Interactive Model of Pain, Touch, and Interoceptive Modulation
I’ve been working on a new Interactive Model of Pain, Touch, and Interoceptive Modulation designed to help make the complexity of pain—and the possible effects of manual therapy—a little easier to see and explore.
Rather than treating pain as a simple readout of tissue damage, the model brings together nociceptive, neuropathic, and nociplastic processes; peripheral and central sensitization; ascending sensory pathways; descending modulation; implicit safety; expectations and conditioning; touch; movement; and other session inputs.
It can also be used to explore an important question for manual therapy: What might actually be happening when different interventions help? Check out the DEMO below.
The model does not assign unique mechanisms to named modalities. Instead, it breaks sessions into underlying inputs and processes—such as ordinary and affective touch, intensity, movement, nociceptor unloading, agency, context, and input fit—and shows how many different approaches may act through overlapping mechanisms.
You can change client conditions, explore individual inputs, build modeled sessions, compare scenarios, and follow guided lessons through the pathways. The Evidence & Assumptions section also makes explicit what the model is based on, what remains uncertain, and what the model is not claiming.
I’m releasing this as a public preview through August 31 so that anyone interested in pain and manual therapy can explore it and talk with me about it.
This is still a developing model. If you find something confusing, disagree with a modeling decision, or think something important is missing, I’d particularly like to hear about it.
The model is also part of a broader question I’ve been exploring: what should massage therapists be taught about how massage works—and which traditional explanations should we stop teaching as established fact? I explore that question in What Massage Therapy Education Should Stop Teaching.
Click on the button below to explore the model yourself.
Discover how the intricate relationship between the brain, pain, and body shapes our experience of posture. This on-demand course unpacks neuroscientific insights and connects it to practical bodywork techniques, empowering professionals and individuals to approach pain and posture with confidence and clarity.
Author
Dr. Mark Olson, Ph.D., LMT, is a neuroscientist, educator, and massage therapist whose work bridges neuroscience, bodywork, trauma-informed practice, and human experience. He holds an M.A. in Education and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois, with training in cognitive and behavioral neuropsychology and neuroanatomy. He is Education Director at the Sarasota School of Massage Therapy and chair of the advisory committee for the Boulder School of Massage Therapy. His work focuses on pain science, the neuroscience of massage and bodywork, trauma-informed care, and bringing contemporary science into massage therapy education. He is also a NARM® practitioner and develops continuing-education courses for massage therapists and other health professionals through Dr-Olson.com.
