What Simone Biles Can Teach Us About Pain
Earlier this week, Simone Biles, the top gymnast in the world, withdrew from several Olympic events. Her actions and statements are revolutionary in my opinion. However, this post is actually about what her actions can teach us about pain.
Simone’s body was not physically injured. There were no muscle tears or broken bones, no dehydration spells or emergency organ dysfunctions. If we were to judge her only by her physical body, she should have been ready to compete. However, as she put it, “My mind and body were not in sync.”
Simone was as unprepared to compete with her mental state as she would have been with a torn achilles. Had she competed with a torn achilles, she would have risked injuring something else while trying to avoid the achilles pain, risked a worsened mental state with a subpar performance, and risked negatively impacting the success of her entire team. Had she competed with a less-than-optimal mental state, the risks would have been the same — a further compromised mental state had she not competed well, actual physical injury, and affecting her team’s chances at winning a medal. What Simone Biles (and any athlete) understands well is that her body doesn’t differentiate between a physical stressor and a mental stressor. They all get thrown into the same “bucket of stressors” that can affect her performance because . . . drumroll please . . . mind and body are the same thing.** (see extended note at the end of the post).
So, Simone has a bucket of stressors and she knows all physical and mental stressors go into that same bucket. Let’s call this bucket of stressors the Stress Tolerance Bucket. STB for short. All stressors go into the STB. In this very moment, some of the stressors in your bucket might be: the heat outside, your workout this morning, your four year old’s tantrum phase, financial issues, the uncomfortable shoes you’re wearing, the current political climate, the toe you stumped two days ago that’s still sore, your Instagram feed you check 50 times a day, the pollution level in the air, someone’s loud voice in line at lunch, your sleepless night three nights ago, the new wrinkle on your face you found this morning (giving myself away there??). Those are just a few. It’s important to remember that just because you’re not conscious of the stressor, it doesn’t mean it’s not in your STB. Past negative experiences that you have not resolved and the fried chicken you ate two days ago that created inflammation in your body also exist in your STB. Do you see how that’s a mix of physical and mental stressors? Once you start to list it all out, you realize how INCREDIBLE our body is because here’s the thing—as long as it fits inside the bucket, your system can handle it. All your hormone systems, motor systems, and immune systems are constantly managing the contents of this bucket to keep you functioning optimally without having to think about it. Doesn’t that just blow you away??
However, everything has its limits and so does your STB. When that bucket starts getting close to being full, your system produces signals for you to pay attention to. The signals are basically saying, “Hey! I need your help; I need you to take some of these stressors out of the bucket because I’m getting close to not being able to handle it.” Your system is warning you ahead of time—don’t overflow your STB. These signals can be physical sensations such as dizziness, nausea, emotions such as anxiety or anger, or pain such as twinges or dull aches. If your system really needs your attention, it ramps up the signals. You might “throw out” your back, faint, start vomiting randomly, get severely depressed, break out in a body rash, etc.
Simone reported feeling shaky and not knowing where she was in the air. Those are only the signals she’s decided to share with the media—who knows what other signals she was receiving from her system that day or even the weeks/months leading up to the Olympics. In that moment, though, she knew that if she competed, she wouldn’t just be filling her bucket to the brim; she’d likely overflow it, and the risks of overflowing the bucket were enough to stop her.
Okay, you’re not competing in the Olympics and you’re probably not engaging in risky endeavors such as the Yurchenko Double Pike Vault. But you do have an STB and you do have choices. Now that you know that physical and mental stressors both live in the same bucket, you can marvel at the fact that physical OR mental stressors can be taken out of the bucket to change your signals—whatever they may be.
So where exactly is the pain connection again? Like I mentioned, pain is one kind of signal from your system, one of those signals telling you that there’s too much in your STB. And if you take a moment to think about what’s IN your STB, you might see that you actually have many options for what to take out of it. Once your STB has reached a lower level that seems far from overflowing, you might experience a positive change in your pain.
It gets more interesting. We all have different sized STBs AND we all have different levels at which our systems think our buckets are going to overflow. Your STB might be three cups; mine might be one cup. You fit more stressors into your bucket than I can. Now let’s say both of our STBs are three cups. Your system might start sending you alert signals about overflowing at one cup full, even though you have two cups left before you’re in danger of overflowing your STB. My signaling may not start till I reach two-and-three-fourths cups—closer to my bucket’s actual threshold. (Your stressors are also all different sizes—meaning they take up different amounts of space in your STB. This is referred to as the relative weighting of data in your system—for another post!)
Here is your main takeaway:
The stressors that go into your STB are physical stressors AND mental stressors. The signals your body sends to alert you that your bucket is getting close to full can be physical signals (pain or non-pain sensations) or mental signals (feelings). Therefore, the stressors you choose to remove from your bucket to chill those signals can be physical or mental.
Here’s an addendum to the takeaway that I will explore in yet another future post because it very much deserves it. Don’t like the size of your bucket? Don’t like that it’s sending you signals way before you’re actually close to overflow? You can change the size of your bucket AND the level at which it sends you alert signals.
My guess is that Simone Biles has a giant STB, like 20 gallons probably, AND she’s trained herself so that her system tolerates a very high level of stressors in that bucket before being concerned with overflow. So imagine how many stressors were in that bucket, maybe 19 gallons’ worth, before she made the decision to not overflow it. Basically, I just wanted an excuse to explain to you how much of a badass I think Simone is. And while you don’t have any gymnastics moves named after you, you do have something in common with her. You both have STBs filled with mental and physical stressors that you can manipulate, and you both can train the size and tolerance levels of those STBs to your advantage.
keep moving.
**On Mind and Body
Whenever we refer to mind and body as separate entities, we are pulling from Rene Descartes’ philosophy of dualism that he wrote about back in the 1600s. He philosophized that the mind was separate than the rest of the body, including the brain. While the popularization of yoga in current western culture has done a lot to advance the idea that mind and body have a heavy influence on one another (which is ironic as yoga’s origins are actually rooted in dualism!), mainstream thinking and our medical system haven’t totally caught up with the current scientific research. What the past 20 years of neuroscience has taught us is that mind and body are actually one and the same. Mind IS body and body IS mind. Welcome to your nervous system.
Your nervous system is basically who you are. It’s your information highway and processor, and it’s the reason you can do everything that you do. It’s the reason you can move, get hungry, fight illness, get pregnant, remember your childhood, learn a language, get thirsty, dislike another person, toss a ball and catch it, get angry, decide to feel better, push through a workout, hear a noise, taste a strawberry. It’s the reason you breathe. What you probably previously thought was the sole responsibility of your brain (maybe you thought it was your mind!) is actually your nervous system. Your brain is only one part of the whole nervous system, and it’s the organ located in your head, as you know. The rest of the nervous system is located . . . well, everywhere. Stump your toe and it hurts? Your nervous system exists in your toe. Ever get that gut feeling about someone you just met that doesn’t sit well with you? Your nervous system exists in your gut. Experience an orgasm? Your nervous system is there too. Get a good night’s sleep? Thank your nervous system.
So. If your nervous system IS what creates your lived experience (previously thought of as the mind) and if your nervous system is also a physical, material, biological entity residing in just about every part of your body, then we can say your mind and body are one, no? A living body cannot exist without the nervous system, and a nervous system cannot exist outside a body (as far as we know . . . unless . . . ghosts???).
Now, to really get you thinking, what differentiates mental feelings from physical sensations if they all originate from the physical body? Anyone?