How to Heal Chronic Pain Naturally - Doctor of Physical Therapy tells his story

If you’re an athlete who is in pain or injured, or maybe just feeling plateaued in your performance due to a number of restrictions this article is going to provide some clarity and hopefully some hope on your journey.

An estimated 70-80% of retired athletes (whether high school, college or pro level) deal with chronic pain daily. If that's you, this can come with a host of other issues you may be experiencing including, but not limited to anxiety, depression, opioid addiction, stressed family dynamics and ruined relationships as a result of living at a fraction of your potential.

The answer to all your frustrations lies in one simple paradigm shift…to simply remember who you are. Let me explain...

Most of us have lost sight of our original design and the modern world has muddied the waters so much that we don’t even know how to drown out the noise and identify the truth.

I was caught in that cycle for almost 10 years after a really bad injury my senior year of high school, but I escaped it on my own naturally without needing drugs, surgery or physical therapy (because the traditional models failed me).

I believe everyone is capable of this and I’ve helped many others do the same in a fraction of the time it took me. The process I use across the spectrum of rehab to sports performance is what I wish I would have had when I started my own journey and it’s what I’m going to share with you today.

This article is going to be perfect for you if…

• You feel stuck in a cycle of chronic pain and are so overwhelmed with how many things are wrong that you’re not sure where to start
• You keep getting the same injuries repeatedly and nobody has been able to provide answers for you.
• You feel confused with the conflicting advice of not only traditional medical, rehab and fitness professionals, but also the dime-a-dozen influencer “experts” popping up daily saying controversial statements with the highest and most convincing confidence just for clout.

In this article we’re going to:

• Uncover what could be sabotaging your goals
• Learn the basics of how to create an environment for healing, recovery and optimal health
• Establish a framework for how to move in a way that re-establishes your naturally athletic and resilient human design while eliminating pain in a way that allows you to keep it that way for life

My name is Dr. Brandon Keilman. I’m a movement and sports performance coach, doctor of physical therapy and licensed physical therapist in Winter Park, Florida. I own a small, cash-based practice, called Orlando Movement Practice, out of a local gym where I have a ratio of about 60% movement/performance based clients and 40% physical therapy/injury and pain management clients.

I’ve been training myself for over 26 years, others for over 15, 8 of which have been as a licensed physical therapist in the greater Orlando area. My clients have ranged in ages from 8 all the way to 98, from sedentary activity levels with no exercise experience to elite athletes at the olympic and world champion levels.

Suffice it to say, I’ve seen a lot and tried a lot. I know what works and what doesn’t. I did a lot of things right and a few things wrong or in incomplete ways. I also know I’ll never know it all and that the learning never stops.

What I do know really well at this point though, is the basics. And what I know about people is that most are nowhere close to having the basics down on how to make the human form operate well, much less optimally.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and the cause and prevention of disease.”

This is how I operate. Let’s talk about what that means and how our world is set up completely backward from this concept.

Internal Warning Signs of Chronic Pain on the Horizon

Let me set the stage for how my journey began and some of the warning signs I should’ve paid attention to a lot earlier.

I grew up in northwest Indiana until I was 9 and that midwestern life came with us down to Florida. Comfort foods like butter and cinnamon sugar bread, Kraft Mac n' Cheese, Lay’s potato chips, candy, Pizza Hut, Kool-aid, McDonald’s almost daily, Dairy Queen, cereals like Cap’n Crunch, Golden Grahams, Cinnamon Toast Crunch every morning...you know…all the good stuff.

I grew up when Saturday Night Live was still good and loved skits like the Super Fans w/ Chris Farley. “How many heart attacks is dat for ya Bob?” “Oh that’ll be a baker’s dozen dere, Bob.”

Funny but…not so good…

The warning signs probably started way earlier, but when I was 12, I was taking swim lessons, got out of the pool, vaguely remember walking toward a staircase and the next thing I knew I woke up lying on the ground, then remember sitting in a chair being given dry frosted mini wheats to bring my blood sugar back up.

Let me be clear...that is NOT normal for a pre-teen.

As time would reveal I’ve got diabetes, parkinson’s, alzheimers, multiple cancers, heart disease and even some autoimmune disease in my immediate and extended family gene pool.

