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Send us Fan Mail The pain that drops you to your knees rarely arrives with a dramatic story. It shows up when you’re doing something laughably normal: opening a shower curtain, putting on socks, standing up from the toilet. That’s not proof your body is fragile. It’s often proof your body has been whispering for a long time and finally found a moment you couldn’t ignore. We walk through how pain actually escalates, why your perception is the only pain scale that matters, and what we can lear...
The pain that drops you to your knees rarely arrives with a dramatic story. It shows up when you’re doing something laughably normal: opening a shower curtain, putting on socks, standing up from the toilet. That’s not proof your body is fragile. It’s often proof your body has been whispering for a long time and finally found a moment you couldn’t ignore.
We walk through how pain actually escalates, why your perception is the only pain scale that matters, and what we can learn by tracking what the pain prevents you from doing. Then we share a powerful Zoom coaching moment: a business-owning mom walks in with 8 out of 10 head pain and leaves at a 2 in about 20 minutes. No touch, no tricks. We unpack the Double Bubble process, rooted in paradoxical intention, and why “choosing the pain” can stop the internal war that keeps the nervous system locked in threat.
We also break down a four-layer framework for chronic pain relief and recurring symptoms: emotional patterns like grief, mental stories and beliefs, energetic or inherited programming (yes, epigenetics comes up), and the physical body. Finally, we explain craniosacral therapy in plain language and why pairing nervous system coaching with skilled bodywork can help changes last, especially when pain flares around certain times of year or meaningful anniversaries.
If you’ve tried everything and the pain keeps coming back, listen with an open mind and a curious body. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s stuck, and leave a review so more people can find a smarter path to real relief.
This is Soma Rising: Conversations for a Conscious Future —where health, wealth, love, and purpose flow together on the Golden Path of alignment. Learn more at somatribe.org
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Website: soma-massage.net
Instagram: @somawellness.center or @tabitharmacdonald
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If today’s episode spoke to your soul and you’re ready to rise into a life aligned with your truth, I’d love to invite you into Soma Tribe—my signature transformational journey for people who are done playing small and ready to reclaim their power, purpose, and intuitive knowing.
✨ Learn more and sign up online.
Tabitha MacDonald is an Intuitive Coach and Bodyworker committed to helping people overcome pain fast so they can experience the love, success, freedom, and fulfillment they deserve.
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Soma Rising: Conversations for a Conscious Future
Welcome to Soma Rising, the podcast where science meets spirit and healing becomes the art of alignment.
Join Tabitha MacDonald, intuitive coach, bodyworker, and transformation expert, as we explore the path of the heart — the Golden Path — where health, wealth, love, and purpose flow together as one radiant field of creation.
Each episode invites you to release the ego’s grip and rise into the luminous potential of your soul — where love feels safe, intuition leads, freedom is your birthright, and peace is natural.
Through powerful conversations, personal stories, and Superconscious insights, we bridge the worlds of neuroscience, intuition, and energy healing to help you align your body, mind, and soul with your Higher Self.
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SPEAKER_00: Have you ever
noticed that the pain that
knocks your socks off is usually
when you're taking your socks
off?
It's so stupid, right?
We all expect these grand
stories.
We expect dramatic injuries, a
car accident, a fall.
Something that at least makes
sense as a reason to be in
agony.
But the truth is it's almost
never that.
It's I was getting out of bed.
It's I was putting my socks on.
It's I was getting up off the
toilet and everything just fell
apart.
The most mundane things cause
the biggest injuries.
Or do they?
Because here's what I know after
spending years working with
bodies and with pain.
That shower curtain moment, and
we've all had one, is never
actually about the shower
curtain.
Mine was in my 30s.
I reached out to open a shower
curtain, and my entire back
locked up.
Nine months.
No solution.
And it wasn't the first time.
It was just the worst time.
Once or twice a year, like cloth
work, my back would seize.
Always at the worst possible
moment.
Huge workload, full client
schedule, no margin for error,
no room, no time to stop.
Now, it usually started when I
started exercising.
That morning, I had done a
20-minute Gillian Michaels
workout before I was about to
take the kids to the beach for
the day because I was tired of
being fat and I wanted to get in
shape in 20 minutes, and I
wanted my body to change with
one 20-minute workout
immediately and permanently.
We can talk about that more
later.
For years, I thought I had a bad
back.
That was just my body, that was
just my life after a certain
age, blah, blah, blah.
