Shapeshift Wellness

Shapeshift Wellness We empower people with chronic low back pain & sciatica to reclaim the active life they love.

FEAR OF PAIN IS MORE DISABLING THAN PAIN ITSELF 👇 I quote this study all the time, and there are dozens more like it. If...
09/11/2026

FEAR OF PAIN IS MORE DISABLING THAN PAIN ITSELF 👇
I quote this study all the time, and there are dozens more like it. If you focus too much on anatomy, you become afraid of your body, which leads to movement avoidance, deconditioning, weakness, and ultimately more pain and disability.
You see your MRI. It's got a disc herniation or a protrusion. That's pretty scary.
Somebody tells you that bending your spine makes disc herniations worse. That's pretty scary.
They tell you that your disc is like a jelly donut and your disc is crushed or splattered. That's extremely scary and not true at all.
Of course, we want to take sensible precautions with severe pain, and of course we want to rule out red flags. Beyond that, thinking about our anatomy and our MRI does not help us at all to determine what you specifically should be doing for your rehab exercises.
This is a major roadblock with people who have tried an exercise-based approach and failed. We can't progress your exercises to build meaningful strength and resilience until we get you to overcome your fear of progressing with your exercises in the first place.
This is why, with our clients, we love to incorporate mindfulness practices and relaxation practices, as well as pain science education, so you're not as scared and your body feels safe relaxing.
When your nervous system experiences a state of safety, then we can start to gradually introduce exercises that you may have been worried about in the past.
Then, slowly, we can build strength and resilience over time and give you the confidence to return to a normal life.
✅ Comment "FREE TRIAL" For an evidence-based whole-person, full-body rehab plan to overcome chronic pain and get back to an active life 🏋️ 🏃‍♀️🧘

09/11/2026

Before you hip hinge, check your sciatic nerve first ⬇️
Here's the test. Stretch one leg out, pull your foot toward your face (GENTLY), and see if it irritates nerve-related symptoms. Shooting pain down the leg or numbness in your big toe means sciatic nerve tension.
Here's another way to check. Round your spine and tuck your chin. If that makes symptoms worse, and pulling your foot toward your head makes it worse still, but lifting your head or pointing your toes eases it, your nerve is telling you it's not ready to be stretched.
If that's you, take the hip hinge slow. Test a small range and see how you feel.
It's genuinely fine to skip hip hinge work for now if your nerve is that reactive. You're just sequencing your exercise around what your nerve can handle right now.
The problem is that hip hinges are often promoted as a starting place for people with disc herniations and sciatica because they were popularized by Stu McGill. Theoretically, keeping a neutral spine for certain people does help them achieve pain-free movement faster, but the problem is hinging at the hips also stretches the sciatic nerve. It's not all about a neutral spine. Sometimes we have to account for other anatomical realities.
Comment "FREE TRIAL" to start our Beyond Back Pain Program (Self Guided) with a 7-day Free Trial. ⬇️

DEPRESSION CAUSES CHRONIC BACK PAIN? 👇 People like easy answers to the question, "What causes back pain or sciatica?"One...
09/10/2026

DEPRESSION CAUSES CHRONIC BACK PAIN? 👇
People like easy answers to the question, "What causes back pain or sciatica?"
One group of people likes to blame a single anatomical structure, like a disc herniation, a muscle, or a nerve.
Another camp likes to blame mental health, like depression, stress, trauma, or anxiety.
We like simple answers, but simple answers are not true. Chronic pain is complex.
So even when we see studies like the ones I cited in this post and the images, even though it's tempting to look at those studies and say, "I guess depression causes back pain."
The reality is that even though depression is an extremely good predictor of back pain, it doesn't mean that depression on its own is the only reason for that back pain.
Causality is complex. We need to consider confounding variables.
A person who is depressed is also more likely to live a more sedentary lifestyle and have problems with sleep, nutrition, and other stressors in their life.
Those lifestyle changes combined are extremely likely to lead to chronic pain and other medical concerns.
This is why treatments that blame the depression 100% without addressing the lifestyle often fail.
Depression is often a symptom of the underlying lifestyle, so we need to address exercise, nutrition, mental health, and sleep. We need to just look at a whole human being and see how we can improve their life. If we improve your life, most likely we'll improve your pain and get you back to doing things that you like. And that's more likely to help the depression.
Stop looking for simple answers.
✅ Comment "FREE TRIAL" For an evidence-based whole-person, full-body rehab plan to overcome chronic pain and get back to an active life 🏋️ 🏃‍♀️🧘