That fainting spell at the pool should’ve been a massive warning, but life went on as “normal” even into undergrad where I had another fainting spell in the University of Central Florida rec center bathroom. (I had eaten an entire box of chewy Chips A’hoy cookies prior to doing a high intensity circuit training workout because…why not? Right? 🤦‍♂️)

I wouldn’t get that area of my life under control until my mid-20s. As it turns out we’re not meant to eat processed foods, much less binge on them (though the chemicals in them trigger brain areas that contribute to this addictive trait) and it takes our bodies quite some time to detox from them (6 years for vegetable oils!).

What I didn’t know was that genetics may load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. There was a LOT that was in my control. More on that later.

One Injury Can Change Your Life…An Ankle Sprain Can Trigger Severe Back Pain?!?

I always felt I was capable of more as an athlete, but when I turned 17, I decided to take some control over that. I didn’t have enough money to play club ball over the summer, so I decided I was going to focus on getting more athletic by increasing my vertical jump.

I played volleyball and worked hard all summer long using an old program called “Air Alert.” I got my vertical up to 32 inches, felt like I could fly and still hadn’t reached my potential.

Then…it happened…

I went up to block a hitter on the opposing team and made the block, but he landed on my side of the court and I landed on his foot as I came back down.

POP!

I fell to the ground and my ankle started swelling with a baseball size lump developing almost immediately.

Long story short, it was a grade 3 high ankle sprain with complete separation of my ATFL (anterior talofibular ligament) as well.

I didn’t rehab it because physical therapy wasn’t really a thing back then. It was just having the athletic trainer push the fluid out and put my ankle in a cold water whirlpool for 15 minutes a couple times a week (which we now know that ice delays healing).

I was back in 6 weeks, not even close to 100%. Slapped a thick layer of athletic tape on it, sucked it up and did my best. I was a starter in the back row, but functional at a fraction of myself.

I got back to feeling “normal," back to volleyball, basketball and anything else I felt like doing, but then one morning I woke up and could hardly get out of bed.

The relentless cycle of chronic back pain and recurring injuries

That morning my back was spasming hard and it felt like I was trying to break the deadlift world record to just get up from a chair or get out of bed. I literally had to yell or growl it out to stand up. Then, my first few steps felt like bolts of lighting going down my leg and I had intermittent numbness in my right big toe.

Over the next 8+ years I dealt with these back pain episodes that took 6-12 weeks to “fully recover” from at least once or twice a year. It sucked, to say the least.

Statistics say 80% of people end up with back pain in their life, but make no mistake...this is NOT normal at all.

I also ended up with a laundry list of other injuries across almost every joint in my body including, but not limited to:

• Plantar fasciitis and achilles tendonitis
• Meniscus tears in both knees and a grade 2 MCL tear in my right knee (and I believe an undiagnosed ACL tear in my left knee)
• Patellar tendonopathy and IT band syndrome
• Hip labral tears and femoracetabular impingement in both hips
• A labral tear in my left shoulder and shoulder impingement both sides
• Severe back pain and SI Joint dysfunction causing intermittent numbness into my right big toe
• Medial and lateral epicondylitis, wrist pain and more…

It’s ok, you can say it…I was a mess.

After 8 years of frustration, it took me 3 years to climb out of all of that mess and feel confident in my path. Now as I approach age 40 in January 2024, I have no pain and move better than I did as a teenager before those bad injuries.

The fun part about my success? I did it before I had any formal training. I’ve been where you are right now. And because I was able to do it…I KNOW 100% that you can too.

I could probably go on forever with all the things I tried, but I have to save room for other articles and posts!

Here are the 3 most important things I had to learn to get out of chronic pain:

1. I had to want to get out of pain. I know that sounds funny, but you can say it all day long. Actions speak louder than words. Lots of people say they want out of pain, but are not willing to put in the work and time. I get it though…By age 24 I had to decide that my outcome was not acceptable and that I was not going to settle for this mess the rest of my life. Step 1 is to decide you want out and you’ll do whatever it takes to get out.
2. The body can heal completely…IF AND ONLY IF…you give it the right environment to do so. If your internal and external environments are sabotaging you, you’ll never win and will stay stuck in the cycle.
3. We are meant to move a certain way just like every tiger moves the same general way. There is a right and wrong way to move, one that is secure and one that is more vulnerable to pain and injury. That design has a really broad application that includes a base skill set that is mastered and expands to athletic and artistic expressions that are still secure. With the right process, you can achieve almost anything, you just have to figure out the right starting point.

Assuming you’ve made the decision that enough is enough and you want to get out of the cycle to become better than what you were before you got stuck…here’s what to do…

Step 1 in Healing Chronic Pain: Remove the Things Sabotaging Your Goals

Like I said, my lifestyle habits were kind of a mess. By age 24, I was not only tired of the pain, but I was tired of twice yearly seasonal allergies that left me huffing, puffing and sniffling for 3-4 weeks at a time since the age of 16.

