In a culture where comfort is king, pain is often seen as the villain—something to be avoided, silenced, or eliminated as quickly as possible. But what if pain isn’t the problem? What if, instead, it’s a necessary teacher—a signal that invites us to explore, adapt, and evolve? When we shift our mindset from “eliminate pain” to “learn from pain,” we uncover a powerful path toward long-term function and physical longevity.
Pain as an Inevitable and Individual Experience
Pain is not only inevitable—it’s also highly relative. The same movement or posture can feel completely different to two people with identical injuries, and even within the same body, pain can appear under one context and vanish in another. This subjectivity reveals an important truth: pain is not always a reliable marker of damage or danger. More often, it's a sign that something in our system—be it structural, neurological, or behavioral—is asking for attention and adaptation.
To deny or suppress pain outright is to miss a valuable opportunity for learning. When we treat pain as feedback, rather than failure, we begin to build a deeper understanding of our bodies and how they function. That understanding is a cornerstone of both injury resilience and high-level performance over the long haul.
Redefining the Goal: From Pain-Free to Function-Full
Longevity is often confused with simply staying injury-free or pain-free, but that bar is far too low. The real goal is to retain and regain function across the widest possible range of physical contexts. That means being able to squat, hinge, carry, rotate, climb, sprint, and even sit or stand for long periods without compensations that accumulate into dysfunction.
And perhaps more importantly, it means gaining function in areas previously neglected. Most people are remarkably good at repeating the same movement patterns—the same lifts, the same workouts, the same daily postures. But functional longevity requires variability. The body thrives on novel input, and the nervous system is nourished by movement diversity.
Pain often shows up when function has been ignored or overly narrowed. That hip twinge during a hike, or that shoulder ache during your fifth day of bench pressing, isn’t always a sign of breakdown. Sometimes, it’s your body letting you know it’s time to expand your movement vocabulary.
The Beginner’s Mind: A Gateway to Progress
The concept of shoshin, or "beginner’s mind," is rooted in Zen Buddhism and emphasizes approaching experiences with openness, curiosity, and lack of preconceptions. In the context of movement and rehabilitation, beginner’s mind is incredibly potent.
When we’re new to something—be it a skill, a sport, or even a recovery process—our rate of improvement tends to be high. Progress comes quickly not because we're weak or broken, but because there's so much untapped potential. In contrast, when we become specialists in certain movements, we often plateau, and even regress. We get comfortable. We stop exploring.
Pain can be a forced reintroduction to beginner’s mind. It asks us to step back, reassess our assumptions, and start fresh. This might mean returning to foundational movements with new awareness, changing how we breathe, altering our loading strategies, or exploring entirely unfamiliar movement patterns. Pain slows us down, which—ironically—is often the exact stimulus needed to progress in a sustainable way.
Function Follows Awareness
To grow functional capacity, you first have to perceive what’s missing. And often, what’s missing isn’t strength or endurance—it’s attention. Awareness of how your feet contact the ground, how your ribs move when you breathe, how your pelvis shifts when you rotate—these small details create the foundation for improved movement efficiency and injury resilience.
Pain often heightens this awareness. It breaks our autopilot. It makes us hyper-attuned to areas we previously ignored. If you’ve ever had a nagging back injury, you know exactly how many steps it takes to walk to the fridge. You know the angle of your car seat. You know exactly when your posture starts to unravel. While this can be frustrating, it also provides an incredible window into refinement.
With guidance and patience, pain-induced awareness can be redirected from avoidance to exploration. It can lead to stronger, more coordinated, and more adaptable function than ever before.
Function Is a Skill, Not a Guarantee
It’s easy to assume that function is a default setting. But like any skill, function must be practiced, challenged, and redefined over time. In youth, movement variety is built into life. Kids run, jump, fall, roll, climb, and rest in all sorts of positions. As adults, we often trade that variability for convenience and specialization.
This isn’t necessarily bad—but it comes at a cost. Without regular functional challenges, we lose physical options. We lose robustness. And we become more vulnerable to injury when we inevitably step outside our usual movement patterns.
A functional longevity approach demands that we treat function as a practice—one that doesn’t end when pain resolves or when a fitness goal is achieved. Instead, we continue exploring, adjusting, and refining. We seek out new skills. We revisit old ones. We intentionally expose ourselves to unfamiliar movement contexts—often ones we’re not good at—and in doing so, we slow the aging process and extend the lifespan of our physical capability.
The Value of Function vs. the Cost of Discomfort
At some point, every person who values movement will face a difficult decision: Is the function I desire worth the discomfort it provokes? Whether that’s playing pickup basketball with an achy knee, hiking steep terrain with stiff hips, or getting back into jiu-jitsu despite a cranky shoulder—pain invites a choice.
You can avoid the activity. Or you can adapt your body to better tolerate and express that function. There’s no universally right answer. But the longer you live, the more frequently this question will arise. And the more you avoid, the smaller your world becomes.
We have to ask ourselves: How valuable is this function to me? What am I willing to do to keep it? For example, if basketball lights you up and connects you to community, health, and joy, giving it up because of pain may be far more damaging than committing to a process that makes your knees more resilient. That process may require strength training, mobility work, movement re-education, and a lot of time outside your comfort zone—but it’s an investment in keeping something deeply meaningful.
Function isn't free. It costs effort, adaptability, and often a temporary increase in discomfort. But avoidance has a cost too—one that may only be felt once too many of your favorite activities are already off the table. We should all decide what’s worth keeping, and then build our bodies to support that.
From Fixing to Evolving
It’s tempting to approach pain or dysfunction with a “fix it and forget it” mindset. But what if we saw those moments not as problems to solve, but invitations to grow?
Pain teaches us that function is never static. It’s constantly in flux—shaped by our choices, our environments, our stresses, and our habits. By reframing pain as part of a larger process of adaptation, we empower ourselves to stay in the game longer, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.
This is the essence of a movement practice grounded in longevity: not chasing perfection, but embracing imperfection as a catalyst for refinement. Not eliminating discomfort, but learning from it. Not repeating the same comfortable motions, but constantly seeking new edges of capacity and awareness.
Closing Thoughts
Pain doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means there’s something to be discovered.
Longevity isn’t just about extending time—it’s about expanding function. The more functional options you have, the more you can express your physical self. The more curious and engaged you are with your movement, the more durable that self becomes.
So whether you’re rehabbing an injury, exploring a new sport, or simply trying to age well, remember: improvement begins where familiarity ends. Start again. Start often. Stay curious. That’s the path to a long and functional life.