The Power of Trying Something On: Rewiring Patterns
During much of my early to mid-twenties, I felt completely hopeless. Though I had been tested for multiple things and told I was fine, my body had never felt more depleted. I remember teaching my shifts and barely being able to stand for more than a couple hours from immense joint pain and fatigue. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water and collapsing on the floor from sheer weakness. I was experiencing daily panic attacks, sometimes multiple times a day. My body felt like it was fighting me constantly with strange symptoms and conditions appearing one after another. I remember fearing how I would age, what my life would look like as time passed, convinced that my body was broken and devoid of healing.
I had tried so many things to get better: rehabilitative practices, physical therapy, Pilates, yoga, bodywork, strength training, Gyrotonic, you name it. Each one taught me something about myself and my body. And yet, I was still terrified to move. I believed one small misalignment could break me. Each movement session often led to pain flare ups that lasted for days, sometimes weeks.
One day, after a particularly bad flare up in one of my knees, I took a fascia-based movement class taught by one of my now mentors. Like most things at that point, I told myself beforehand it would not work for me. My body was broken. I had already written the story: I would live in chronic pain forever, and movement that felt good in my body would never be part of my future.
But during the class, something shifted for me as I started moving and coming up against those familiar pain sensations and stories. I remember having a conversation with myself: What if we just try something different today? You believe in these concepts. The words being spoken resonate with you. This work aligns with how you view the body. You have full agency to stop if something doesn’t feel right. Even though I was hesitant and still pretty cynical, I decided to try a small experiment in my mind: Imagine you are someone this movement actually works for. Imagine it could work for you too. What do you have to lose? Just try it on and see what happens.
In that moment, I could feel a new pathway spark in my brain. I kept telling myself to just try it on. I could stop whenever I wanted. I trusted my body to keep me safe, and for the first time, I could calm the familiar sensations and racing thoughts long enough to truly receive the benefits of the movement.
That simple shift opened a whole new chapter in my movement journey. It led me deeper into studying the fascia’s relationship with the nervous system, pain science, and so much more. Pain is real, and I would never invalidate anyone’s experience, but the degree to which we feel it is deeply tied to the nervous system and the feedback loop it creates, as far as we know. Sometimes the brain keeps producing pain signals long after an injury has healed, or even without injury at all. The hopeful part is that if those pathways can be learned, they can also be unlearned.
When I began to think about my body more globally, considering how fascia connects not just to muscles but also to organs, digestion, emotional health, and more, I started telling myself before and during each class something like: “This work is healing my body. My body is resilient. It is safe for me to try something new even when .”
Slowly, I reintegrated practices I had once abandoned. I even ventured into dancing after years of it feeling off limits. I began exploring aerial arts, applying the same new neural pathways. And while no journey is linear, I noticed over time that my body’s resilience was growing stronger and stronger. The stories I told myself about movement began to change. Movements that once felt impossible became something I felt brave enough to explore.
I had studied the body in depth for years prior, learning biomechanics, chasing perfect alignment, and monitoring the way I walked, stood, and moved to the point of obsession. But none of that necessarily brought me any relief from pain. It wasn’t until I cultivated enough safety, deep within my brain and body, that any practices began to truly work for me. I realized I was not broken beyond repair.
There are so many healthy and nourishing movements we may avoid out of fear that they are not for us. Of course, it is important to get clearance for any current injury or health condition. But I am talking about the lingering issues. The injuries that appear “healed” on paper but never feel quite normal, or the chronic pain that does not show up on tests and often has no clear explanation. In these cases, the nervous system, fascia, and movement patterns play a huge role in how the body experiences and responds to sensation.
All this to say: here is your permission to just try something on. Slow down. Notice your breath as you move, the tension you hold, and the thoughts that arise. Trust that movement itself can be healing when approached with care, without fear or expectation. In doing so, you send a powerful signal of safety to your body. I think of it as leaving a little entry in my brain, a log of safety that builds over time. The next time I return to that movement, my body remembers the new pathway I carved and knows what I can now tolerate.
If it doesn’t feel right yet, let it go and come back later. But maybe don’t count yourself out too quickly. Try something on, just to see. Each small step gives your body and brain a chance to learn, to remember, and to build new connections. Over time, these little experiments might begin to shift the stories you hold about your capacity and resiliency, not only in movement but in other areas of life as well.