I hear it all the time in the
clinic.
But here's the thing as a
massage therapist, I work on
bodies every day.
I was going home, sitting on the
couch, eating ice cream, and
calling that self-care.
I was using my body as my
primary work tool and giving it
nothing back.
No healthy movement, no
maintenance, no respect.
And at some point, my body made
a decision.
If she won't stop on her own,
I'll make her stop.
And it worked.
Every single year, more than
once a year, until I started
actually listening.
Here's what I want you to sit
with before we go any further.
Pain doesn't just show up, it
whispers first.
It whispers and it whispers.
A little tightness here, a
little fatigue there, a little
nudge that says, hey, something
needs your attention.
And when we ignore those
whispers long enough, eventually
it stops whispering and it
throws a tantrum.
And that tantrum is what lands
people in my office saying, I
don't know what happened.
It just came out of nowhere.
And it was never out of nowhere,
at least not normally.
You just got really good at not
hearing the quiet version.
So today we're going to talk
about something that happened
recently because it's one of the
clearest examples I've seen of
this in a long time.
I was on a Zoom call with a
practice coaching group.
It's part of my coaching
certification that I did five
years ago.
And I've volunteered to like
come into practice sessions and
help people who are learning the
processes and improve their
skills.
And one of my friends is in this
particular little practice
group.
And we were one of the newer
coaches who's new to this
process, not necessarily a new
coach, but new to Chris Duncan's
work, wanted to practice the
technique called the double
bubble.
And with a double bubble, we use
a recode with it, which is the
most effective way to transform
anything.
And so my friend, she says, I'm
in so much pain today.
I can't practice, but I'll
receive.
And of course, I immediately
light up because I'm like, oh,
pain.
Pain is pain, I know.
I'll help.
And so she volunteers to be the
practice client and so that the
other coach can watch how we go
through the process.
So as we start going through the
questioning, I'm looking at
everything, right?
Even on a Zoom call.
I'm not just looking and hearing
what she's saying.
I'm watching her face, I'm
watching her body movement.
I can pick up so much
information from places people
don't even know that I can pick
it up from.
This is kind of a superpower,
but it's also a trained skill
that I've had from working with
people in pain for over 20
years.
So she was dealing with an eight
out of 10 head pain.
And if you've ever used a pain
scale, you know that eight is
not a rough day.
Eight is an unbearable day,
right?
Eight is the kind of pain where
it's hard to think, hard to
focus, hard to be a functional
human being.
Period.
Throw in being a business owner,
a wife, and a mom.
Now we're talking it, it's a
really bad day.
And I want to pause here for a
second because this matters when
we're talking about pain.
Your perception of your pain is
the only thing that matters.
Not what caused it, not what it
looks like on a scan, not how it
compares to what someone else
has been through.
If you've had a baby and they
were beating on your spine for
12 hours before they came out,
you have a very different pain
scale than someone who hasn't
had that experience.
And that's completely fine and
normal.
We're not comparing, we are
always only working with your
experience exactly as it is.
That is the most accurate pain
scale.
So her experience is an eight at
this point.
And so that's what we're working
with.
She mentioned that her wisdom
teeth were coming in, needed to
come out, and that's where the
pain was.
Now, because I can see pain, I
knew that's not where the pain
was coming from.
And wisdom teeth pain is very,
very real.
I've had it, I know what it
feels like, and I'm not
dismissing it.
But I could hear something else
underneath it.
The way she was talking, the way
she was holding herself, even on
screen, where she was pointing
to her headache.
None of that is wisdom tooth
pain.
All of that is something deeper.
And I've worked with pain long
enough that I can usually hear
what's underneath the presenting
complaint pretty quickly.
And what I heard underneath the
wisdom teeth was worry, worry
about what this pain was going
to mean for her life.
She has a small child, she
couldn't concentrate, couldn't
focus, couldn't get things done,
and she owns a business.
Do you know how hard it is to
run a business when you're in
pain?
It's hard.
And it it wasn't even really the
pain that was the problem.
It was everything she couldn't
do because of it.
And that is almost always the
story with pain.
It's I can't do this because of
the pain.
And here's something I noticed
that I don't think was a
coincidence at all.
And it later revealed that it
most definitely wasn't.
This was just a couple days
after Mother's Day.
She had lost her mother when she
was very young.
And when we got into the session
and did the recode, I could see
the pattern, these unconscious
contracts her inner child had
made.
