Pain management
Chronic pain has a pattern.
We look for it.
If you've been told to pace yourself, ice it, and avoid certain movements, or if medications are only masking the signal, that's managing pain, not treating it. Chronic pain rarely lives where it started, and finding the actual pattern takes time and a whole-body approach. Evidence-based, non-drug care: manual therapy, acupuncture, and full-body assessment, working from the cause, not just the symptom.
How we treat pain
Pain that outlasts tissue healing is a different clinical problem. It needs a different approach.
Acute pain is tissue damage , strain, inflammation, injury. It resolves as healing happens. Chronic pain is different. After three months, the nervous system often maintains the pain signal even after the original tissue has healed. That doesn’t mean the pain is imaginary , it means the treatment needs to address the nervous system pattern, not just the structure.
Manual therapy, breathwork, and movement work all have well-documented effects on nervous system sensitization. Reducing load on overworked tissues, restoring normal movement patterns, and changing how the body processes threat signals are the mechanisms. Complex pain cases here often combine physical therapy with acupuncture, particularly when the nervous system component is prominent.
Conditions
From chronic low back and neck pain to hip and SI joint issues, fibromyalgia, and pain that has not resolved after surgery, the conditions treated here share a common pattern: the source of the signal lives somewhere upstream of where it hurts. The treatment follows from finding that source.
See the full list of conditions treated →Integrated care
Some pain patterns need a different kind of input. Needle work changes what hands alone can’t.
For patients with prominent nervous system sensitization , widespread tenderness, pain that moves around, sleep disruption, or pain that doesn’t follow a clear mechanical pattern , Dr. Kim’s acupuncture integrated with physical therapy often produces results that either alone doesn’t. The combination addresses both the structural and the neurological layer simultaneously.
See the acupuncture approach →Questions
-
How is this different from pain management through a pain specialist?
Pain specialists typically use injections, medications, and procedures to manage the pain signal. Physical therapy works on the movement and structural factors that maintain the load driving the sensitization. Both can be useful , they’re not mutually exclusive. Many patients do both. Our role is the movement and manual therapy side.
-
I’ve been told my pain is “in my head.” Is that what you mean by nervous system?
No. Chronic pain with a prominent nervous system component is physiologically real , the sensitization is a measurable, documented process. “In your head” is not a useful clinical description. The nervous system is a physical system, and chronic pain is a physical process that happens to involve it prominently.
-
How many sessions do I need for chronic pain?
Complex chronic pain typically takes longer than acute injury to respond , 10 to 16 sessions for meaningful improvement is common. We re-assess at every visit block (typically every 4 sessions) and give you an honest picture of progress. If PT isn’t the right primary intervention, we tell you.