Talks | Interviews | Publications
Talks for Curable (videos)
including several guided somatic trackings and live Q & As
More Talks (videos)
Interviews with Lara (videos)
Publications
Talks for Curable
*Free to Curable Classes members, others can do a free 6 week trial to Curable, which gives app subscribers access to a number of free talks/month
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Lara offers strategies, suggestions, and hope for those of you living with not only neuroplastic symptoms but also structural. She has worked with clients with lots of structural conditions who find enormous benefit in this work (e.g., Post-Stroke Dysautonomia, Parkinson’s, ALS, etc.)
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/2e/living-with-structural-and-neuroplastic-pain
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Lara talks about what she calls updating your operating system, why it is critical to this work, and how you can go about it. Many of us experience things in childhood that our child brains believe means “there must be something wrong with me” or “I must be unloveable.” The child’s cognitive development back then was only able to process what happens to you as your fault or responsibility. If we do not “update our OS,” we can carry these harmful and inaccurate assumptions well into adulthood. Those tired old assumptions can keep tripping our amygdala’s danger signaling system, which can in turn create or amplify physical sensations to get our attention.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/4m/updating-your-operating-system
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Lara talks about people pleasing as an adaptive strategy learned in childhood that becomes less helpful in adulthood. She explains why this tendency is linked to chronic pain and other symptoms, and she offers several strategies for how to soften and move beyond your own people pleasing tendencies.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/yf/people-pleasing-and-chronic-symptoms
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Lara talks about how she conceptualizes ‘somatic tracking,’ a Pain Reprocessing Therapy method for calming physical symptoms, and then she leads a guided somatic tracking practice, followed by a live Q & A. (This talks is full of Lara’s characteristic mixed metaphors and strange analogies!)
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/4W/guided-somatic-tracking-practice
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Lara talks about the importance of developing an inner sense of safety, no matter what else is going on inside or outside of us. Many of us do not even relate sometimes to the word “safety,” and Lara talks about alternatives she and her clients often find even more powerful than the traditional “I am safe” messages.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/4Z/how-to-send-yourself-messages-of-safety
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People are often told not to do somatic tracking when their pain is high or symptoms are loud. Lara’s own personal experience is that is sometimes when she needs it most. So she invented what she calls Flare Tracking - somatic tracking for when you’re in a flare.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/4Y/flare-tracking-somatic-tracking-for-flare-ups
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Lara has had ample experience with her own excruciating chronic pain, and at 16 years old, she used what she called “going into the pain” as her way of handling it. Turns out, this adaptive strategy Lara intuited was not unlike somatic tracking. To this day, she finds it very helpful.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/5l/going-into-the-pain-a-somatic-tracking-practice
More Talks
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Pain Reprocessing Therapy
INTRO to PRT
Lara shares a recent twist to her own personal story with pain, and she teaches a few of her favorite pain reprocessing strategies.FINER Program, Spaulding Hospital (October 2024)
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Structural + Neuroplastic Pain
LIVING with STRUCTURAL and NEUROPLASTIC SYMPTOMS
Lara talks about the often taboo subject in the mindbody medicine and pain reprocessing world: that you can have structural and neuroplastic pain — and this work can help you too. It just looks different.On the Curable app, free to Curable users
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Key Skills for Pain Reprocessing
Lara shares some of her own story and describes the fundamental building blocks for becoming skilled in pain reprocessing.
FINER Program, Spaulding Hospital (March 2024)
“So inspiring. [Lara’s interview] really resonated with me. Particularly the whole notion of just putting aside the question of structural issues and just doing the work. It makes so much sense. Thank you so much” — @RickRowan
Interviews
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Dr. John Stracks Interviews Lara
HOPE for HEALING
Dec. 2021: Lara talks with Dr. Stracks about her own healing journey after finding Curable, where she is now an expert speaker and facilitator. -
KEY TAKEAWAYS from LARA:
Chronic pain is neither just structural or just neuroplastic. This false binary mistakenly directs people to either a medical intervention or a mindbody approach. Many of us require multiple treatment modalities for healing - and that’s OK.Reclaim your agency & self trust. Agency is about building self-trust, using your voice, and taking the next step that is right for you, no matter what else is happening.
Healing is a social process. Find people who ‘get' it’ and who can validate and encourage you. Chronic illness often creates social isolation. We can only heal those wounds by healing together.
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Dr. John Stracks 2nd Interview with Lara
BEING YOUR OWN ADVOCATE
Sept. 2023: Lara tells Dr. Stracks about her 17th surgery and discovering the power of using her own agency, speaking up, and being her own advocate.
“Divine timing places things in your life when you need them, and I definitely needed to hear this video today.”
— @christinajohnson7907
Publications
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The Listening Room
Birk, Lara. 2007. “The Listening Room.” Pp. 35-38 in Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies, edited by Sayantani Das Gupta and Marsha Hurst. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press.
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Erasure of the Credible Subject: An Autoethnographic Account of Chronic Pain
Birk, Lara B. 2013. “Erasure of the Credible Subject: An Autoethnographic Account of Chronic Pain.” Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies 13:5. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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Listening to Voices: Patient Experience and Mental Illness
Karp, David A. and Lara B. Birk. 2013. “Listening to Voices: Patient Experience and the Meaning of Mental Illness.” Pp 23-40 in Handbook of the Sociology of Mental Health, Second Edition, Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research, edited by Carol S. Aneshensel, Jo Phelan, and Alex Bierman. New York, NY: Springer.
