BASE CAMP

Welcome to BASE CAMP: The 4 month group program for complex pain patients to learn exactly how to decrease pain and all the other weird symptoms you’ve been struggling with so you can step-by-step dramatically increase your quality of life.

Are you stuck in a viscous cycle struggling with poor nutrition, crappy sleep and exhaustion, brain fog, and out of control stress or autonomic dysfunction, leaving you with intense flares/crashes, cognitive issues, poor recovery, depression/anxiety, digestive issues, and unable to exercise due to increasingly widespread pain?

Guess what…What you do during the day has a huge effect on what happens at night and the pain levels and additional symptoms that vicious cycle creates as it compounds and increasingly amplifies symptoms over time.

Systematically addressing and linking each of the primary symptom buckets of sensitization to the appropriate conservative treatments/interventions we as patients impact, is how we turn the dial WAY DOWN on their intensity so we can get to a place of better sleep, energy, and mental clarity, less grief and angst, a more regulated nervous system, more movement, and most importantly, less pain.

 

Program Cost:

  • Cost: Base Camp is just 4 payments of $197/mo for the general public, compared to $2600 for my 3 month 1:1 Mentorship program

  • This is less than 1/4 the cost of the Mentorship

  • I run this just once a year, so please don’t miss out and have to wait another year to make positive changes.

Dates: (See further down for deliverables and additional details around curriculum)

  • Registration for the public closes Monday, May 5th, 2025

  • The program runs from May 6 to August 12, 2025

  • Calls will be every other Tuesdays at 4pm PST/7pm EST.

    • Dates: May 6, May 20, June 3, June 17, July 1, July 15, July 29, August 12

 

I created Base Camp because I got tired of seeing so many patients with unmanageable pain for whom the central sensitization component was not only never well explained, but definitely not treated. Because well, we don’t really in the traditional medical system. There’s not a clear, defined way to identify symptoms and link them to exactly what patients can do about them. It is the aspect of complex chronic pain that is most neglected, yet has the potential to have the biggest impact on symptoms since central sensitization is THE grand-daddy amplifier of pain.

It being in your head or there being nothing you can do about it simply isn’t true.

Improving inputs like ones sleep, fueling, stress and energy management etc. is always at the top of the priority list when I work with people 1:1 because everything else being layered in sustainably depends on it. It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs - you can’t get to the higher levels of purpose and fulfillment if you’re stuck in survival and haven’t created enough consistent capacity to layer more things in you love with less blowback. If your body has no sense of safety and support, and all the alarm bells are screaming at you with the volume turned up to 20, you must address that first.

Which is actually, great news!

Because if you’ve tried everything when it comes to meds and treatments and nothing is helping, but you haven’t addressed the most impactful things for you that affect the central sensitization piece - that means there is definitely room for improvement.

This program is called Base Camp because it is where you must start to unlock everything else that is possible despite complex pain. Here, you learn all the critical skills from someone who actually understands the barriers, with other unique warriors just like you who have similar weird stories. Why? Because there are patterns and reasons we all develop similar symptom clusters and diagnosis…

WELCOME TO BASE CAMP.

Ready to change your life with complex pain?

- Jess C. Testimonial

“I am super proud of myself but I can’t take too much credit. You have gone through this the hard way and you’ve shared your tips to help us avoid some of those things. Obviously everyones story is different, but you’ve nailed it. After this trip my wheels are turning to become more of a traveler. It was an adventure, I love it. Tired, yes. But the recovery was amazing…I can’t thank you enough for sharing your tips and doing that because it literally made the trip a success. First time ever on an airplane…but I loved it! You are a blessing in this life. So thankful for you and the community. This trip really opened up a whole other isle to my life. Still hurt, so tired at nighttime, sweating so much just from the temperature/climate but knowing what’s going on with my body makes it so much better. I can de-regulate so much better and manage flares as needed by putting some music on and doing some deep breathing and it worked its way out. I was able to rest and watch the sunset and I just had happy tears. I’m living life again and I owe so much to you my friend, so much.”

