On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Laura Rathbone on the show to discuss Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Laura Rathbone is a Specialised Pain Coach and Advanced Physiotherapist that works exclusively with people experiencing persistent pain and conditions such as chronic back pain, pelvic pain, fibromyalgia and CRPS.  Much of her work is virtual as she coaches people all over the world in the service of their pain, but she also has a small clinic in the beautiful town of Weesp, just outside Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In this episode, we discuss: -What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)? -How the ACT framework compliments a biopsychosocial approach to patient care -The importance of promoting active over passive interventions for patients with persistent pain -Why clinicians should integrate psychologically informed physical therapy into their practice -And so much more!   Resources: Laura Rathbone Website Laura Rathbone Twitter Laura Rathbone Instagram Laura Rathbone Facebook Laura Rathbone LinkedIn The Association for Contextual Behavioural Science   A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode!  Learn more about Four Ways That Outpatient Therapy Providers Can Increase Patient Engagement in 2020!   For more information on Laura: Laura Rathbone is a Specialised Pain Coach and Advanced Physiotherapist that works exclusively with people experiencing persistent pain and conditions such as chronic back pain, pelvic pain, fibromyalgia and CRPS.  Much of her work is virtual as she coaches people all over the world in the service of their pain, but she also has a small clinic in the beautiful town of Weesp, just outside Amsterdam, the Netherlands.   She understands the need to see people from a 'whole-person' perspective and integrates modern, evidence-based physiotherapeutic and psychologically-informed approaches.   Laura is a UK chartered Physiotherapist and has a Masters Degree in Advanced Neuromusculoskeletal Physiotherapy from Kings' College London.  She is part of the Le Pub Scientifique team which organise regular live learning sessions exploring the science of pain and produces a small podcast called “Philosophers chatting with Clinicians”.  She runs her own courses on ACT and mentos clinicians regularly. Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy (00:01): Hi, Laura, welcome to the podcast. I'm very excited to have you here and today we're going to be talking about ACT. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. Laura Rathbone (00:12): Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited too. I like talking about something. Karen Litzy (00:17): All right. So now let's talk about ACT first, two questions. What is ACT and how did your interest in ACT come about? Laura Rathbone (00:32): So ACT stands for acceptance and commitment therapy. I suppose, you know, sort of efficiently, the way we talk about it is that it's a third wave cognitive and behavioral therapy. So it's born out of the behavioral movement and it's a psych it's essentially, it's a psychology framework. It came out of the world of psychology. And the aim of it is to recognize that when we are experiencing, you know, difficult unpleasant and invasive stuff, there's often a lot of all the aspects to that experience that add to the struggle and add to the suffering. And what we're working with from an ACT perspective is often can we compassionately and you know, empathetically and appropriately work with some of that, all the stuff that comes with the struggle and comes with a difficult experience. And does that help us manage our present moment experience? Laura Rathbone (01:38): Does that help us reduce some of the suffering so that we can move forward with some of the realities that are in our lives? Like for example if you're experiencing pain, which is where I come into it, you know, in the absence of having a really good predictable, effective cure for things like persistent pain, things like fibromyalgia