The act of trying to professionally help people is both rewarding and frustrating. Rewarding because I can make a meaningful difference in people’s day-to-day lives. Frustrating because I attempt to unravel people’s acute and chronic issues, that may have taken them a lifetime to develop, in a matter of our thirty minutes together. I enjoy teaching people, but their willingness to be taught varies on their situation, their personality, and their ability to pay for my ongoing services. After twenty-years as a physiotherapist and a lifetime of personal injuries, I have a wealth of experience to share with my clients, but I need to pick and choose what they are ready to hear in any given thirty-minute appointment. I wrote my first book as a cathartic means of processing my own trauma. I wrote my second book to help fill in the gaps of knowledge that people don’t actively seek out when they are uncomfortable.
Why We Hurt: Understanding How To Be Comfortable In Your Own Body will be available in paperback, audiobook and Kindle formats. It is my means of teaching people about the role stress, anxiety, and fear play in their physical experiences of discomfort. I address the imperfect nature of our world, the fear that is created within our medical systems, and answer the question: why don’t they teach us this in school? I believe that individuals need to better understand the messages of their bodies and put more effort into learning about how the systems work around them. I wrote this book to help people learn about how their bodies actually work and to ease my own challenge of not being able to teach every client everything that I think they would benefit from knowing.
I expand on my lessons in Why Things Hurt by sharing my thoughts on consciousness, little-T trauma, psychedelic-assisted therapies, posture, movement, dry needling, and visceral manipulation. The book is tied together with real life stories and accessible explanations of anatomy, injury, and healing. I am also putting together an online course that will pair with the book to act as a resource for parents and teachers to help their children create a better awareness of their physical and mental wellbeing.
The book will be available in Envision Physiotherapy clinics mid-December 2023, and worldwide via Amazon January 10, 2024. Click Here to Buy Online
Gabor Mate, MD, Author, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture
"People experience the world through their bodies," Brent Stevenson writes in this remarkable book, but as an innovative physiotherapist he has witnessed all too often just how out of touch humans can be with their bodies, as with the emotions that tense up and limit the movements of those bodies, causing pain, fear and even disability. In plain English Why We Hurt explains how our minds, memories, brains, muscles, ligaments, viscera, and connective tissue interact in subtle ways to foster suffering, origins and healing of which transcend the narrowly mechanical views of conventional medicine. Stevenson's understanding of these dynamics is keenly insightful, his many case histories are fascinating, and his explanations are clear and illuminating.
Dr. Pamela Kryskow, MD, Medical Lead Roots to Thrive Program
Brent's book skillfully integrates a holistic approach to restoring human health, seamlessly weaving together physical and emotional well-being. By demonstrating through case studies how clinicians can effectively attend to all aspects of a person's health, the book emphasizes the importance of recognizing and addressing all clues to facilitate patients' journey back to wellness. Additionally, the book explores the evolving role of psychedelic medicine in this holistic approach, acknowledging its potential as evidence continues to accumulate.