“Addressing the central sensitization/amplification component that accompanies chronic diseases like Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, hEDS/EDS (hypermobility spectrum disorders), Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), POTS, GI disorders, or other forms of dysautonomias etc. are how we shed the layers that are increasing underlying symptoms most.”

— Justine Feitelson

My MARSMethod is specifically designed to address all the biggest dial movers we affect as patients, that most affect amplified pain and symptoms from allostatic load accruing, making symptoms more and more intrusive.

 

Many of us are so overwhelmed surviving, we don't recognize the impact of what we do during the day having a dramatically negative effect on what our body does at night. That’s why getting a handle on your sleep wake cycle, nutrition, energy management, pacing, wind-down and other skills around recovery and fueling sustainability can so significantly

affect your resilience - which is essentially the amount of space your nervous system has to take on more stress and absorb it without overflow i.e. flaring. This is where the stress bucket analogy comes in! When your nervous system is maxed out without the recovery to support any additional onslaught, it can’t cope and it results in additional flares and crashes.

 

BASE CAMP PROGRAM CURRICULUM

Call 1: What Is Pain?

We’ll define the different types of pain, give simple metaphors to explain it, discuss how pain from neurological disease or injuries differs, discuss how you can go from acute injury to healed to chronic to sensitized, how you go from chronic illness to sensitization, what predisposes you to sensitization, and more.

Call 2: Sleep Disturbance

Identify and improve the behaviors and environmental factors that are making it much harder to fall asleep and feel recovered. You'll learn how to anchor your sleep/wake cycle, wind down, use circadian rhythm and other strategies to make falling and staying asleep easier so you can have more energy and capacity.

Call 3: Fatigue

We’ll go through critical nutritional habits that affect energy and metabolic symptoms. Food is energy. This may sound obvious, but it’s not when you’re in survival mode. Lacking protein, being severely undernourished, and having poor meal quality/timing massively exacerbate fatigue.

Call 4: Cognitive Impairment

Pacing takes planning, and routine is the antidote to stress. As soon as you recognize how to create more balance, recovery will improve. You’ll learn various strategies to be able to stay more organized mentally to combat brain fog, progress physical or cognitive activities, and better set goals so you can increase energy.

Call 5: Mood & Stress

Struggling with stress, anxiety, grief/depression etc? Newsflash - with chronic pain, this makes you normal. But stress, like anxiety, fuels the sympathetic state. However avoiding stress isn’t realistic. Instead, we must understand how it impacts us and learn tools to better manage it with breathing and mindfulness.

Call 6: Dysautonomia

Whether dysautonomia, orthostatic intolerance, POTS, GIT, bladder issues etc. issues with our autonomic nervous system can wreak havoc on us. These varying forms of nervous system dysfunction can affect way more than HR or BP and require different interventions depending on what systems are impacted.

Call 7: Sensory Sensitization

Learn different ways to impact widespread pain and work around various sensory sensitizations like touch, temperature, sound etc. We’ll expand on the 3D’s: downregulate, de-stim and distract so you can improve your tolerance to various stimuli and decrease how trigger happy your nervous system has become.

Call 8: Motor/Movement

The other application of pacing and sensory awareness! Different forms of movement are like different languages to our nervous system. Learning how to use movement sustainably without creating more pain is one of the most powerful tool against chronic pain, but one of the most challenging without the appropriate strategies.

 

THE PROMISE

You actually don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to dramatically decrease symptoms with complex illness. What you need is to understand what the heck is going on with your body, what are the biggest dial movers for you, and how do you most efficiently and effectively turn those dials given your capacity - taught by someone who has lived this themselves and gets why it’s so hard to actually change behaviors and has developed strategies that take all those challenges into account so you can actually have success.

What is the guaranteed outcome? You will master my MARSMethod and integrate👇

  • Knowledge around types of pain and complicating factors: We want to start with what is pain and amplification to begin with. How do the different types of pain work, how does it get so bad, and what you can do about it depending on the type and co-existing factors. How do you approach things earlier in the disease course and with better fitness levels/training age vs more progressed disease states and a more de-conditioned situation. What should your priorities and focus be and what strategies can you integrate to be more successful yourself, vs what do you need additional help with now better understanding your amplifiers, contributors, causes etc.