Contracts that sounded something
like, I won't have health
because you didn't.
Ways that a young child's mind
tries to maintain connection and
belonging with a parent who is
gone.
Not consciously, not on purpose,
but very real.
And it's running in the
background, quietly shaping
everything.
And I'll come back to that in a
different episode in more
detail.
For right now, just we're just
gonna pin it and it'll probably
be in the next episode.
Because it matters more than it
might seem right now, and it
deserves its own conversation.
But let me explain what the
double bubble recode is because
it sounds a little unusual.
And I want you to understand why
it works before I tell you what
happened.
There's a concept in psychology
called paradoxical intention.
It was developed by Victor
Frankel, a psychiatrist who
noticed that when people
deliberately leaned into the
thing they feared most, the fear
started to lose its grip.
And instead of fighting the
feared outcome, you just choose
it intentionally.
And something in the nervous
system can finally relax because
it's no longer fighting on two
fronts at once.
That's the foundation of the
double bubble.
And here's how it works in plain
language.
First, you choose the pain.
You literally choose it.
You don't try to make it go
away, you don't white knuckle
through it or pretend it isn't
there.
You actually decide on purpose
that the pain is real, it's
there, and you're going to let
it be as big as it wants to be.
Worst case, full permission, you
write it all down.
What I'm making this pain mean
is I'll probably die alone on a
toilet like Elvis.
That's the one my brain always
usually goes to.
My clients always have their own
worst case scenario or fear.
And then you bring light to it
instead of covering it up with
affirmations and positive
self-talk.
Because if the pain's not
shifting, it doesn't need an
affirmation, it needs a light.
And then we go and we define
what does the opposite look
like?
So now we got the worst case
scenario.
What is the opposite?
Now, people in pain, they hate
this question.
They look at me with daggers
coming out of their eyeballs
because they're like, I don't
know what you're talking about.
Because the pain's so loud,
sometimes it's hard for them to
get there.
So if that's you, that's normal.
Let's just pretend for a moment
we could take all of the pain,
put it, put it in a container,
set it aside, and you have a
whole new body without the pain.
And now we're going to step into
what it actually feels like to
have a body that feels good and
healthy, clear, free of pain.
Not what you think it should
feel like, what it genuinely
feels like when you let yourself
imagine it.
Because remember, the brain
doesn't know the difference
between what's real or what is
what is real or what is
imagined.
And so imagination plays a huge
role in resolving pain and other
patterns.
It's especially important in the
double bubble because we need
two opposing points to choose
from.
Because believe it or not, there
are parts of you that actually
think the pain is there to serve
a greater purpose for you.
And what we do is we want to
find the part of you that has
the highest intelligence, which
is your superconscious, and we
find the path between worst case
scenario and base best case
scenario, and we're not forcing
resolution, we're simply
dissolving the conflict by
refusing to pretend only one of
those options is allowed to
exist.
Now, why does this specifically
matter for pain?
Because a lot of the time we are
in a quiet war with our own
body.
Part of us desperately wants the
pain gone.
And another part, and this is
the part that almost nobody
talks about, has some kind of
investment in that pain staying.
I'm gonna repeat that because
it's important.
A part of your consciousness has
some kind of investment in the
pain being there.
It's not conscious, it's not on
purpose that that part exists.
Maybe the pain is the only
excuse you have to rest.
Maybe it's keeping you from
something that feels scary to
move forward or toward.
Maybe there's a contract
somewhere like my friends that
says belonging means suffering
the same way someone you loved
suffered.
When you choose both the pain
and the absence of it at the
same time, you stop feeding that
internal war.
And the nervous system, which
has been burning enormous energy
trying to maintain the conflict,
it's to exhale.
My friend came in at an eight,
she left at a two.
Guess how long the process took?
20 minutes.
No touch, no bodywork, just the
process over Zoom.
That's how powerful our
superconscious recode work is.
To get someone from an eight to
a two in 20 minutes, that's
magic.
But is it?
Or is it just neuroscience?
Now I want to be really clear
about something here because
this is where I think a lot of
people in the wellness space get
it wrong.
And I don't want to be one of
those people.
This is not a mind over matter
story.
This is not me saying your pain
is all in your head, and if you
just think differently, it will
go away.
That is not what happened, and
that is not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is that pain has
layers, and by the time it shows
up in your physical body, it has
almost always already moved
through the other three.
The first layer might be
emotional, which is grief, fear,
anger, loss, emotions that
didn't get processed and get
stored somewhere in the body
instead.