09/10/2026

Safely decompress your spine using a bar, without the full hang ⬇️
A lot of people ask about doing traction just by hanging from a bar. I don't recommend a full dead hang. That's too much.
Plus, your grip strength will probably wear out before you get the benefit of decompression anyway.
Instead, use a bar you can stand under with your feet still on the ground. If your bar's high, just add a step or a block under your feet.
Your feet control how much decompression you get. Zero percent, ten, thirty, fifty, even eighty. A full one hundred percent means your feet are off the ground completely, and I'm not comfortable fully relaxing my back at that level.
Same idea with an inversion table. Don't flip all the way upside down. Stop right where you can actually relax your back and hang out.
Keeping your feet on the ground also matters for a smoother transition out. If you're hanging fully and land on the ground suddenly, that jarring transition can trigger pain right as you're coming out of the stretch.
Go gentle in and gentle out. That's the whole trick.
However, personally, my favorite way to do decompression at home is just laying over a yoga ball or stability ball and relaxing that way. This way, your hands and arms and shoulders and upper back can fully relax while you're enjoying what should be a good pain relief activity.
Most importantly, if any traction or decompression activity does not provide pain relief, then it's not worth doing, because please remember that decompression does not literally heal a disc herniation. It's just a pain reliever.
Comment "FREE TRIAL" to start our Beyond Back Pain Program (Self Guided) with a 7-day Free Trial. ⬇️

MRI JUST LEADS TO SURGERY 👇 Please stop freaking out about your MRI if you have low back pain or sciatica.First, the imp...
09/09/2026

MRI JUST LEADS TO SURGERY 👇
Please stop freaking out about your MRI if you have low back pain or sciatica.
First, the important disclaimer stuff: obviously, MRIs can be life-saving when they catch serious and rare conditions, things like cancer, tumors, infections, or cauda equina syndrome.
MRI is helpful to rule serious conditions out.
HOWEVER, for most people, MRIs just freak them out because you see stuff that's totally normal, but it sounds scary.
Disc herniations, even severe ones, are not really a serious condition. We know this because most people have disc herniations, whether or not they have pain.
And yes, even nerve compression is common on MRI. Up to 23% of people have nerve compression on their MRI, even with zero symptoms.
But if you get an MRI and then you research it too much, you're going to find that everybody tells you to avoid bending, lifting, and twisting. If you do your exercises wrong or do the wrong activities, you're going to make your disc herniation worse, and you're going to need surgery.
Many of you get so freaked out about it, and the pain is so severe that you just get surgery because that seems like the logical conclusion.
And this would make sense if we could reliably say that your pain was 100% due to the disc herniation or MRI findings.
But again, since we know everybody has a bad-looking MRI whether or not they have pain, we know that we cannot blame pain 100% on your MRI findings.
Thinking too much about anatomy gets the image burned into your head, which leads to avoidance of activity, which leads to weakness and deconditioning, and ultimately more pain and disability. It's a horrible self-fulfilling prophecy.
To break the cycle, you need to overcome fear first. You need proper evidence-based education and a gradual progression back to full-body mobility and strength.
✅ Comment "FREE TRIAL" For an evidence-based whole-person, full-body rehab plan to overcome chronic pain and get back to an active life 🏋️ 🏃‍♀️🧘

09/09/2026

Best position for relaxation/meditation practice ⬇️
If you want to practice real relaxation, you need a position that's comfortable enough to let go, but not so comfortable you fall asleep.
For most people with chronic back pain or sciatica, that's a reclining chair, or lying down. An office chair or recliner where you lean back just a little, fully supported, can be great.
The goal is a genuine break for your nervous system (and your back), one where you stay present enough to notice it happening.
It takes practice to get good at this skill of relaxing your body, especially when you're wound up from chronic pain
Stress and tension add fuel to chronic pain just as much as a stiff back does. A few minutes of real relaxation, done right, is part of the toolkit.
Comment "FREE TRIAL" to start our Beyond Back Pain Program (Self Guided) with a 7-day Free Trial. ⬇️

BENDING YOUR SPINE IS NOT DANGEROUS 👇 Most chiropractors, physical therapists, and surgeons will tell you that when you ...
09/08/2026

