The Moment I Realized It Wasn’t About My Spine Anymore

Christmas Eve 2016.

I was shopping in Toronto, standing in a change room when my back suddenly popped as I bent over to try on a pair of pants. I remember feeling a sharp pain. I leaned against the wall, trying to understand what had just happened. I was confused and worried. I had injured my back before, but this was a different feeling. Something was wrong.

Days earlier, I registered how happy I was to be in the best shape of my life. I was strong. I was active. I could run, lift, and ask my body to do almost anything any day of the week. I was 39 years old.

Overnight, everything changed. The sharp pain became sharper. The intensity was unbearable. The pain radiated from my lower back into my right glute (buttock) and down my right leg to my ankle. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was nerve pain. Sciatica.

I had never experienced anything like it.

Walking, sitting, standing, working… everything became extremely painful. I was afraid of the simplest things, like putting socks on, or taking a step. Every movement was riddled with fear and anxiety.

After 9 months of appointments with several healthcare practitioners (told by some it would go away in a few weeks, others had no idea what to make of it — one even said out loud, “I don’t know what to do with you Hélène!”), I was still in severe pain.

Until one practitioner truly saw and acknowledged the severity of my condition. She instantly referred me to a back specialist.

I felt seen that day, I will always remember that feeling.

I went to my appointment, and after a few mobility tests, the specialist immediately ordered an MRI and put me on heavy pain killers. He was surprised I was up and walking at all. I happen to have a high pain tolerance (like most women, apparently…).

With the MRI came the explanation: a small fragment of bone from my spine was in contact with my sciatic nerve, from an incident that had happened a year prior.

The diagnosis: S1 Disc Fragment. My injury was real. And getting an answer gave me hope. I still needed the medication for the pain and inflammation, but with time, I was told, the nerve pain would begin to decrease as the bone fragment would get absorbed naturally.

But something strange happened in the following 3 months: As predicted, the injury started healing. I didn’t.

The sharp, electric pain was still there, much lighter, but I no longer trusted my body the way I once did. And I developed a different pain as the sciatica diminished. My lower back was stiff as a board. I couldn’t sit or stand for long. Just getting out of bed required an elaborate routine. I was careful. Too careful.

I was not moving with ease. Like anything when we guard ourselves physically or emotionally, ease can’t exist.

That was the moment I started asking a different question:

Not, “What is wrong with my spine?” 

But, “What else is my body trying to protect me from?”

My spine had been injured. That was real. It was healing, but the pain was not going away. It was lighter, it came and went, and sometimes it moved around. I read somewhere that these changes could actually be a sign that the injury was healing.

So I started researching the relationship between pain and the brain. I was only 40 years old, and I wasn’t ready to accept that this was my new normal. 

I learned that even when the body has healed, the brain can continue to signal danger and keep the pain response going.

So the injury was no longer the whole story.

My nervous system and brain had learned pain. They had learned protection. They had learned to stay alert. And now they needed to consciously learn something that used to come naturally: trust and safety.

This was the beginning of a completely different way of understanding my body.

I had spent years learning muscle biomechanics, movement, anatomy, and training. I understood how to make a body perform better and grow stronger.

But this was different.

This was about understanding what happens when the body has been through something overwhelming. The injury had launched a coping strategy. And my nervous system and brain kept that strategy in place long after the injury had healed.

This is when I realized: 

My healing was not only about fixing what was physically injured. And this is something I now see repeatedly in the people I work with.

Sometimes the body heals, but the brain doesn’t know it’s time to let go. It’s about helping the brain, nervous system, and body fully recognize that the danger has passed, so we can move, live, and feel safe again.

I know this because I lived it. Today, I move again. I run and train, I go through my day without thinking about every movement and I am no longer living in pain.

My body healed. My brain learned to let go. And I got my life back with knowledge to sharp.