How Energy Work Helped Me Heal My Chronic Back Pain
Tapping into the body's natural healing potential through energy work
At fourteen years old, I had a mountain biking accident that changed the course of my life. I was tearing downhill when my front rim bent, sending me flipping over my handlebars. I hit a tree headfirst and lost consciousness. I walked away from that crash, but in the following year, I began experiencing severe back pain. By fifteen, I could barely walk, and doctors told me I needed major lower back surgery.
After partially recovering, I pursued a brief stint playing professional hockey in Germany’s Division 1 for the Freiburg Icewolves. It was a dream come true, but my back pain was so debilitating that I had to retire halfway through my first season. The pain was unbearable, and it became clear that I couldn’t continue.
I spent the next two decades searching for relief, trying everything from chiropractic care, massage therapy, acupuncture, and osteopathy to cortisone injections—hoping for a breakthrough, but finding only temporary relief. I even sought help from specialists at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, underwent nerve ablation in my neck, and followed private functional medicine protocols for a year. Yet, despite all these efforts, nothing changed. The pain persisted, along with the nagging sense that something deeper was at play.
Then, in 2018, while docked at a marina in St. Lucia after sailing across the Atlantic on a friend’s boat, I experienced a particularly bad flare-up, I listened to a podcast featuring Dr. John Amaral. The moment I heard him speak, I knew he was describing exactly what was happening to me. My nervous system was completely dysregulated, and I was carrying trapped energy that I just couldn’t shake. I felt such a strong pull to his work that I decided to cut my trip short. Dr. Amaral was passing through New York, and I arranged to meet him there. I spent the day with him in March of 2018, and that first session was a turning point. For the first time, I was able to move through the emotions, sensations, and energies that had been locked inside my body for decades. Since then, I have become deeply passionate about energy work and its ability to help people move through mysterious chronic pain, nervous system dysfunction, and trauma stored in the body.
The Link Between Energy, the Nervous System, and Chronic Pain
Dr. Amaral explains that our bodies process unresolved experiences through physical symptoms. When stress, trauma, or emotional turmoil is not fully expressed or released, it can become embedded in the nervous system and manifest as chronic pain, tension, and inflammation. Research has shown that unresolved stress can cause the body to stay in a state of fight-or-flight, leading to increased spinal tension and misalignment.
One of the most profound insights I’ve gained is that pain is not always about structural damage. Dr. Amaral describes how pain, particularly back pain, can be a reflection of stored emotional or energetic patterns. Unprocessed stress and trauma cause the body to contract, stretching the spinal cord and creating a feedback loop of discomfort and dysfunction.
How Energy Work Releases Trapped Trauma
Energy work helps restore nervous system balance by discharging trapped energy, allowing the body to return to a state of flow. Dr. Amaral’s approach involves working with the body’s energetic field, helping the nervous system recalibrate and let go of stored tension.
In my first session, I experienced many spontaneous movements and felt waves of energy shifting through my body. This led to big catharses, with intense, even inhuman sounds escaping me as my body contorted from the force of energy into many strange positions. This may seem strange, but it aligns with what happens in nature. When an animal escapes a predator, it shakes violently to release the built-up survival energy. Humans, however, tend to suppress these impulses, causing the energy to stay stuck.
My Studies in Energy Work and A New Perspective on Healing
Through my healing journey, I have studied energy work with Dr. John Amaral (Body Centered Leadership) and Drs. Chelsea Rae & Brian Thomas Lumb (Genius Frequency Methodologies), gaining insights into transformative bodywork, somatic healing, and neuroscience-based energy practices.
What I’ve learned through this journey is that true healing requires more than just mechanical fixes. It requires addressing the body as a whole—physical, emotional, and energetic. Pain is often a messenger, calling us to pay attention, process what has been ignored, and integrate experiences in a new way.
Energy work is not just about pain relief—it’s about reconnecting with yourself on a deeper level. When we regulate our nervous system, release stored trauma, and allow energy to flow freely, healing becomes possible in ways that conventional medicine alone cannot always achieve.
If you’re struggling with chronic pain, nervous system dysregulation, unexplained sensations, or tension in your body, I encourage you to explore energy work. It changed my life, and it might just change yours too.
To take the first step toward your own healing journey, I invite you to book a free consultation with me. Let’s discuss what you’re experiencing and how energy work can help.