Your Body Is Not the Enemy: Sarah Johnson on Retraining Chronic Pain

Most chronic pain patients have been told two things: that their pain is real, and that they need to learn to live with it. Sarah Johnson, LAc agrees with the first part. The second part is where she diverges from nearly everything conventional pain management has to offer.

From her practice at Sarah Johnson Acupuncture in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, Johnson treats patients whose chronic pain has outlasted every explanation they've been given. The MRI was clean. The physical therapy helped for a while. The medications dulled the edge but never resolved the source. What Johnson offers is a different framework entirely — one that doesn't start with the site of pain, but with the system that generates it.

Listening to the Whole Story, Not Just the Symptom

The first appointment with Johnson doesn't look like a typical intake. There's no rush to localize the complaint, no immediate reaching for a needle. Instead, there's a conversation — and it covers far more territory than most patients expect.

“My approach begins with listening and really understanding the patient's story, not just their symptoms. In Chinese medicine, pain is not isolated, it reflects patterns of imbalance. I assess the entire system, including sleep, digestion, stress, menstrual health, and emotional state to identify root cause of the pain. Treatment combines acupuncture, lifestyle guidance, and additional Chinese medicine techniques to restore flow and regulation.”

Sarah Johnson, LAc

Sarah Johnson Acupuncture · White Bear Lake, MN

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Sleep. Digestion. Stress. Menstrual health. Emotional state. In most pain clinics, these aren't considered relevant to a sore shoulder or an aching back. In Chinese medicine, they're inseparable from it. The idea that pain reflects patterns of imbalance — not just tissue damage — is foundational to how acupuncturists assess and treat. And it turns out modern pain science is arriving at a remarkably similar conclusion.

A landmark individual patient data meta-analysis covering nearly 21,000 patients across 39 randomized trials found that acupuncture was superior to both sham acupuncture and no-acupuncture controls for chronic musculoskeletal pain, osteoarthritis, chronic headache, and shoulder pain — all with statistical significance.^[1] But the finding that may matter most to Johnson's patients isn't the pain reduction itself. It's that the effects persisted over time — suggesting acupuncture does something to the system, not just the symptom.

Pain as Protection, Not Damage

Here's where Johnson's thinking gets genuinely distinctive. Many chronic pain practitioners focus on what's broken. Johnson focuses on what's overprotecting.

“Chronic pain is not just 'in the body' or 'in the mind', it's in the relationship between the nervous system, tissues, and the lived experience. It doesn't always mean something is damaged. Often, the body is stuck in a loop of protection. When people understand that pain can be retrained, not just endured, it opens the door to real change.”

Sarah Johnson, LAc

Sarah Johnson Acupuncture · White Bear Lake, MN

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That phrase — pain can be retrained — sounds radical until you look at the neuroscience. The field of pain neuroscience education (PNE) has produced compelling evidence that when patients understand how their nervous system generates and amplifies pain signals, their experience of pain changes. A systematic review of randomized controlled trials found that PNE produces meaningful reductions in pain, disability, and fear-avoidance beliefs in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain.^[3] Understanding the mechanism doesn't just provide intellectual comfort. It actually changes the signal.

Johnson is describing the same phenomenon through a different lens. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, chronic stress and unresolved pain create what's called qi stagnation — a state where the body's vital energy stops flowing freely. From a Western perspective, this maps closely to what pain researchers call central sensitization: a state where the nervous system amplifies pain signals, lowering thresholds until even normal sensory input — touch, movement, temperature — gets interpreted as threatening. The body isn't damaged. It's stuck in high alert.

This is why conventional approaches that focus exclusively on the pain site often fail. If the problem is a sensitized nervous system, treating the knee or the back or the shoulder addresses the wrong level of the system. What Johnson does — assessing sleep, digestion, emotional state, stress load — makes clinical sense because all of those inputs modulate how the nervous system processes pain.

The Bridge Between Ancient Framework and Modern Science

What makes Johnson unusual isn't just her clinical skill — it's her ability to hold two frameworks simultaneously without forcing either one to be the whole story.

“One of the most important things I emphasize to patients is that your body is not working against you, it's trying to protect you. Chronic pain can be the result of the body becoming very good at a survival response that is no longer needed. From a TCM perspective, this may look like prolonged stagnation or deficiency, but from a conventional lens, it is often the nervous system becoming overprotective and overreacting to normal signals.”

Sarah Johnson, LAc

Sarah Johnson Acupuncture · White Bear Lake, MN

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That bridging is more than philosophical. It's clinically productive. When Johnson tells a patient that their body isn't broken — it's protecting — she's doing exactly what pain neuroscience research says works: reframing the threat. And when she places needles along meridians that TCM associates with the liver (stress regulation), the spleen (digestion and energy), or the kidney (foundational vitality), she's simultaneously engaging the neuromodulatory mechanisms that modern research has documented in acupuncture: endorphin release, vagal nerve activation, reduction of inflammatory cytokines, and downregulation of the sympathetic nervous system.^[1]

Patients often notice this convergence before they can name it. They come in for back pain and leave sleeping better. They come in for headaches and notice their digestion settles. They come in anxious and leave calm. These aren't side effects. They're evidence that the treatment is reaching the system, not just the symptom — exactly as Johnson describes.

Johnson also emphasizes education as care. When a patient understands that their pain isn't evidence of ongoing damage — that it's a learned nervous system pattern that can be unlearned — something shifts. The fear drops. The guarding softens. Movement becomes possible again. Research confirms this: reducing pain-related fear through education produces measurable reductions in both disability and pain intensity, independent of any physical intervention.^[3]

Healing as Adaptability, Not the Absence of Pain

“Ultimately, healing chronic pain is not about chasing zero pain at all times. It's about restoring adaptability, improving quality of life, and helping patients feel at home in their bodies again.”

Sarah Johnson, LAc

Sarah Johnson Acupuncture · White Bear Lake, MN

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That reframe — from pain elimination to adaptability — is one of the most important things a chronic pain patient can hear. The promise of zero pain is a trap. It keeps people chasing interventions, escalating medications, avoiding movement, and organizing their entire lives around a sensation they've been told should be gone by now. Johnson offers something more honest and more sustainable: a body that responds to the world with appropriate signals instead of alarm bells. A nervous system that can tell the difference between threat and sensation. A life that isn't defined by avoidance.

Pairing acupuncture with movement, rest, stress modulation, and education creates what Johnson describes as lasting effects — not because any single intervention is magic, but because together they address the full architecture of chronic pain: the tissues, the nervous system, the beliefs, and the behaviors.

If you're living with chronic pain that hasn't responded to conventional treatment, the issue may not be what's broken. It may be what's overprotecting. The Holistic Health practitioner directory can help you find an acupuncturist or integrative practitioner who takes this systems-level approach — someone who'll listen to the whole story, not just the part that hurts.