The second layer is mental, the
stories, the beliefs, the
unconscious programs running in
the background.
I won't have health because you
didn't.
Pain is the only way I get to
rest.
My body cannot be trusted.
And then the third layer is
energetic.
The contracts, the inherited
patterns, the things we absorbed
from our parents and their
parents before them that we
don't even know are ours.
This is where epigenetics come
in, which I'm going to do a
whole separate episode on this
because the research is
fascinating.
But the short version is that
science has now shown we can
inherit our parents' behavioral
and emotional patterns at a
biological level.
The things that happened to
them, the fears they carried,
the coping strategies they
developed, some of that gets
passed down, not as a story, as
a program.
And the fourth layer, the one
most people focus on
exclusively, is the physical
body.
Structure, alignment, tissue
tension, the mechanics of it
all.
By the time something shows up
in layer four, it has usually
already moved through layers
one, two, and three, which is
why treating only the physical
body, while important, is often
not enough on its own to create
lasting change for people.
That's not dismissing physical
treatment.
That's what I do for a living.
My friend still followed up and
made the appointment to go see
the cranial sacral therapist at
my office.
And that solidified the mental
work we had just done.
Because in order for the
energetic and the psychological
work, the coaching to hold,
right, it needed the physical,
the physical to match what we
just did on the other three
levels.
Because we were working with the
upper three levels, the
energetic, the mental, and the
emotional levels of pain.
The physical body still needed
to have a shift in the way her
cranium was sitting to make more
space for her brain.
And that's where cranial sacral
therapy is amazing and very,
very helpful, especially if
you're in a lot of pain, because
going and getting a very painful
massage might not be the best
strategy for you when you have
an eight out of 10 pain level.
So I want to take a moment to
explain cranial sacral therapy
in plain language because I
think it deserves a better
explanation than it usually
gets.
And a lot of people don't even
know what it is.
But your brain and spinal cord
are surrounded by fluid,
cerebrospinal fluid, and that
fluid has its own rhythm.
A slow, quiet pulse that moves
through your central nervous
system completely separately
from your heartbeat and your
breathing.
About six to twelve cycles a
minute, just quietly doing its
thing all day, every day.
Your body also has a connective
tissue system, Bosha, that runs
from your skull all the way down
to your tailbone, wrapping
around your brain and spinal
cord like a sleeve.
When you go through stress,
trauma, physical tension, or
even just years of sitting at a
desk in a position your body
doesn't love to be in, that
sleeve can tighten.
It can lose its natural rhythm.
And when that happens,
everything running through it,
your nervous system, your
ability to regulate, your
capacity to recover, it's
affected.
Cranial sacral therapy uses an
incredibly light touch,
sometimes literally the weight
of a nickel.
Now, I want to throw in here
because when people hear that,
they go, I went to a massage
therapist once and she touched
me like a feather and it didn't
do anything.
That's not the same thing.
Cranial sacral has a very
specific intention, working with
a very specific condition.
A light efflage massage is not
the same thing.
So please separate the two.
At specific points on the skull,
the spine and the sacrum to
listen to the rhythm and help
the body find its way back to
it.
It's not manipulation the way
that we do with neuromuscular
therapy or deep tissue massage,
and it's not force.
It's more like holding space for
the body to remember what it
already knows how to do.
If you had asked me five years
ago if I thought there was any
benefit in this style of
bodywork, I would have
wholeheartedly left you out of
my clinic.
Now I embrace it like it's God's
gift to pain recovery and
concussions because of the
effect it has had on my healing
and recovery.
And I sing Daniel's praises
daily to all of my clients
because I'm like, this man has
literally helped me get my brain
back.
And he was a student of cranial
sacral.
He, I was like his first client.
And I am so grateful for us
getting to learn it together
because I still think he saved
my life.
And he is a man who I just
admire because he's always
learning.
He's he's a man after my own
heart.
He's been with me for a decade
at Soma.
And he is just like me, where
he's just always learning and
growing, even in his 70s.
So back to Cranial Sacral, it's
what I'm talking about now is
that when we combine that with
this the coaching aspect of what
I do, and that's using things
like NLP.
We've just renamed it the Soma
Recode because we're basically
combining, I basically combine a
whole bunch of different things
that I've studied and put them
all together.
So the double bubble uses the
superconscious recode, NLP parts
work, which you might have heard
is like family systems.
