Our Body Can Heal: What Changes Is Not Always the Scan
By Master Yang Yang, PhD
Dear friends,
When we say the body can heal, most of us picture the tissue changing back. The disc returns to its place. The narrowing opens. The scan looks different. We wait for that picture, and when it does not arrive we conclude that nothing is happening.
I want to offer a different picture, and I want to build it out of evidence rather than hope.
What our trial showed after we stopped teaching
In 2022 we ran a randomized controlled trial with 350 adults living with low back pain, in partnership with colleagues at Weill Cornell Medicine, Mayo Clinic, New York Medical College, and others. Half received our twelve week online program of tai chi, qigong, and meditation, twice a week, sixty minutes a class, alongside their usual care. Half continued with usual care alone. Participants ranged in age from 21 to 92. The results were published in the North American Spine Society Journal.
The program group improved more than the usual care group in pain related disability, pain intensity, sleep quality, and quality of life. That is what we hoped for, and it is the headline.
But the finding I keep returning to is a quieter one. The program ran twelve weeks and then it ended. We measured again four weeks later, with no classes in between, and the group was still improving. Less disability. Less pain. Better sleep. Better quality of life. Every measure had continued to move in the right direction during a month when we taught nothing at all.
I was not in the room. Their bodies were doing the work.
Healing is not the same as repair
Here is where the ordinary picture of healing misleads us. Many of the findings that alarm us on a scan, disc degeneration, bulges, narrowing, are extremely common in people who have no pain at all, and they become more common with every decade of life. A finding on an image is not a verdict.
A longtime member of our Saturday class wrote to me recently. She had not been able to stand for more than ten minutes. Now she jogs, and goes to dances that last three hours, and she is 74. She wrote:
"The pain is gone. What has not changed is my spine. I probably still have whatever degenerative processes I started with, herniated discs and narrowing of the openings where the nerves leave my spine. It feels like a miracle, because the adjustments I have made do not seem large. I did not cure my spine. I learned to live in harmony with my bones, joints, muscles, tendons, and nerves, and the pain went away."
Nothing in her spine was repaired. The pain left anyway. That is not a lesser kind of healing. In my experience it is the more durable kind, because it does not depend on anything being fixed and it does not expire when a treatment ends.
What the body needs from us
If the body is doing the healing, our practice is not the cure. Our practice is the set of conditions under which healing becomes possible. Four of them matter most.
Attention. Not attention to pain, which most of us already have too much of, but attention to tension. Where is the holding, right now, in the spine, the hips, the shoulders, the jaw? Noticing tension when you are not in pain is the most valuable skill in the whole program. It is what lets you make a small correction before it becomes a large problem.
Slow movement, in every direction. Forward, back, side to side, with rotation and without. Slowness is not weakness. Moving slowly is how you find the places you have been avoiding, and avoidance is often what turns a sore back into a stiff one.
Engaging the body while being gentle with it. This is the balance that takes the longest to learn. Doing nothing does not build capacity. Forcing rebuilds the guarding you are trying to release. In our tradition we say no pain, more gain. Work to the edge of comfort, then relax, then return.
Patience, expressed as consistency. Ten minutes daily will do more than two hours on Sunday. Dripping water penetrates stone.
What this means for Spine 7
This is the idea our spine program is built on, and it is why the program has changed six times since 2020. Each version taught us something. Spine 7 keeps the structure you know and improves the teaching: each practice explained more clearly, and tied more closely to the everyday things you want back, standing at the sink, walking to the store, sleeping through the night. We begin on Saturday, September 12.
One last word for anyone who is discouraged. If you have been told that your spine is worn out, that finding may be true and it may also be beside the point. The body has remarkable systems for adaptation and repair. They are slow, they are quiet, and they do not need your permission. What they need is the right conditions, offered patiently, for long enough.
With warm regards,
Master Yang Yang, PhD
Yang Y, McCluskey S, Bydon M, et al. A tai chi and qigong mind-body program for low back pain: a virtually delivered randomized control trial. North American Spine Society Journal. 2024;20:100557. Open access.
This article describes general principles of practice and is not medical advice. If back pain is accompanied by loss of bladder or bowel control, numbness in the groin, progressive leg weakness, fever, unexplained weight loss, or follows a significant injury, seek medical care promptly.
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If you would like to explore these principles in a guided setting, you are welcome to join our weekly classes or in-person training programs.
Explore our Live Online Saturday Spine Class (Fundamentals) → https://waqi.health/chronic-pain-relief
© Master Yang Yang, PhD, September 7, 2026