The hard truth though…those were warning signs that my insides were wrecked and I was stacking the cards against myself trying to stay healthy. Your upbringing is a big part of this, but there has to come a point where you take responsibility for your own health.

I know many of you are in the same boat. If you’ve been stuck in the cycle like I was, you must address your lifestyle habits. If you don’t, you don’t really want to be out of pain that bad. How your body operates internally matters arguably more than the best movement system out there.

Here are the basics of what to do to detox your body:

• Remove all unnatural and processed foods. That includes basically any potentially allergenic foods as well (conventional dairy, beans/legumes, vegetable/seed oils, refined sugars, grains). Go through an elimination diet to figure out what’s right for you.
• Ditch modern footwear. My journey out of pain on the movement side took a drastic turn for the better when I re-taught myself how to run a barefoot (it took 7 months of patient progress) after having to give up running for three years. High cushion, high heels, compressive toe boxes, etc…all wreck your foundation, making every step worse than it needs to be.
  Minimize modern furniture. Couches, desks, chairs, recliners…These put your spine and hips in unnatural positions causing undue tension on your entire nervous system.
• Ditch modern fitness training methods. Lifting and HIIT based models steal rotation from athletes and go against our natural design. While they can create benefits in the short term, the stiffness they create can lead to long-term harm on our joints.
• Address any trauma that has occurred in your life and separate yourself from toxic/draining relationships…at least for a while. If you’re not being supported on your journey or you feel you’re giving more than you take in, or there are toxic people in your life…it’s ok to prioritize yourself and create some distance until you are in a better mental state.

I’ll share what worked for me in the next section.

Step 2 in Healing Chronic Pain: Tap into Your Body’s Amazing Ability to Heal Itself

So we know what to get rid of or modify. How do we make things run optimally?

The traditional models keep us alive, but they don’t teach us how to thrive, so it’s up to you to research. Here’s the 30,000 foot overview of how to set your internal environment up for success…

Fast periodically to clean up old damaged cells and ushered in new cells.

I personally complete a 72-hour fast quarterly and regular 16-24 hour fasts for the anti-inflammatory, anti-aging and even potential anti-cancer effects.

Fasting, I believe has been misused as a weight loss tool (I ven by myself over the years) when the power really lies in its ability to kickstart a process called autophagy.

This process is a fancy term for deep cellular cleanup. When your body goes without food for a period of time between 16 and 72+ hours, your body will start to “eat” damaged cells for fuel. After a certain point stem cell production kicks in and you get vibrant, rejuvenated cells to take their place.

This is a powerful tool for healing and renewing your body. Some general recommendations are to start by simply shortening your eating window to between noon and 8 PM to get a feel for a short, intermittent fast. You eat the normal daily amount of food during that window though.

The next level up would be a 24 hour water only fast, which is really necessary to get autophagy ramped up.

The next level is 48 hours, during which autophagy will start to slow (but not stop) after you’ve reached 48 hours.

If you make it up to 72, then you will have achieved most of the benefits of the stem cell production as well. After 72 hours those benefits don’t stop if you’ve got a lot of cleanup to do, but they do slow down. I see massive strength and mobility upgrades on the third day alongside this feeling of calm, yet hyper-focused almost euphoria.

Disclaimer, if you have not done a 48 or 72 hour fast before, this is not the right place to start. Please consult with a medical professional to help guide you through that process as maintaining proper hydration and electrolyte replacement requires somE fine tuning and could cause harm if you’re not on point there. This article is not a substitute for seeking individual medical advice specific to your situation. It is just to open your eyes to things that are available to us for free to heal your own body. Implement at your own risk.

Eat a whole foods only omnivorous diet and determine what’s right for you with an elimination diet.

I’m not getting into plant-based vs animal-based. A well balanced diet includes both, the ratios of which are individual and tend to change seasonally and I could dismantle both sides of the argument using the peer-reviewed literature (because it’s all incomplete and has biases.) Here’s what worked for me…

A well-balanced paleo diet completely rid me of my seasonal allergies. I had tried clean eating, got shredded, but still got sick all the time, allergies hadn’t changed and was stiff as a board.

I did a whole foods only, well-balanced vegan diet for about a year, felt good for a few months, but health tanked and allergies got worse 7-9 months into it.

