Pain Is Not In Your Brain And It's Not In Your Tissues - So Where Is It? | Dr Mervyn Travers (PhD)

If you've been told your pain is "all in your head" or that it's purely a problem with structures in your body - this episode will challenge both of those ideas.Dr Merv Travers is a physiotherapist, PhD researcher and strength & conditioning coach based in Perth, Western Australia. He's a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Notre Dame Australia, working in the areas of low back pain, tendon pain, and exercise rehabilitation.In this conversation, Merv explains why pain belongs to the whole person - not just the brain and not just the body. He breaks down active inference and predictive processing in plain language, shares a story of a professional athlete he treated for Achilles pain and makes a compelling case for why the RESOLVE trial may be the most important musculoskeletal pain trial we've ever had.We also explore the common threads between some of the best research that has been done on persistent pain - Cognitive Functional Therapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Graded Sensorimotor Retraining - and why Merv believes the active inference framework ties them all together.Whether you're a clinician looking for a better way to treat persistent pain or someone living with pain who's been told nothing else can be done - this episode offers real hope backed by real science. RESOURCES: Try Pain Coach for free RESOLVE      Trial (Bagg et al., JAMA 2022) The Fit for Purpose Model (Wand      et al., Physical Therapy 2022)  Recognise App (for      laterality training) Dr Merv Travers / Optimise RehabKEY TOPICS 00:00 — Teaser & Introduction 01:05 — Merv's Mission: Helping Clinicians Help Patients 02:44 — How Do You Understand Pain? 04:13 — Predictive Processing Explained Simply 08:00 — The Teacher Who Said "Your Back Never Heals" 09:50 — Beyond Predictive Processing: Active Inference 12:02 — Pain Equals Body Damage x Nervous System Threat? 14:19 — The Wine Experiment: How Expectations Shape Experience 18:02 — Why Every Person's Pain Is Unique 21:48 — Treating Athletes: The Culture of Structural Thinking 23:28 — The Achilles Story: "I Don't Know What I'm Going to Do" 24:56 — Sensory Acuity Testing: "Foot Fetish Tinder" 27:07 — The RESOLVE Trial: The Most Important Pain Trial We've Had 30:21 — Why The Trial's Rigour Matters 31:40 — CFT, Pain Reprocessing Therapy & What's Coming Next 33:58 — The Common Threads Across All Three Treatments 37:07 — Get To Know Your Patient (Pain Coach Ad) 37:33 — Movement Experimentation & Modifying Symptoms 44:05 — Manual Therapy Isn't Excluded From This Framework 48:56 — The Fit For Purpose Model: Three Pillars 51:07 — Self-Evidencing Through Movement 54:19 — The Placebo Effect Is Not A Dirty Word 58:55 — A Universal Truth For Someone In Pain 01:01:21 — Where To Find Merv Travers