  • Sleep hygiene and circadian rhythm: We deal with the physical and mental challenges around sleep. You will be able to fall asleep easier, anchor your sleep cycle better, and nap less. We’ll audit daytime behaviors that are inadvertently making it tougher to fall asleep and improve your environment, so you get better sleep quality, wake up with more energy and have less dips during the day.

  • Meal quality and timing: We all know we need to eat better, but how to get healthier food easier and more consistently isn’t easy with these symptoms. You’ll gain strategies to make sourcing easier and improve systems around prep with limited energy or standing capacity, taking specific common challenges/needs into account like protein with hEDS, gastroparesis, nausea, lack of appetite, food aversions and intolerances.

  • Energy management and pacing: The daytime side of recovery. You’ll learn how to better manage allostatic load, progress activities properly, organize yourself more sustainably, and know when to ‘push’ and when to ‘listen to your body’, integrating pressure release valves and built in flexibility that allow you to still achieve goals. As I semi-joke, “it’s not about doing less, it’s about being less stupid”. How you organize yourself matters. As you gain capacity with increased recovery and lower stress, you earn more and more freedom.

  • Mood and stress: How you can better manage your nervous system and down-regulate on demand with various breathing and mindfulness we progress so you can lower your sympathetic, get stress out of our bodies better, separate from stressful thoughts easier and decrease anxiety as a global sensitizer. Your perspective with pain matters. This is a safe space to talk about the challenges it creates with connection and other things we love but struggle to sustain, and how to work around that better so depression has less of an impact too.

  • Widespread pain and sensory sensitization: Do you feel like your CRPS or sensitive areas are ‘spreading’? Have you been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and then basically told to get the eff out with no solutions? This happens as our nervous system amplifies pain further. To decrease this, you have to learn how to downregulate, distract and desensitize and re-wise your brain in appropriate ways so you can change the way your nervous system is assessing threat. Whether that’s showing up in touch through allodynia, temperature through things like Reynaud’s, noise/sound like tinnitus, there are ways to improve and manage this better that I will teach you in this course.

  • Sustainable movement: You’ll learn how to plan and execute movement more sustainably with less flares so you can exercise more consistently with less blowback. This will allow you to overcome intense pain, neuropathy, and the resulting weakness and compensations that develop from low or no exercise due to pain. In Complex Pain Progressions we dive deeper into neuromuscular inhibition and sensory issues that develop, leaving with strategies to improve brain mapping in different areas, joint differentiation, and the weakness/spasm cycle that develops. To begin with though, it’s a matter of pacing and organizing.

    I’ve worked with over 100 complex pain patients just like you who had tried everything gone through this curriculum to have incredible success, leaving forever changed with how they look at and can manage chronic conditions. You will not leave this program the way you came in. That I can guarantee.

 

Ready to take advantage of this one of a kind program?

 

Program Structure:

  • This is a 4 month group program. There will be about a 2 hour call every other week where we talk about how things went last time, I teach on the new subject, and then open up the rest of the call for questions/conversation. It’s important to give yourself time to practice the strategies and techniques learned before layering more in. Allowing yourself to acclimate sustainably is behavior change 101 and ensures you get lasting change from this program.

  • Besides the education component, the live calls are an opportunity for you to not only learn from me, but learn from other participants and get to know each other as you work through implementation together.

  • Even though it’s a group program, the application is still individualized. This is a safe space to make authentic, meaningful connections and meet other awesome warriors with similar goals and challenges.

  • All calls will be recorded and be sent out afterward, which you have lifetime access too.

Resources/HW:

  • Each week you’ll get resources/handouts that covers information I’ll be sharing on the call, and serve as resource guides for the types of changes we want to make over the course of our time together. You’ll then leave the 4 month program having a ‘‘Base Camp bible so you can continue to refer to the education and cultivate your awareness around these habits long into the future.

  • Slides will be provided so I can make your learning process as easy as possible.

