and to be able to
move awareness of the environment is definitely important, but coming
(20:34):
from a sense, an internal sense of where they were
in space, and that is connected to a really strong
understanding that their body is what their body is. There's
(20:55):
no expectation for it to be anything other than what
it is. But we're just interested in how it might
move and observing the internal sensations and whether they promote
a moving in one direction or in a different direction
as opposed to moving because there's an external reason to
(21:20):
reach over and pick something off the shelf.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Well, what I'm really fascinating with is this commonality between
a rugby player and somebody with an eating disorder. I mean,
I'm just I'm blown away because so what were the
changes Let's call the rugby players just for a second.
What changes did they notice by doing this, because they're
(21:48):
obviously in some way to go through that much pain
of a match, don't you have to sort of dissociate
from your pain. I mean, I've always went to why
an NFL player or rugby player or cage fire can
take so much pain, and so you're saying to be
with the pain. It's just really an interesting concept about
what happens to them as they learn to internalize all
(22:11):
these differentsentations.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
So again I might give you an example. At the
beginning of the course, there would be much raucous laughter
because I'm not as tall as I might be, and
you recognize that, but I'm an average height, and I
would say to everyone in the room, by the end
of this course, I will be able to pick up
(22:36):
every one of you and give I will move you
into a lift, I will raise you off the floor,
and then I will place you down, and it will
be done smoothly and with grace, at which point there's
tremendous laughing because the rugby players clearly thought this was
absolute hooped that this little thing would be able to
(22:59):
do that. And by the end of the course, that's
exactly what happened. But we worked together to make it happen.
So they started to understand how they could make their
body into to be filled with tension so that I
(23:21):
could pick them up easily. And I would always use
the example of a sleeping toddler. If you try and
pick up a sleeping toddler, they're really really heavy because
they're so relaxed. But if you want to pick someone up,
you need them to actually use the tension in their
body to allow you to lift them up. And so
(23:42):
what we learnt through the year, what I got lots
of feedback on, was that the rugby players had no
idea of what their body was capable of, and so
then they'd learnt new techniques apparently on the rugby field
as part of that. So I hope that explains it
(24:03):
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, that's really interesting. So by connecting to what's actually
going on, you actually can work with it, that is
what you're saying. Yeah, anyway, So by the way, I
didn't say this. Magis lives in Scotland and just across
the southern part of Scotland. You were, Ireland's your home though.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Right Island is my home. I'm Irish.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah, And so she does work. She's worked with patients
of mind and had some nice successes. And so Max,
let us know how we can get a hold of
you because you do online work. Obviously, she lives in Scotland.
And what's the town you're live in again, because we
saw you a few couple of years ago.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
So I lived just outside Edinburgh and I live in
a little tiny village just outside Edinburgh, and in fact,
one of the people that I've worked with today is
from the States in the Midwest, so there you go.
I have people every day from the States and different
(25:05):
parts of the States. So people can get hold of
me at resolving Chronic Pain dot com. And if you
can't remember Resolving Chronic Pain dot com, then you can
get hold of me at mas Clarksmith dot com. It
feeds into my website, which is Resolving Chronic Pain dot com.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Right, and she's also on my website on backincontrol dot
com and under clinical Resources, she's under health Coaches and
life coaches, so and we manage. Thank you very much.
You open up a whole nother line conversation we can
talk about in our monthly medius and stuff. So I
appreciate this very much. Well, thanks for being on this podcast.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'd like to thank our guest Mags Clark Smith for
being on the show today and sharing the experiences and
insights that led her to use somatic awareness and mindfulness
to help giance heal from chronic pain. I'm your host,
Tom Masters, reminding you to be back next week for
another episode of Back in Control Radio with Doctor David Hanscomb,
(26:09):
and in the meantime, be sure to visit the website
at www dot backincontrol dot com.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Thanks for listening today and join us next week for
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