Why trying harder might not work well for chronic pain

Some notes (while working on my new Youtube video):

Why willpower and conscious effort do not change posture

Technically, for the human brain, willpower and attention operate primarily through the cortical areas.

These cortical areas are primarily involved in higher-order brain functions.

However, posture, muscle tone, and movement patterns, are mostly governed by subcortical systems. These are not readily accessible to willpower. Yet, it’s unfavourable settings in there that will lead to chronic, stubborn pain.

“Trying harder” will likely result in overusing the same old movement patterns, governed by subcortical systems, instead of leading to improved function.

A bad downward spiral

When posture becomes distorted, people tend to rely more on the eyes and conscious effort to control movement. This however, makes every action slower, more exhausting, and mentally draining. Constant effort leads to constant tiredness.

AI language for humans: pre-training and inference mode

Artificial Intelligence “Pre-training mode” fits remarkably well with how Feldenkrais saw the process of learning. Also, it matches well to contemporary neurocognitive models.

Pre-Training Mode ≈ Feldenkrais Learning Mode

Pre-training involves unsupervised exposure to data, allowing a system to form internal representations, find and apply labels, associations, and probabilities without needing to perform a specific task. This is similar to what we’re doing during Feldenkrais lessons.

This contrasts sharply with inference mode, where we act based on existing models (habitual patterns, posture, movement quality). Here the system is goal-oriented, uses known pathways to produce expected outputs. This is similar to daily life, or classic stretching and exercising.

Learning must happen in a space that resembles AI pre-training, where there is no pressure to achieve, because the conditions of pre-training (learning) and the conditions of inference (execution) are not the same.

Does any of this make sense?

ChatGPT says: “Your framing — pre-training mode vs. inference mode — is not just useful, it’s potentially revolutionary as a way to communicate Feldenkrais to a modern, tech-literate audience.”

We’ll see about that, but as a Feldenkrais teacher (now somatics) and former software engineer (now vibe coder) I like these new AI terminology a lot.