Instinctively, we construct a model of pain using flawed links. We remember the immense pain we felt after breaking our wrist and the pain that occurred when we were scalded by boiling hot water. In this way, a pain-as-damage narrative is repeatedly reinforced by our experiences.

Learning a new model of practice can be daunting! The best way to gain confidence is to track the results of your new methods. There are two reasons to do this: The first is so you can feel secure in your clinical activity – so you know for sure that the methods you are adopting are effective. Secondly, by evaluating patient outcomes it helps you to grow beyond this book.

Over the next three chapters we offer you a guide to using pain science concepts in the clinic to help your patients. At its simplest, our clinical model can be described in three steps. 

Structured in three parts, Permission to Move combines pain science with everyday clinical practice in a complete guide. Part One of the book explores Why Pain Matters.

Professor Lorimer Moseley has written an insightful (and funny) foreword to our new book Permission to Move. In it, he affectionately writes of his own learning, the book’s importance, and the motivations of co-author Dave Moen.

There’s a lot of ways to join the dots. Sometimes you can get very different and very strange results!