Neil Pearson

PT, MSc(RHBS), BA-BPHE, C-IAYT, ERYT500, YACEP

“My goal is to help people living in pain and to assist others with the same desire to serve.

We must shift many paradigms.

Our views of pain, of people in pain, and of the role and effectiveness of non-pharmacological pain care, are mostly outdated.”

Neil is a physical therapist, a Clinical Assistant Professor at University British Columbia, and a yoga therapist.

He is an engaging educator and compassionate clinician, able to make the complex understandable, willing to share his knowledge and expertise in pain care, and always ready to learn more. He is also an aspiring writer.

Neil’s most influential mentors and teachers have been the people in pain he has served.

Accomplishments

• Physical therapist since 1985, focusing on complex pain since 2000
• Faculty at UBC since 1997
• Educated 5000+ people in pain in group education sessions
• Educated 2000+ in his Pain Care Yoga training programs
• Consultant with Doctors of British Columbia since 2013, to develop and implement clinical pain management continuing education
• Past Director of Pain BC
• Founding Chair of the Canadian Physiotherapy Pain Science Division
• Faculty member for international yoga therapist training programs:
  • Inner Peace
  • Yoga Therapy International
  • Embodied Yoga Therapy
  • Yoga Studio College
• Author of ‘Yoga Therapy’ in the 2016 book Integrative Pain Management
• Author of Understand Pain Live Well Again 2007
• Developer of an online, self-care, pain curriculum
• Author and editor Yoga and Science in Pain Care: Treating the Person in Pain 2019

Awards

• Distinguished Alumni Award from Queen’s University, 2015
• Excellence in Interprofessional Pain Education from Canadian Pain Society, 2012
• Award of Excellence for Clinical Contribution from Physio Association of BC, 2010

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Blinkenstaff, C./Pearson, N.
Reconciling Movement and Exercise with Pain Neuroscience Education: a Case for Consistent Education
Physiotherapy Practice Review 32(5):396 – 407, 2016

Pearson, N.
Know Pain
Yoga Therapy Today Summer, 2013. 14 – 16

Pearson N.
Yoga and Chronic Low Back Pain
IJYT 2010, 20: 53 – 54

Pearson, N.
Yoga For People in Pain
IJYT 2008, 18: 77 – 86

Pearson, N.D./Walmsley, R.P.
Trial Into the Effects of Repeated Neck Retractions in Normal Subjects
Spine 20: 1245, 1995