Talks | Interviews | Publications
Talks
Interviews
2025 interview with Christie Uipi on Like Mind Like Body (airing on Oct. 30!)
Publications
Talks for Curable
*Free to Curable Classes members or via a free 6 week trial to Curable.
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Lara will talk about how those of us with strong structural components to our symptoms can still benefit greatly from this work. It just looks different for us - but that’s not a bad thing. She will give us a new paradigm for redefining healing that gives you your power back. You’re not waiting on or dependent upon anyone or anything else. You build this place of solace inside you. It is actually a superpower you will be glad you have.
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Lara shares why the concept of “safety” can actually be difficult or even triggering to some people and how to create a sense of inner safety instead.
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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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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 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 connects the dots as to why having a harsh inner critic can affect physical symptoms and how to develop an ‘inner friend’ voice to counterbalance the voice of the critic.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/10y/from-self-criticism-to-self-kindness-
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Lara talks about the kinds of negative thought spirals we very naturally can get stuck in when in a symptom flare and how to soften it by reclaiming your agency.
https://www.curablehealth.com/clara/classes/10d/combatting-flare-triggered-negative-thinking
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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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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
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Lara shares her own journey through 34 years of chronic pain after a muscular disorder turned into medical emergency and then went sideways. 17 surgeries later, Lara is left with structural complications (nerve damage and a knee contracture) that of course are interwoven with neuroplastic elements. She speaks to the need to redefine healing and offer new narratives for people with structural issues — and how this offers Lara and her clients a different kind of hope.
Talks at Local Hospitals
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Pain Reprocessing Therapy
INTRO to PRT
I share a recent twist to my own personal story with pain and teach a few favorite pain reprocessing strategies.FINER Program, Spaulding Hospital (October 2024)
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Structural + Neuroplastic Pain
LIVING with STRUCTURAL and NEUROPLASTIC SYMPTOMS
I talk 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
I share some of my own story and describe 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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My interview with Dr. John Stracks
HOPE for HEALING
Dec. 2021: I talk with Dr. Stracks about my own healing journey after finding Curable, where I am now a teacher, speaker, and facilitator. -
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Chronic pain is neither all structural or all 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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Another interview with Dr. John Stracks
BEING YOUR OWN ADVOCATE
Sept. 2023: I talk with Dr. Stracks about my 17th surgery and discovering the power of using my own agency, speaking up, and being my 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.
