by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In our fast-paced world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of thoughts, emotions, and responsibilities that fill our minds. Finding clarity amidst the chaos can be challenging, but there’s a simple, effective tool that many people overlook:...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain, Advancing Your Practice, Bowen Therapy
One of the most unique aspects of BowenFirst™ Therapy is the intentional pauses that occur throughout the treatment. These pauses might seem unusual to those unfamiliar with the technique, but they play a crucial role in the therapy’s effectiveness. So, why are...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
Detoxifying Your Home Environment: Simple Steps for a Healthier Living Space Your home is your sanctuary—a place where you relax, unwind, and spend quality time with loved ones. But did you know that the air inside your home can sometimes be more polluted than the air...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain, Advancing Your Practice
Fascia is a fascinating and often overlooked component of the human body. This intricate network of connective tissue surrounds and supports every muscle, bone, nerve, and organ, acting as a continuous web that holds our bodies together. Fascia is not just structural;...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
Chronic pain is a complex and often debilitating condition that affects millions of people worldwide. Unlike acute pain, which is usually a direct response to an injury or illness, chronic pain persists long after the initial cause has healed. This persistent pain can...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we discussed how research on the placebo effect complicated a lot of assumptions about pharmacological research. But if the manifestations of improved health are not a result of physiological effects, it’s fair to ask: if we’re not the disease, are we...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
We left off the last post pointing out the ethical quandary around using the placebo effect for therapeutic purposes. Consider the fact that as NDs, “Do no Harm” is a fundamental tenet of our practice. Everything else aside, if the results are similar whether or not...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post, we saw widespread findings showing a pervasive placebo effect with the use of pharmacological treatments. What do these findings tell us? Why all these variable results? If drugs are supposed to have a predictable result on certain pathways or for...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In Sheather-Reid’s 1990s study on efficacy of pain relief agents, the agents used were opioids and non-opioid analgesics (such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and acetaminophen (paracetamol)) to examine the analgesic efficacy of the opioid agonist codeine...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we saw the powerful affects of priming individuals as a means to reduce the experience of pain. This confirms our conviction that mindfulness is an essential component in the effective treatment of pain and trauma. The flip side of the matter can be...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In contrast to the more empowered approach, discussed over the last several posts, of viewing a patient’s pain as “one of their symptoms,” a pathophysiological approach to pain focuses on pain relief as the primary objective. The choice of intervention is usually...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
This is a bit of a longer post, but I’ll ask you to hang in there with me. We’re covering complex, but really important stuff, here. What we learned last post, about pain and perception, suggests that our therapeutic treatments, lacking research, may be onto something...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we started to explore the role of the brain in pain and recovery. An especially powerful aspect of this is the role of perception. A 2011 study established neural evidence for the brain’s role in controlling motor output (Tanaka et al., 2011, p.38)....
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last several posts, from a variety of angles, we’ve examined the mind-body dimensions of treatment for pain, seeing how it is essential to treat the trauma rather than the symptoms. This has involved treating the body as a carrier of meaning, whose history...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In my last post I raised the issue of fear as a meaning invested in the body and its symptoms. The correlation of the body part with the fearful memory deeply connects and acknowledges the fear. Making explicit the mind-body connection helps release the traumatic...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In recent posts we’ve been discussing the value of a paradigm shift to thinking of the body as a carrier of meaning and the health care opportunities it affords. As one commentator observed: finding ways for patients to shift their perspectives, to achieve “…a shift...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
In the last post we looked at the research on the human body as a carrier of meaning, with a discernible history with lessons to teach us. Let’s look at this idea more closely. The work of Steen et al., “Generalized chronic musculoskeletal pain as a rational reaction...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain, Advancing Your Practice
Our discussions in this blog have continually circled us back to the same set of questions. As a doctor, what is our responsibility for assessing the situation and exploring possible “prescriptions”? To how much of the patient’s story will you relate, and through...