What Else You Get:

  • Private group/community to share wins and challenges, support one another and get help from others working on the exact things you are. This is always one of the favorite parts of everyone in the program as it is so awesome to meet others like you, be there for each other, and form genuine connections/friendships that go long into the future! (Which is also so fulfilling for me, I must admit).

  • Direct access to me throughout - email support so you can get your questions answered in real time

  • All my best practices I use with 1:1 clients at the fraction of the cost of the MARSMethod Mentorship ($2600)

When Is It:

  • Registration for the public closes Monday, May 5th, 2025

  • The program runs from May 6 to August 12, 2025

  • Calls will be every other Tuesdays at 4pm PST/7pm EST.

    • Dates: May 6, May 20, June 3, June 17, July 1, July 15, July 29, and August 12

  • I run this just once a year, so please don’t miss out and have to wait another year to make positive changes.

THIS PROGRAM IS FOR YOU IF:

  • Have persistent, increasing pain in an area of your body you can’t get under control

  • Have increasingly widespread pain and sensitivity to light, sound, smells, touch etc

  • Struggle with chronic low energy; feel burnt out, lethargic and have uncontrollable fatigue

  • Often finds yourself in unpredictable flares

  • Have unmanageable stress, anxiety or depression that feels like it controls you

  • Keep going to bed really late or at inconsistent times, dread or have a lot of anxiety around bedtime, and are falling asleep too much during the day

  • You want to improve the quantity and quality of your sleep; have more usable hours of the day, and want to nap less

  • Have brain fog, trouble concentrating and remembering things

  • Want to be able to work out more consistently and flare less from movement

  • Have a hard time eating regularly and have a lot of barriers with demand avoidance, nausea, food dislikes or allergies, or sourcing food more conveniently because of not being able to cook

  • Have maximized treatments or want to be less reliant on medications

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT FOR YOU IF:

  • You have severe insomnia, night terrors, vivid nightmares, medication induced sleeping issues, sleep walking, narcolepsy, apnea or other serious sleep disorders they require more specialized treatment. The techniques and strategies taught in this program would still be useful and applicable, however such scenarios require more than just the strategies taught in this course for best outcomes.

  • You have straightforward, localized body part pain that is not intrusive. If you have something like back pain that is extreme and hurts all the time no matter what you do, this program would still help.

  • Are not struggling with flaring from movement in general, as much as missing the appropriate strategies to improve your results in PT and get out of the weakness/spasm cycle. Then please reach out for private movement sessions or keep your eyes out for Complex Pain Progressions.

  • You feel fine with where you are at with medications and treatments are don’t feel your pain is overwhelming or interfering much with your life.

 

Ready for the next round? Join below.

Testimonials and Comments From Past Participants

Hi, I’m Justine. Pain Coach, Fitness Professional & Movement Specialist

I am founder of Resilient Warrior Coaching and co-host of It’s Not in Your Head podcast with Dr. Dan Bates. I work with complex pain patients who have tried most treatments medicine has to offer. I pick up where doctors leave off and focus on optimizing variables that decrease pain we as patients impact. I myself live with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a spinal cord stimulator, hEDS, low back pain, and have a history of traumatic brain injury, trigeminal neuralgia, and sensitization. I get it.

Besides my B.A. from Washington State University, I am an OPEX Certified Coaching Professional (CCP). I began my movement career in Cross Fit, getting my Cross Fit L1 (CF-OL1), USAWL-L1 (olympic lifting) and Adaptive & Inclusive Trainer (AIT) certifications. I then began moving into more individual design and addressing compensations/mobility by gaining my Pain Free Performance Specialist (PPSC) and Low Pressure Fitness L1-Trainer (LPF-L1) credentials. I have since added an even more brain based, sensory approach to changing motor patterning through a nervous system/neuro lens to my work, becoming a Level 3 Neurostudio practitioner. You can learn more about my professional background on LinkedIn, and my story and work in this article as well.

How did I get here?

