Feeling Safe? Chronic Pain, Athletic Performance & Safety

At the heart of chronic pain, recurring injuries, and even athletic plateaus lies one powerful and often overlooked force: your nervous system’s need to feel safe.

In every moment, your unconscious mind is scanning the environment—internally and externally—for anything that might be interpreted as a threat. It does this not just through your senses, but also through memories, old injuries, scars, postures, and ingrained movement patterns. This background safety-monitoring system runs 24/7, outside of your conscious awareness.

And when it perceives a threat, real or imagined, it often acts through your motor control system.

When your unconscious flags something as unsafe, it triggers a “safety-dominant” response. This can include:

• Muscle inhibition (weakness or shutdown)

• Compensatory patterns

• Guarding or bracing in certain areas

• Altered posture or movement mechanics

  
  

These responses are beneficial during an injury or trauma—they help protect the body from further damage. But long after healing, your nervous system can still hold onto these patterns, as if it’s stuck in a loop.

Here’s the paradox: your brain’s attempts to protect you may now be causing the chronic pain or reduced performance you’re experiencing.

For example:

• A knee injury from years ago still influences how your hip fires during running

• A surgical scar near your abdomen changes the way you breathe or stabilize your core

• A past concussion affects how your neck muscles react under load

  
  

These motor control responses, once functional, can become maladaptive. They may no longer serve you, yet continue to limit movement, create imbalance, or keep you in a pain cycle.

SensoriMotor Repatterning therapy (SMR) is designed to communicate directly with the nervous system using a combination of:

• Manual muscle testing

• Neurofunctional assessment

• Acupoint stimulation

• Corrective sensory input

This process enables us to pinpoint areas where the nervous system continues to behave as if the body is unsafe. Then, using targeted interventions, we help the brain update its map of the body—showing it that the threat is gone, and safe movement is now possible.

The Athletic Edge: Unlocking Performance Potential

For athletes, unresolved safety responses can subtly, but powerfully, limit performance. You might be:

• Losing force output in key muscles

• Bracing unconsciously, reducing fluidity

• Creating imbalances that increase injury risk

  
  

When SMR restores proper motor control and removes outdated “safety programs,” athletes often experience:

• Improved movement efficiency

• Increased strength and coordination

• Reduced injury risk

• Greater confidence in their body’s capacity

Chronic Pain Relief Through a Different Lens

SMR doesn’t treat pain directly; it treats the underlying neuromotor dysfunction that often causes or perpetuates it.

By restoring full muscle function and resetting the nervous system’s threat responses, many people find that long-standing pain decreases or disappears.

Feeling Safe = Healing, Moving, Performing

When the body feels truly safe, it can finally:

• Let go of outdated protective responses

• Move with freedom

• Heal more completely

• Perform at its true potential

  
  

SMR therapy is about helping the unconscious nervous system remember that it is safe and permitting it to stop holding you back.

Read client success stories: www.vansmr.ca/testimonials

You can book an SMR appointment with me here