Oliver Bee RMTRegistered Massage Therapist
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Kitchener–Waterloo · Chronic pain

Still hurting after months of treatment? Here's a different way to look at it.

Chronic pain is often less about the sore spot and more about how the whole system around it has adapted. That's the frame I actually work from.

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Three categories, not one

Chronic pain is rarely a strictly physical problem.

I think about chronic pain across three contributing categories: physiological, psychological, and social. It's immensely complicated, and how we perceive pain is heavily influenced by how we're living and how we feel about our life, not just what's happening in the tissue.

I treat the structural level directly — deep tissue and myofascial work, informed by tensegrity — and offer tools, practices and support that speak to the other two categories alongside it. Managing chronic pain well tends to take community, too, and a set of beliefs that carry you past the fear of it toward actually improving the body you live in.

Lived, not just studied

Chronic pain isn't something I only learned about in school.

I've had my own journey with chronic pain, including six months where I was missing three or four days of clinic a week. I was dealing with low back pain that would stop me from treating — some days I'd cancel and just lie down and cry.

I got through it with real help: colleagues, self-care techniques we worked out together, and eventually a fantastic chiropractor who got me back on my feet. I bring what I learned through that stretch, alongside everything I've picked up over years of practising, to help other people through what is a genuinely frightening experience.

I'd rather you know a little about what I've actually been through. It tends to make it easier to talk about your own.

If this sounds familiar, we can talk it through at your first session.

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Why understanding it changes things

An unknown restriction is easy to fear. An understood one isn't.

When you're presented with a new and unknown restriction to your capacity, it's easy to fear it, because you don't understand it. Building a better understanding of the function and structure of your own body creates some space between the emotional experience of pain and the reality of it — a reality you have some control over, rather than something that haunts you and makes you afraid to move.

I believe understanding pain can remove the fear of it — and once the fear is managed, that's the first real step into managing the pain itself.

Treatment Plans

Arthritis & ongoing care

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More on how I work.

The structural thinking, the room, and what happens after a session.

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