Mind Your Body Podcast
Chronic pain is rarely just physical. At Body and Mind Pain Center in Los Angeles, we understand that true healing requires addressing both the body and the mind. Dr. Zev Nevo guides our unique Mind-Body Rehabilitation Program, designed to help you move beyond just treating physical symptoms towards resolving the underlying patterns of suffering that often perpetuate and intensify pain. We believe in patient-centered, evidence-based care, providing a safe space (co-regulation) essential for your mind and body to become receptive to healing.
Request an AppointmentBODY: Treating your Pain
Our Medical Clinic offers advanced, evidence-based treatments targeting the physical sources of pain and dysfunction. Dr. Nevo utilizes precise diagnostics and minimally invasive techniques based on his extensive expertise and certifications. Your patient-centered care plan may include:
- Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation: Comprehensive assessment and management of musculoskeletal and neurological conditions.
- Interventional Orthopedics: Utilizing state-of-the-art ultrasound guidance for highly accurate diagnosis and targeted treatments for sports and spine-related injuries.
- Regenerative Orthobiologics: Harnessing your body’s healing potential with PRP and Prolotherapy injections.
- Extracorporeal Shock Wave Therapy (ESWT): Non-invasive treatment for chronic tendon and soft tissue conditions.
- Osteopathic Manipulative Treatments (OMT): Gentle, hands-on techniques to restore balance and improve function throughout the body.
MIND: Healing your Pain
Mind-Body Rehabilitation: This is our customized program dedicated to addressing the “suffering” behind pain, which often perpetuates and intensifies our perception of physical discomfort. We explore the intricate connections between your thoughts, emotions, nervous system, past experiences, and physical symptoms.
Our Mind-Body Rehabilitation program, guided by Dr. Nevo in Los Angeles, will enable you to:
- Understand your unique pain experience beyond just the physical diagnosis.
- Learn how your brain interprets and responds to pain signals, including concepts like neuroplasticity.
- Explore the ways your mind and nervous system respond to perceived safety and threat across multiple domains of your life.
- Begin rewiring your brain to process sensations and emotions as safe, reducing hypersensitivity.
- Identify the signs and symptoms of nervous system dysregulation in your own body.
- Learn practical skills to identify and reduce factors that increase sensitivity to pain and other stimuli.
- Gain emotional intelligence to understand how thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations interact and influence each other.
- Develop resiliency and balance in your life by learning skills related to self-compassion, healthy boundary setting, processing legacies of stressful and traumatic experiences, and increasing tolerance to adversity, stress, and pain.
- Improve objective measures of body and mind health, including heart rate variability (HRV) and heart coherence.
- Receive resources and ongoing support on your healing journey, potentially tapping into a community of peers who share common fears and concerns (if applicable).
An Integrated, Evidence-Based Approach:
The Mind-Body Rehabilitation program harnesses evidence-based approaches from multiple leading experts in pain psychology, worldwide trauma experts, and utilizes advanced technology (like HRV biofeedback) to monitor your mind-body health. We are committed to recommending strategies based on science, not hunches or popularity, ensuring you are well-informed and empowered to choose the best options based on what is available and appropriate for you, consistent with our fiduciary care model.
An Insurance Policy for Adversity:
Consider this program an investment in your resilience – an insurance policy for adversity in life. Addressing the mind-body connection and nervous system dysregulation related to pain, stress, and trauma can prevent dysfunction in other body systems. These dysfunctions may present with symptoms such as:
- Fatigue, lack of energy, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)
- Impaired attention, focus, or concentration (brain fog), sometimes related to ADHD.
- Sound sensitivity or auditory processing difficulties.
- Social isolation, feelings of hopelessness or helplessness, low frustration tolerance, irritability, or tendencies towards addiction.
- Gastrointestinal symptoms (e.g., Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), chronic constipation).
- Chronic Pelvic Pain.
- Chronic headaches (including tension, occipital, or migraines).
- Cardiovascular symptoms (e.g., POTS – Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome).
- Co-existing mental health conditions such as Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders, or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Therapeutic Modalities We Integrate:
Based on your individual needs and goals, your Mind-Body Rehabilitation plan may incorporate techniques drawn from:
- Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT): Retraining the brain to interpret signals as safe.
- Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP): Auditory intervention to regulate the nervous system.
- Rest and Restore Protocol (RRP): Listening therapy to support healing, restoration and balance
- HeartMath®: HRV biofeedback training for coherence and resilience.
