Joanne Lee SmithChronic pain and symptoms recovery Nurse / Coach

Mind-Body Recovery: Do Less, Recover More!

6 Dec 2025 · 2 min

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1:30

In this excerpt from Joanne Smith’s talk, she challenges the common belief that increased effort always leads to better outcomes. While most domains—academics, music, athletics—reward more practice and harder work, she argues that mind‑body recovery operates differently. Applying the same “go‑go‑go” mindset to symptoms such as chronic pain, fatigue, or stress actually impedes healing. The harder one pushes to overcome these symptoms, the slower progress becomes. Smith presents this as good news: by intentionally doing less, easing pressure, and allowing the body to rest, recovery can accelerate. The segment sets up a counter‑intuitive principle that less effort can be more effective for mind‑body health.

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So this is where the counterintuitive approach comes from. So most things in life, it makes sense. You put the effort in, you work hard, you study, study, study. You're at university doing a degree. I put the hours in, I learn, I study, study, study, and I come out with good results. That's, you know, in most areas of life that makes sense. You know, the more practice that you get, the better that you'll get. more hours that you put in learning to play a new instrument, the more time you do practicing, the better that it sounds. So in many, many areas of life, it makes perfect sense. You know, the more hours of training that I put in going running, the more hours that I went running, the more effort I put in there, the better I got, the easier it got. It just made perfect sense. You know, it just got easier. But with this mind-body recovery process, It's counterintuitive. So I've got some really good news for you all today. Some really, really good news. It's actually party celebrations because the harder that we try with the mind-body symptoms to get better from them, you know, if we bring in that same on-the-go, go, go, go, go energy into got to get better, got to get better from these mind-body symptoms, then the harder that we try and the less progress we're going to make. It's counterintuitive, it's counterintuitive, so it's really great news because actually you can do less, it's easier.