Fascia, your body's connective tissue network, serves as peripheral nervous system super highway.

There are six times as many sensory neurons loaded in fascial network as in any other tissue of the body, except for your skin. Much of what you feel physically is relayed by the well functioning nerve endings laced through the scaffolding of the fascia.

The nerves, like any other tissue, depend on proper motion, nutrition, and balanced fluid environment in order to signal correctly.

When pain persists, both peripheral and central nervous system undergo significant change.

Pain spells less movement. Less movement leads to limitation and dehydration of fascia, which, in turn,  leads to compression and dehydration of peripheral nerve endings - so they are not able to communicate sensations correctly or clearly.

Corrupted movement patterns lead to development of so called "sensory amnesia" - basically we develop these sensory blind spots, where brain to muscle communication is partially or completely disrupted.

Sensory amnesia is not limited to chronic pain sufferers: students in the yin class (this is quite a bit more advanced class) know how challenging it is to isolate the glut muscle in a bridge pose - often seems like it is fast asleep....

Peripheral nerve endings also undergo another significant change: nerves that once sensed motion, position, temperature or touch lose their capacity to do so. Instead, they become nociceptors, which are signalers of pain. This is why many of chronic pain folk become super sensitive to cold, touch, and even clothing tags.

Another side of this change is that your brain can no longer sense the location of your body parts in space - your nervous system is so busy sensing pain, that it no longer has the capacity for proprioception (body sense). The more pain you have, the less coordinated and more prone to injury you are. Converse is also true: the more body aware you are, the more you are able to turn your pain down - it is like flipping the sensory nerve communication switch, so that pain sensors cannot dominate your brain any longer.

Ayurveda, a sister science to yoga and India's ancient medical tradition, has a practice of body scan and touch, all rolled up in one as its cornerstone practice. It is called an abhyanga - abhy for short; it is a self oil massage performed daily before the shower to soothe the nervous system, stabilize the musculature and awaken body awareness. Here are the instructions for abhyanga if you are curious about it - it is also prescribed for better sleep and hormone balancing.