In April 2026 I had the privilege of attending a two-day Masterclass in Mindbody Medicine with Dr Howard Schubiner, probably the leading medical practitioner working in this field today.

It took place in Manchester – a couple of hundred miles from my home – and was organised by two fantastic organisations in this field: SIRPA and Living Proof UK.

I’d booked my seat at this sell-out event several months earlier and decided to take the entire week off. That’s partly because driving my 7-year-old electric car that far involves two charge stops and takes the best part of a day, and partly because it gave me a rare opportunity to spend a few days visiting my oldest friend. But mainly it was so I could let everything I knew I’d learn be fully absorbed and not have to rush back to my desk.

There is so much I could say about those two days, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it over time, but first I have to say that Dr Schubiner is an absolute legend!

An American physician, he has spent decades building a serious research base for mind-body medicine from within mainstream medicine. He’s published over 100 papers and books, holds a clinical professorship at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and is the founding director of the Mind Body Medicine Center at Ascension Providence Hospital in Michigan. Unlike Dr John Sarno, the physician who inspired him and whose work was largely dismissed by mainstream medicine, Dr Schubiner is not on the fringes of his profession – rather, he is making it impossible for his colleagues to ignore this field.

Not just an expert in the field

He is also a fantastic speaker – and a warm and approachable human being. He held the floor for two days straight with a mix of scientific research, case studies, practical guidance and self-deprecating humour that kept the audience hanging on his every word, and he still managed to join us all in the pub afterwards (where I had the privilege of buying him a pint!).

The audience of upwards of 150 people was drawn from across the health and wellbeing sectors: doctors, physiotherapists, psychotherapists, counsellors, complementary therapists – and a handful of hypnotherapists. What united us wasn’t a shared professional background – it was a shared understanding that the mind and body are not separate systems, and that treating them as if they are is no longer working.

We were there to talk about neuroplastic symptoms: pain and other chronic symptoms that are generated and maintained by the brain, in response to a perceived threat, rather than by structural damage in the body. The brain has learned these symptoms. And because the brain learned them, the brain can unlearn them.

Many of us – myself included – had our own lived experience of recovering from chronic illness through this approach and to find ourselves surrounded by people who not only “get it” but are actively working to help others in the same way was incredibly nourishing.

My biggest takeaway – and why it was not what I expected

I went fully expecting to come home with new groundbreaking ideas I could weave into my existing practice. But the biggest thing I learned was that all the techniques and approaches he shared were fundamentally familiar to me.

What clinicians trained in structural medicine experience as a paradigm shift – the idea that thoughts, emotions, stress and learned neural patterns can produce and sustain real physical symptoms – is the foundation of how I have always worked. Not because I myself was ahead of the curve, but because the hypnotherapy training I undertook went deep. It was built on an understanding of the mind-body connection that mainstream medicine is only now catching up with. And this wasn’t just my opinion, it’s one that was shared by the other hypnotherapists I met there.

If you’re living with chronic pain, persistent fatigue or other symptoms that medicine has investigated, treated and failed to resolve, I want you to know that this field exists, that its evidence base is serious and growing, and that some practitioners have been working this way for considerably longer than the mainstream yet acknowledges.

The brain’s capacity to learn pain is also its capacity to unlearn it.

This time it’s personal

I’m going to end with a fascinating experience of my own, a few days after the masterclass. I’d had a wonderful week, not only professionally but also personally, having spent some real quality time with my oldest friend and her husband – and upped the ante in my own personal health journey too (more to come on that in due course). I was perhaps a little anxious about the long drive home on Sunday, maybe a bit concerned that I would start a very busy week already tired, but at the same time looking forward to sleeping in my own bed again.

On Saturday I began noticing a little discomfort in my right index finger, near but separate from a small but noticeable arthritis bump that appeared a few years ago. As I began my long drive home the pain became more intense, until I found myself holding it away from the steering wheel as I drove, because the slightest touch was excruciating. 

I began wondering what I’d done to it. Some months earlier I’d injured a different finger in the gym which took weeks to heal, and the sensation was a little similar, but I knew I hadn’t done anything to cause that kind of damage. 

That’s when the thought appeared: maybe it’s neuroplastic pain. 

Just asking the question can make a difference

The moment I opened up to that possibility I felt my anxiety ease. Instead of worrying about it, I chose to enjoy the drive home, promising my finger that if it was still hurting the next day I’d find out what was going on. I arrived home in plenty of time for a video catch-up with a group of people I’m doing some self-development work with at the moment. I didn’t mention my finger, focusing instead on other aspects of my week and paying full attention to what the other members of the group were sharing.

It was only when I went to bed an hour or so after the call had ended that I realised my finger had stopped hurting. The intense pain that had felt like a potentially serious injury had totally disappeared. As I write this it’s 48 hours later, and there has been no sign of it returning.

I’m not entirely sure what my finger was trying to tell me, but I assume there was some anxiety around my returning home. The combination of giving myself space on my return journey and engaging with other people seems to have been enough to switch off the alarm signal. 

Or perhaps my body was just playing with me, making sure I really had been paying attention to everything we’d been talking about in Manchester!

To find out more about Dr Schubiner’s work, visit www.unlearnyourpain.com or to book an exloratory chat with me to see how I can help you turn off your own ‘alarm signal’ , click here.