It'll also include like
spiritual therapy, working with
the energetic plane, and then
also working with beliefs and
patterns and programs that some
part of you created at some part
in of your life in order to deal
with something that happened at
that time.
Now, when we finished, we
integrated everything using
tapping because I believe that
we have to take the spiritual,
mental, emotional work and
ground it into the body for it
to actually last.
So then we used tapping to
integrate it into the nervous
system and we tapped our way
into new beliefs about our body
getting to be feel safe and feel
good.
And then she went into the
integration with the cranial
sacral therapy and had a
tremendous result.
The message, the voice message I
got from her almost made me cry
a little because I always
dismiss the efficacy of my work
until I get a message like that,
which I literally get every day.
But because I always deal with
my own, I think humbleness is
not even the right word.
I think it's just this, it could
always be better.
And I think that just has to do
with my pursuit of excellence in
my career, but but I digress.
So but it we did full
integration.
We took someone who literally
couldn't function and made them
happy and functioning in two
hours.
But that's that's amazing and a
beautiful gift to give to a
human being.
So the body got support,
releasing the physical hold.
And that's really the
integration process that made it
all stick and hold, right?
So if you're doing stuff like
NLP hypnosis or recodes or
whatever it is that you're doing
to make a shift in your life
that is not changing, you might
not be getting to either the
root cause or you're not having
the physical integration of
change.
And that sometimes can be done
just by taking the action, or
sometimes it needs some
assistance from a highly skilled
practitioner who can guide your
body where it needs to go.
So I also want to come back to
something I mentioned earlier
because I don't want to gloss
over it.
The timing of her pain mattered.
It was only a couple days after
Mother's Day.
A young woman who lost her
mother early and a body that was
screaming at an eight out of 10.
Here's what I've noticed over
years of working with people.
Pain is not always constant.
Sometimes it's seasonal,
sometimes it's situational, and
sometimes it only shows up in a
certain environment or around a
certain person or at a certain
time of year.
And when that's the case, it's
almost always worth asking, what
does this time of year mean to
me?
What anniversaries live here?
What memories, even the ones I
don't consciously remember,
might be resurfacing right now.
Because the body keeps that
record whether you're aware of
it or not.
And sometimes what looks like a
physical problem, wisdom teeth,
a bad back, a headache that
won't quit, is actually a grief
response, an anniversary
response, an inner child who is
doing the only thing they know
how to do to feel close to
someone they lost.
We don't need to pathologize
that.
We just need to be willing to
look at it and to have the right
tools to transform it.
So let's go back to where we
started.
The shower curtain, the socks,
the getting up off the toilet.
Those moments were never really
about the curtain or the socks.
They were the moment the cup
finally overflowed.
The body sang loudly,
undeniably, in a way you
absolutely could not ignore.
I have been whispering to you
for a long time and you wouldn't
listen.
So here we are again.
The mundane trigger is never the
cause.
It's just the moment everything
that had already been building
finally had somewhere to go.
And the reason I actually love
working with pain, the reason
I've built my whole practice
around it is that the body is
not trying to destroy you, it is
trying to communicate with you.
And the moment you stop biting
it and start getting genuinely
curious about what it's saying,
things can shift faster than you
would expect.
My friend went from an eight to
a two on a Zoom call in 20
minutes.
Not because the pain was fake,
not because she just needed to
think positive, but because she
stopped fighting it and started
listening to it, and because we
looked at all layers of the
pain, not just the one that was
loudest.
One more thing before I let you
go.
I can hold this space for people
because I've walked through it
myself.
My back doesn't go out anymore.
Not because I got lucky and not
because I found the right
physical treatment, though that
has helped, but because I did my
own work.
I looked at my own layers, I got
honest about the programs I was
running and the contracts I had
made without knowing it.
You can only take someone as far
as you've been willing to go
yourself.
So if you're someone who has
been living with pain that keeps
coming back, pain that moves
around, pain that flares at
certain times of year, pain that
doesn't fully respond to
treatment no matter what you
try, I want to invite you to
look at the whole picture.
The sessions I offer blend
superconscious recode,
neurolinguistic programming,
hypnosis, and identity level
work to get underneath the pain
at its root.
And when we pair that with
skilled body work, structural
integration, cranial sacral
therapy, we're working all four
layers at the same time.
If that sounds like what's been
missing, the link to book a
session is in the show notes.
Come as you are, bring the pain
with you.
That's exactly what we'll work
with.