I was born and raised in sunny San Diego, CA, and always loved being active, competing at high school varsity & AAU level basketball for four years before college. 5 months after getting my B.A. in Marketing at Washington State University, I was in a car accident suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Over the next 9 years, I went through a very slow and difficult recovery often in a cognitive haze, struggling through tolerating severe treatments including electro convulsive therapy and near a hundred medication changes to combat the persistent cluster trigeminal neuralgia and other headaches, insomnia, fatigue, memory loss, depression, nausea and other gastrointestinal issues that developed. (sound familiar)? With the fortitude I developed as an athlete, I continued to persevere during this lengthy healing process and slowly started regaining my independence. As I got healthier, by June of 2019 I began jogging regularly. Unfortunately what began as a seemingly random mild pain in my lower left leg turned into excruciating agony radiating from my shin. My left leg was covered in bruises and scalding hot, feeling as if my bones were freshly

shattered with an immense pulsating pressure. My skin from the knee down through my toes felt like there were bugs crawling on it and just the smallest bit of cycling at the beginning made it feel like my tibia was literally splitting and muscles were tearing. The spasms and contractures were relentless and constant limb guarding was the only way to survive. After months of not being able to put my foot on the ground, a bone scan in February 2020 finally confirmed the diagnosis of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).  I was started on typical medications for neuropathic pain and received repeated lumbar sympathetic blocks with minimal improvement, finally making the decision to have a DRG Spinal cord stimulator (SCS) implanted in 2021. Although the SCS reduced symptoms, living with it while being as active as possible came with its own set of challenges, leaving me with the question, “How do chronic CRPS patients actually live with this disease once there are no more treatments to try?” That’s what I’ve learned to do, and have turned that experience and continued formal education into helping others do the same.

Begin to write a new chapter today. When we’re in the thick of it, we can’t see the way out, or imagine the future. It is beyond the leap of faith we must take and fear we feel in this moment. But if you are brave eough to bet on yourself, and take accountability for the pieces you control, a future you can’t yet see becomes possible. Take the leap, it’s your time.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

  • If your symptoms as a result of pain are difficulty sleeping, extreme fatigue, nausea, increased sensitivity/pain, mood/stress challenges, A LOT because sensitization is really fueling the fire. That amplifies the crap out of underlying pain, so improving that element dramatically decreases that symptoms bucket too. You will have improved energy during the day, less fatigue, an improved sleep/wake cycle, easier time falling asleep and less anxiety around it, be able to eat more regularly, and have a multitude of skills to be able to down-regulate your nervous system on-demand or manage the sympathetic end of the nervous system better at baseline.

  • The program is 4 months long with calls every other week. This is what allows you to continually layer in changes sustainably.

  • No worries! Of course I’d love to have you Live, but all calls will be recorded and sent out after via email with lifetime access.

  • They'll be up to about two hours, with me teaching on that weeks subject for about an hour and then it being open for downloads, questions, thoughts and discussion around what we're trying to implement. Even though it's a group program, you're getting individual application of the material to your unique situation while also being able to learn from others process too.

  • Nope! I want you to just show up as you are, however you feel safe. This will be a very welcoming, supportive space, but the most important thing is you’re just exposed to the information in whatever way that is comfortable for you. Totally fine to turn your camera off.

  • Unpredictable symptoms, busy schedules and competing priorities are definitely a reality for us. That’s why I structured the program the way I did. Just 2 hours a week as far as call time and that’s recorded. If you can’t make it, you can watch it anytime that works for you. The HW to implement is easy to follow and implement. Ironically, the changes you make will quickly begin to give you more energy back than you came into this program with.

  • This program is designed to help complex pain patients troubleshoot and establish healthier sleep habits and optimize their sleep environment, but it is not intended to diagnose or treat the complex medical conditions or sleep disorders we come into this with alone necessarily. If you suspect you may have a sleep disorder or other medical condition that is affecting your sleep, please consult further with a healthcare professional.

  • You have lifetime access to the live recordings and resources.

  • Changes with pain, sleep, energy, mood, cognition etc. take time to establish and vary from person to person. That being said, as you layer in changes to your behaviors and environment you should see changes within the first few weeks, and by the end of the program, navigate your days and nights very differently than you were at the start. With continued practice and implementation of the strategies I teach, you can expect to see even more significant improvements compound over time.