BENDING YOUR SPINE IS NOT DANGEROUS 👇
Most chiropractors, physical therapists, and surgeons will tell you that when you bend forward, it makes your disc herniation worse.
This is based on an outdated model called the dynamic disk model.
This outdated model assumes that the intervertebral disc is basically like a water balloon stuck between two blocks of your vertebral bodies.
If that were true, then putting pressure on the front side would squish the water balloon in the opposite direction.
BUT YOUR DISCS ARE NOT WATER BALLOONS.
In reality, the intervertebral discs are tough, rubbery cartilage.
Much more like a car tire filled with chewing gum.
When you bend forward, sometimes what happens is the pressure on the "car tire" causes the back side of the disc to open up, which helps resorb or shrink the disc herniation.
Meaning, bending, for many people, does not cause a compressive force. It creates a stretching and opening up of the disc space.
This is pretty cool! At the very least, the study in this post shows that the disc does not always behave exactly the same way for every single person.
More importantly, you can't live a normal life if you think that you must avoid bending in all situations.
We need to slowly ease back into bending so that you can put your socks and shoes on or do other normal daily activities.
Yes, in the beginning, with severe pain, it can be helpful to brace your core and limit spinal bending while things calm down, but long term, we want to restore normal full-body mobility and strength.
✅ Comment "FREE TRIAL" For an evidence-based whole-person, full-body rehab plan to overcome chronic pain and get back to an active life 🏋️ 🏃‍♀️🧘

09/08/2026

Stop using a lacrosse ball to massage your back ⬇️
For self-massage, grab a soft pinky ball instead. They're squishy, just like the expensive massage balls, except they're a cheap kids' toy.
A lacrosse ball is too intense for most people. It can leave you sore the next day, the kind of deep, elbow-in-your-back soreness that feels fine in the moment.
If you massage so hard that you can't breathe peacefully while you're doing it, it's too much. Your nervous system is going to freak out, and that is the opposite of what we're going for with chronic pain.
Self-massage should calm your nervous system down.
Start soft. You can always go firmer later if your body's ready for it.
Comment "FREE TRIAL" to start our Beyond Back Pain Program (Self Guided) with a 7-day Free Trial. ⬇️

SAFE PAIN PROTOCOLS 👇 If you push through unsafe pain, you'll flare things up or re-injure yourself.BUT - if you avoid p...
09/07/2026

SAFE PAIN PROTOCOLS 👇
If you push through unsafe pain, you'll flare things up or re-injure yourself.
BUT - if you avoid pain too much, you baby yourself. It makes you weaker and deconditioned, which actually results in more pain.
You need to know the difference between safe pain and unsafe pain when it comes to finding the right exercises for chronic low back pain or sciatica.
Pain traffic light
1-3/10 = green light (safe)
4-6 = yellow light (slow down)
7+ = Red (stop, do something else)
No worse principle
If pain gets worse and worse the longer you do activity, or if it's significantly more painful hours or days after your activity, you've done too much. Next time, do a little bit less activity.
Centralization
Favor activities that cause traveling symptoms in the leg or foot to stop traveling as far.
Workaround activities that cause pain to travel further down the leg or increase the intensity of nerve symptoms
✅ Comment "FREE TRIAL" For an evidence-based whole-person, full-body rehab plan to overcome chronic pain and get back to an active life 🏋️ 🏃‍♀️🧘

09/07/2026

How to actually test if an exercise is helping your sciatica ⬇️
In the clinic, I'll have someone do about ten press-ups, just a little past their comfort zone, and watch what happens to their sciatica or back pain with repetition.
This surprises people. The first rep might hurt. But repetition often makes it BETTER.
As long as it's not crazy painful, keep going. Do ten or fifteen reps and see how it feels over time.
By rep ten or fifteen, if the radiating pain down the leg is improving a little bit, that's a sign this exercise is working for you right now.
But if you do ten or fifteen reps and the pain gets worse, or it starts radiating further down your leg, that's not the right exercise for you today. Or you went too far into the range of motion.
Either way, back off and start with smaller steps.
For the right person, this can result in instant sciatic pain relief. Just remember that instant pain relief is not the same as permanent pain relief, and you still need a proper full-body and whole-person plan.
Comment "FREE TRIAL" to start our Beyond Back Pain Program (Self Guided) with a 7-day Free Trial. ⬇️

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