Paleo (tweaked for what worked for me after going through trial and error elimination diet) did the trick. Adequate high quality animal protein is the starting point followed by healthy fats and then plenty of fruits and vegetables (minus some reactive ones) and that’s it. Eat only what you could hunt or gather and eat seasonally would be my biggest tips.

Utilize the power of nature (for free)

Sure you could buy a grounding mat for a few thousand dollars, pay a monthly membership to a recovery facility where you have access to cold plunge and sauna OR…

Just ditch your shoes and go barefoot, get some sunlight, take a cold a shower and stand or walk on a natural surface daily.

Grounding, or earthing, is a powerful tool you can use to drastically reduce inflammation in your body. Inflammatory particles in our body carry a positive charge and the surface of the earth carries a negative charge that helps to cancel out those inflammatory particles.

Vitamin D deficiency is one of the most common factors in people with lifestyle diseases and those in chronic pain. Studies show between 60-93% of people dealing with different forms of chronic pain also have Vitamin D deficiency.

What do we need to produce vitamin D naturally? Sunlight and cholesterol.

So here are some action steps you can do for free to reduce your chronic pain:

• Get direct sunlight daily. Expose roughly 40% of your skin or more to the direct sunlight for at least 15 minutes daily to upgrade your vitamin D production for immune boosting, anti-inflammatory effects
• Set your circadian rhythm for be sleep. Go outside during first light in the morning to set your circadian rhythm and get better sleep (without expensive supplements or medications)
• Ground daily. Stand or walk barefoot on a natural surface for a minimum of 10 minutes daily (I do this 60 minutes minimum daily and did it as much as 4 hours daily when I was working through pain). Free anti-inflammatory medicine for the whole body.

My free PDF guide at the bottom of this page goes into further detail on actionable steps you can take today.

Next, let’s talk about my bread and butter, movement. We have joint pain, obviously movement needs to be addressed and I have a approach that works. If it doesn’t, your internal environment needs the biggest focus.

Step 3 in Healing Chronic Pain: Move in a Way that Honors Your Naturally Athletic Design

This one is going to be new for most of you reading this. You’ll likely have to unlearn a lot of what you think you know if you’ve been in the training world for a while.

Ever wonder why all toddlers basically move the same, but then that all supposedly changes and we all move differently when we grow up? Ever wonder why that changes?

Maybe it shouldn’t change so much. This is what I wish I understood at the start of my journey.

Now let me say, this concept does not apply as straight forward to anyone born with structural or genetic anomalies. This framework still helps, but the pathway requires a much higher level of attention to details and respect for those limits. Those situations are rare, so for most of us, that exception does not apply.

I had to learn a few lessons along the way to come to the framework I'm about to show you.

Kelly Starrett’s MobilityWod taught me I had some control over my pain and maybe there was some standard for human movement. His material was the first to point out the indigenous squat and to suggest everyone should be able to do it with straight feet. I was equipped with the belief that I could feel better along with some simple tools I could use to get started in as little as 10 minutes daily.

Ido Portal Method taught me I could not only address everything wrong with me, but I could apply a simple process to achieve almost any skill imaginable, from breathwork to the splits to strength to acrobatics to mindfulness. It also instilled the importance of self research.

Researching cultures who have been tinkering with the body for thousands of years like eastern cultures and shaolin monks taught me how important daily head-to-toe maintenance work was and the kind of dedication required to have healthy joints across the lifespan.

Physical Therapy school introduced child development stages to me and sparked the fascination that has led me to use it as the template I use not only for kids, but active adults and elite athletes alike to restore full access to the whole body and reestablish a naturally athletic base.

There were many other systems I learned from over the years coming from movement disciplines like parkour and martial arts to name a few, but I wish I understood and had mastered the original design for movement development first.

The OG Movement and Athletic Development Process

The way we all develop our movement is called the childhood neurodevelopmental sequence (NDS). It is a predictable series of progressions called milestones that transform us from reflexive babies with next to no control over anything to mini elite athletes who are always ready, fully mobile without warm-up, explosively athletic and anti-fragile by the age of 6. There are 18 distinct levels of progression so to speak.

Sure, some will excel more than others in modern society, but the gap is much smaller in barefoot, non-modernized indigenous cultures. Those people basically all move the same. The hunters have perfect posture, are extremely fit and retain childlike movement freedom while possessing the elite athletic skillset that a hunter needs to effortlessly navigate the terrain and provide for his community.

