Ideas in the Wild: Chuck Duff On How to End Pain

Doctors and therapists erroneously view pain as the result of injury or disease. Renowned bodywork teacher and pain therapist Chuck Duff discovered that the ineffectiveness of these beliefs stems from a failure to understand the true origins of pain. His Coaching The Body® (CTB) system recognizes that pain originates in the brain as a response to danger signals from trigger points that feed the brain’s innate protective instinct.

CTB interrupts these peripheral danger signals using highly effective manual therapy techniques to remove trigger points. These techniques exploit the brain’s neuroplasticity by providing an experience of pain-free movement. Chuck has taught thousands of manual therapists how to dramatically improve their success rates with even difficult pain cases. After decades of teaching, Ending Pain makes his revolutionary approach available to a wider audience. It also applies CTB principles to self-care and movement-based therapies such as yoga and corrective exercise. I recently caught up with Chuck Duff to learn more about why he wrote the book and the ideas he shares with readers.

Why did you write this book?

I know what it feels like to hurt so badly you can’t get off the floor. As a bodyworker, I’ve observed not only the pervasiveness of chronic pain but also how much it is misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Our medical system’s deep misunderstanding of pain is literally killing us, causing financial despair, depression, anxiety, lost careers, and compromised enjoyment of life. Traditional medicine also enables a culture of uninformed dependency that is both damaging and unnecessary.

I know there is another way, a different and more lasting solution for common pain complaints such as back pain, shoulder pain, and sciatica. The approach I’ve developed doesn’t require addictive prescription opioids, exotic medical equipment, or billions of dollars in research.

What you can learn in this book is an efficient, remarkably fast, and effective system for removing extremely common, hidden sources of muscular disturbance known by a select few as “myofascial trigger points.”

Briefly, trigger points in muscles generate “danger signals” that are sent to the central nervous system. The central nervous system (CNS) evaluates the stream of danger signals to assess the threat level, and based on that assessment, the brain may choose to “output” what we know and feel as pain. My system involves hacking the CNS by offering it an experience of movement without pain, giving the CNS “evidence-based reasons” to drop its hyper-protective stance that caused the pain in the first place.

What’s an idea you share that really excites you?

Most approaches to bodywork and self-care have the primary strategy of compressing the areas where pain is felt and moving the point of compression around but not the muscle. A prime example of this is using a foam roller on the outside of the thigh. They move the foam roller repeatedly across areas where they experience muscle pain. This approach fails to apply some key principles for long-term pain relief.

As you learn to apply CTB principles and techniques to your own body, remember these guidelines for the best results:

1. Understand where the pain is generated. Most importantly, know not to apply compression in the wrong place. “Rubbing it where it hurts” is not useful; pain is often caused by a trigger point somewhere else in the body. When someone experiences pain that they associate with their IT band, it has nothing to do with the IT band and most likely not even the muscle that lies underneath it (vastus lateralis).
2. Compression with movement is better than passive rolling. Moving the roller but not the muscle you’re compressing is another unhelpful strategy. The whole idea of “rolling” is somewhat flawed. Rolling over tender areas means that you’re not spending much time actually compressing the trigger points, and you’re also not retraining the muscle to be able to change length. It’s a far better approach to find the right area, then hold compression on it while you move the joint associated with the muscle, which changes the length of the muscle.
3. Find the hard fibers. The most efficient way to find trigger points is to look for hard fibers — areas of muscle that feel ropy — and then follow along the length of the fiber until you find a tender area (normally near the attachments of that particular hard fiber). Sometimes it’s a good idea to explore a little with your fingertips first, and then apply a compression technique suited for that area.
4. Pure compression isn’t nearly as effective as vibration. A vibration tool distracts the nervous system, making the body less likely to generate the pain that you normally feel. This allows more thorough treatment with less pain, meaning the body will permit the muscles to release and move more quickly and easily.

How will following your suggestions improve your readers’ lives?

In my career, I have observed the pervasiveness of widespread pain, the harm it does to your well-being, and the reliance on prescription drugs to mitigate the lasting effects. If you follow my teachings with an open mind, you can begin to alleviate the pain without the use of expensive equipment or addictive opioids.

Regardless of who you are — massage therapist, yoga or movement instructor, personal trainer, health coach, psychotherapist, physical therapist, medical doctor, athlete, dancer, or an enthusiastic non-professional — you will gain some important ideas and techniques from this book. I want to put my system in your hands and empower you with knowledge to help yourself and others. In this way, we can change our deeply flawed pain industry from the ground up, one improved life at a time.

My goals for you are myriad: to help you find a new way of understanding pain so that you might be motivated to learn more and become as successful as we are at lasting healing, to impart some practical techniques that you can try on yourself or your associates, and to provide some encouragement that it’s appropriate to question the misguided medical assumptions that have failed many patients.

My ultimate goal is to foster change within a system that imposes unnecessary suffering upon untold millions each year via inappropriate, ineffective, and invasive procedures and medications by offering a safe and legal alternative to opioids and surgery.