As you now know, pain is our body's internal alarm system. 

When pain persists or recurs, our nervous system undergoes a significant change - it becomes more sensitive to otherwise innocuous events, and also more protective - or, as science calls it - hyper-vigilant.

This, in a nut shell, is a persistent pain -  or trauma - induced central nervous system sensitization. Central nervous system sensitization creates global, body - wide changes, affecting our sleep, digestion, immunity, stress response, memory, and emotional stability, among others.

These changes are incredibly vast, and also often very sneaky: they accrue overtime, accumulating slowly, without us noticing.

Is it even possible for us to dig our way back to where we feel - not just OK - but good?

The answer lies in this question:

"What are you training?"

In order for us to be good at something, we need to practice and train at it.

The main purpose of pain is to grab your attention and make sure you change your behavior. Nature doesn't fool around - this pain mechanism works exceptionally well, except for when it doesn't - when pain persists, this mechanism works against us.

Let's say that you have persistent pain, and you spend most of your time paying attention to that pain.

As mentioned earlier, this changes the way your brain works: your brain will grow a more detailed map of that paining area, it will also become much more sensitive - your nervous system will begin to listen more carefully and respond to minute signals that, under different  circumstances, would be completely ignored.

You see, the more you pay attention to pain, the more attentively the brain begins to listen to that paining area; and the more attentively the brain listens - the more pain it registers. Catch 22!

This is where the Escape. Calm. Challenge. approach comes in (it is also built into every one of the mat classes).