- Emotional Awareness & Expression Therapy (EAET): Addressing the impact of suppressed emotions and relational stress.
- Polyvagal Theory: Understanding and working with your nervous system states.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS): Exploring and harmonizing different internal ‘parts’.
- Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy: Releasing stored trauma from the body gently.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does addressing the ‘mind’ help my physical pain?
Your brain acts as the control center for pain perception. Factors like stress, past trauma, deeply held beliefs, and emotions directly influence how your brain interprets signals from your body and can actually amplify or even generate pain sensations (this is known as neuroplastic pain or central sensitization). Mind-body therapies help you understand this connection, regulate your nervous system’s threat response, process underlying emotional contributors, and fundamentally retrain your brain’s pathways. By addressing the “suffering” component and promoting a state of safety, we can change your experience of pain, leading to significant relief and improved function.
Is this program covered by insurance in Los Angeles?
Coverage for comprehensive mind-body programs varies greatly depending on your specific insurance plan in the Los Angeles area. Some individual services within the program provided by Dr. Nevo (like OMT or aspects of medical consultations) may be billable or eligible for reimbursement. However, many specialized mind-body therapies (such as PRT, SSP coaching components, HeartMath training) often do not have specific insurance codes and may be considered out-of-pocket expenses. We strongly recommend contacting your insurance provider directly to clarify your benefits. Our office can provide you with a superbill (a detailed receipt) for services rendered, which you can submit for potential out-of-network reimbursement. Investing in this program is investing in deep, sustainable healing.
How long does the program take?
The Mind-Body Rehabilitation program is highly personalized, not a one-size-fits-all approach. The duration depends entirely on your individual needs, the complexity of your condition(s), your specific goals, and your active engagement in the process. It’s a journey of learning skills, building awareness, and retraining ingrained patterns, which typically involves several weeks to months of active participation. Dr. Nevo will discuss a potential timeline with you during your initial consultation.
Do I participate in all the listed therapies?
Not necessarily. The program is integrative, meaning it draws from a wide range of effective, evidence-based modalities (PRT, SSP, HeartMath, EAET, Polyvagal Theory, IFS, Somatic Therapy). However, it is also personalized. Based on your initial assessment and ongoing progress, Dr. Nevo will co-create a treatment plan with you, selecting the specific combination of therapies most suited to your unique needs, nervous system patterns, and goals.
How is this different from regular psychotherapy or physical therapy alone?
While this program incorporates valuable principles from both fields, its uniqueness lies in the integration under Dr. Nevo’s medical and holistic guidance. Unlike potentially siloed approaches, we simultaneously address:
Psychological aspects specifically tailored to pain (PRT, EAET, IFS).
Nervous system regulation using targeted tools (SSP, Polyvagal exercises, HeartMath).
Somatic (body-based) processing of stress and trauma.
All within the context of Dr. Nevo’s medical understanding (PM&R, OMT, Functional Medicine) of your physical condition and overall health.
This comprehensive approach targets the pain experience from multiple angles – physical structure, nervous system state, emotional patterns, and cognitive beliefs – for more profound and lasting results.
What does ‘nervous system dysregulation’ mean?
Think of your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) as having gears: one for alertness/action (“fight-or-flight,” sympathetic) and one for rest/healing (“rest-and-digest,” parasympathetic/ventral vagal), plus an emergency brake (“freeze/shutdown,” dorsal vagal). Dysregulation occurs when this system gets stuck – either too often or too intensely in the high-alert or shutdown states, even when there’s no immediate danger – or struggles to shift back into the calm, safe, healing state. Chronic stress, illness, or past trauma can cause this imbalance, contributing significantly to symptoms like heightened pain sensitivity, anxiety, fatigue, digestive issues, poor sleep, and more.
How does past trauma relate to current pain or symptoms?
Traumatic or highly stressful experiences (even those not typically labeled as “big T” trauma) can leave a lasting imprint on the nervous system, essentially setting its “alert level” higher. This chronic state of perceived threat (dysregulation) can directly amplify pain signals, increase inflammation, cause persistent muscle tension, and contribute to many physical and emotional symptoms like fatigue, IBS, anxiety, depression, or pelvic pain. The body can also hold unprocessed emotional energy related to these past events. Our Mind-Body program provides gentle, safe, evidence-based tools to help process these legacies and teach your nervous system that it’s safe now, allowing physical and emotional symptoms to resolve.