Check out the Korubo tribe documentary for an example of what I mean. They are the spitting image of what happens when the neurodevelopmental sequence is left unadulterated by modern conveniences and they don’t have the same joint issues we have in modern society.

They also keep this high level movement across the lifespan where your 80+ year olds can still deep squat, cover long distances over varied terrain and get up and down from the ground with relative ease. You can see below how the elders can still sit in similar positions to the children in these kinds of tribes and how modern sitting postures look drastically different and unnatural.

Not to glamorize their life, because it is hard, but the template of their lifestyle is the ticket to health and longevity across the board.

Eat off the land. Barefoot on natural surfaces 24/7. Move near perfectly across the lifespan, even in the elders. Move a lot. Sleep according to the cycles of the sun and live in intimate connection with the earth and environment around them. Plenty of sunlight and grounding daily. Fresh, clean water if they are remote enough from modern society.

The good news is that modern society also allows us the freedom to still take advantage of everything nature has to offer while enjoying the conveniences of modern innovations.

Retracing our steps through the childhood neurodevelopmental sequence, scaled to the adult level, offers us the framework to assess what we're missing, redevelop childlike movement freedom and rediscover the naturally athletic skillset and frame we were meant to have.

The progressions from zero to hero are all found there and they follow a specific set of guiding principles that make them easy to understand, progress or regress at any level. From foundational core work to whole body strength to fascial fitness and elasticity to sports performance…the basic skillset to be a complete athlete with near limitless potential is all there.

And the end result of that process provides the most complete base to layer on sport or activity specific skills with minimal barrier to progress and keep that complete base for life.

I mentioned it took me 3 years to get out of pain. I dabbled with some of this at the time, but the systems available that touched on it were too stiff and robotic, which is not how kids or athletes are.

This lens would have drastically shortened my timeframe and set me up for the rest of my life, but it’s ok if it still takes you that long. It’s a drop in the bucket for the remainder of your life to be pain free.

The NDS takes us up to 6 years to “complete" as kids, but since we've already been through it once, it takes us a fraction of the time to get back to that level. Once you find your proper starting point, the progressions back to feeling as free as a child are not only logical and step-wise, they are predictable. You just have to retrace the steps and be honest with yourself at your current level.

My understanding of the NDS has not only restored my body to near full childlike capacities at the age of 40 (see the pic below), but it has brought clarity and context to every other movement system I’ve ever encountered. I can see where pieces are missing. I see where someone is blowing smoke on social media for clout. I know what I’m supposed to be able to do and I know what will help me and what will lead to dead ends or harm eventually. 

So where do I want to take it now and where could you take it if you did the same?

How To Beat Chronic Pain and Get Back to Play Again

One of the biggest elements that is overlooked with the child developmental process is that the milestones all emerge through the practice of serious play by simply navigating the environment.

You have to get back to play. The goal should be pursue the things that allow you to train less, play more and live well. I want to rest in a deep squat when I’m 80 and sprint on a whim or play sports. I want to wrestle with my kids and grandkids one day hopefully. Personally, I want to not only be the most present husband and father I can be, but to be able to give my two (very active) boys a run for their money as long as I possibly can. They should be afraid of losing to me in a foot race when I’m in my 60s and not be able to make fun of me for being sore the next day (because I won’t be! We'll see right?)!

With the true foundation for movement restored, the options are literally endless. I can do what I want, when I want without hesitation.

That’s the freedom I want for you as well.

Remember, you can heal if you give your body the right environment to do so.

So let’s summarize your action steps moving forward and how I would organize my priorities if I had to go through this journey again:

1. Eliminate or modify things that are sabotaging your goals
2. Tap into your body’s amazing power to heal itself by taking advantage of what nature has to offer (whole foods, grounding, sunlight, fasting etc)
3. Develop daily practices to decompress and decongest you body daily (breathwork, joint care, lymphatic clearance work, etc.)
4. Re-trace your steps through our original movement development framework in order to move the way we were meant to move and keep it the rest of your life.
5. Incorporate as much PLAY as possible in the process

Here are a few examples of some of my students who followed this process as well...

If you’re stuck right now, I made a free PDF guide to help you hopefully shorten your journey and understand what it takes to come back home in your body again. Enter your info below to grab that free PDF.

If you’re ready to get started tackling this stuff today, I made an amazing online course called Athlete Reborn, detailing this exact process of eliminating toxic inputs, setting up your body to heal, eliminating your pain through movement and rediscovering how athletic you were meant to be for life.

Check those resources out below.

Train less. Play more. Live well

Doc