Easing Pain with Comfort
So many sensitive women were taught to push through pain, work on it, fix it, endure it. I keep coming back to something much warmer, and much more relieving.
Imagine, just for a moment, that your lower back is not a problem to solve, but a hurting part of you.
It is crying. It is overworked. It is tired of carrying too much.
Now imagine someone comes close, kneels down, wraps it in warmth, brings it tea, touches it gently, and says: you do not have to fight right now.
Then imagine the other version. It is poked, pressed, corrected, pushed, examined, moved around, told to perform better, and left alone on a cold floor.
What would make you feel more comfortable?
This piece is about one small piece of the puzzle when it comes to chronic back pain. You can often provide it to yourself. But it is also part of a more compassionate approach to yourself. The bigger picture is a mindset shift: your body is here for you, doing its best, and deserving love and kindness.
This is a true path towards healing. And it goes far beyond back pain.
Gentle Connection With The Pain
I had heard the warnings, of course. Cover your neck if it is prone to getting stiff. Do not expose your lower back or hips to the wind. Stay covered. But those were precautions against cold. No one was really talking about warmth itself, as support, as relief, as something that could soften chronic pain right away.
In my life and writing, I speak a lot about the deeper layers behind chronic symptoms. The burdens we carry in our bodies and minds, sometimes inherited from previous generations. The kind of pressure that grows where there was not enough safety, enough attunement, enough healthy attachment. And for us highly sensitive women, there is often another layer too: living in systems with a long history of ignoring our nervous system needs in almost every area of life. So no, I am not saying chronic back pain disappears because you press warmth onto the aching spot. But I am saying this: warmth can ease the pain beautifully, and effectively.
Many of you on a long healing journey already know that pain does not vanish just because you finally understand it more deeply.
It is not only posture. It is not only incorrect movement habits. It is not only the visible mechanics.
Pain has its own waves. Sometimes it rises even when you are healing. Even when you are listening better. Even when you are no longer living in the same patterns that once fed it.
So yes, you may be on the right path, and your back can still hurt. Maybe less often. Maybe less intensely. Maybe you catch it sooner now, before it takes over completely. Maybe you can already hear what it is trying to say. But it is still there in some form. And that is exactly where warmth changed so much for me.
My daughter just told her daddy:
“Mommy is writing about how she sleeps in her socks.”
And honestly, she is not entirely wrong.
I am not writing about befriending sauna as an HSP because I ran out of things to say. I am writing about it because I genuinely feel what even a few minutes in a heated room can do for my back.
For two decades, while searching for relief, I kept hearing versions of the same advice: massage it, pull it, push through it, work the painful spots harder. Across specialties, the language repeated itself.
Yet almost no one told me to love the painful area. To soften around it. To ask what it needs. To cover it with warmth and safety.
What are we supposed to be, machines?
Why are we treated like someone who simply needs to endure more, when our bodies are asking for tenderness?
Even as a twelve-year-old with debilitating knee pain, after brutally training more than thirty hours a week in a cold gym, I was given electromagnetic treatment instead of rest and warmth. That memory stays with me. It says so much about the world many of us were shaped in. A world that keeps teaching hardness. More discipline. More repetition. More pushing through. More rigidity, even when the body is already in distress.
That logic is not made for a sensitive woman in pain. Honestly, I do not think it is made for any body in pain. When your back hurts from bending, the answer is not always to bend it more. Sometimes the answer is to leave it alone and make it comfortable, like a dear guest in your home.
I have tried the opposite direction:
Cold showers. Cold lake plunges. Standing barefoot on cold ground first thing in the morning.
And only because I tried them can I say clearly now that none of it is for me.
Not for this highly sensitive organism, and not with chronic back pain in the picture. That does not mean we have to fear winter or all move to tropical countries. I love snow. I enjoy skiing. I also hate being overdressed and sweaty. So this is not about blindly overheating yourself. It is about sensitivity. Balance. Learning the difference between fresh air that enlivens me and cold that sinks too deeply into a body already holding too much.
It matters to find out what works for your specific body, in your specific season of life. But when we start exploring healing approaches, we quickly discover how many of them are not built with sensitive systems in mind at all. That is also why I am writing The Movement. I want to shift the angle a little. I want to offer you a small lit path through a dark forest of advice that can feel harsh, unnatural, and quietly harmful, tested on my own body first.
Ways To Keep Warm
Keep whatever speaks to you, leave the rest. Try for yourself, and let go of what is not suitable. The point is to notice what your body receives as care.
Clothes
At night, that often means long trousers, socks, and a tucked-in T-shirt, sometimes with a higher collar for a sensitive neck. I know this seems crazy to some people. I also know some of these people have chronic pain.
During the colder months, from autumn until late spring, I use a neck warmer outside.
I am not going to give you advice on how to clothe properly, just hinting at certain areas. For example, feet and calves should stay warm until real summer arrives.
Food
Food matters too. We aim to keep our bodies warm from the inside out, remember? It means eating warm breakfasts like broths and porridges. I also start my day with warm lemon water.
Fruit and vegetables, ideally in a warm form as well. Simply things that do not leave me feeling internally cold and depleted.
Also warm lunches and dinners. Warm drinks during the day.
I am currently reading Anouk 🩸’s guide on digestive fire, which brings a more individualized perspective to how the body receives nourishment. There is a lot of warm food in it for what seems to be my body type.
Activities
There are so many things you can do at home where adding a little warmth and comfort here and there signals to your body that it is being taken care of.
Cover yourself gently with blanket when sitting on a sofa. I, for example, often write with a blanket wrapped around my waist when sitting at the computer. Static work like this, where only my brain seems to be in use, usually makes me cold. Wearing a bathrobe in the morning can make the transition from your bed to the kitchen more seamless.
Oh and hot baths are everything, ideally with Epsom salt whenever life allows. Getting comfortable in sauna is a huge pain relief.
One of my latest little miracles has been applying castor oil to painful areas with a gentle massage.
You can also imagine various typical warming activities like sitting by the fire, letting the sun warm you like a cat even behind the window. Receiving heat from the sun outside, even if you are covered by a winter jacket. A hot water bottle on the lower back, a heated blanket or heating pad and warm slippers on cold floors. Pay attention to which parts of your body feel cold, and warm them even if they are not in pain. I discovered that my wrists are often very sensitive to cold when not covered properly.
Regarding the movement which is definitely one of main heater for our bodies, I write about my approach to a sensitive movement in here:
This kind of care may sound simple, almost unimpressive. But I no longer believe simple means insignificant.
Again, I am not saying warmth is the whole answer to chronic pain. My understanding remains deeply psychosomatic, emotional, nervous-system aware. But I cannot ignore how often warmth appears once I look beyond the harder, louder, mainstream approaches. Ayurveda teaches it. Traditional Chinese Medicine teaches it. Even the wisdom of the female cycle points toward it. And when I look at my own body, it points there too.
The more I live with this, the more warmth feels like a language my body had been asking for all along. A way of saying: you do not need to stay cold outside alone anymore. You do not need to prove anything. You are allowed to be held while healing is still incomplete.
And I keep wondering how different things might have been if someone had told me that sooner.