A majority of people will experience chronic pain at some point in their lives.   Understanding the relationship between the injured body and the brain's response to pain is complicated.  Many people need to work on both sides of the problem before they can make a full recovery. 

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(Consultation with doctors and other medical staff is the first step before starting a training session.)

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Norman Doidge, In "The Brain's Way of Healing"  describes a method for stopping pain pathways in the body and brain:

This involves important discoveries of how the body and brain both unleash pain but also block pain in a gate like system.

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Chronic pain involves neuroplastic changes in the nervous system including parts of the brain that involve decision making and anxiety.  Essentially, the brain "learns" chronic pain even if the body part in question has healed.  For example, a nerve in the back that is impinged will initially send an acute signal to the brain.  But if this goes on for too long, then the brain will become hard wired for the pain and will send pain signals every time the back is moved.

This becomes a vicious circle of increased sensitivity each time there is a pain attack.  

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How do you overcome the chronic pain signal?  First of all it's important to understand that if a nerve cell "learns" a pain signal, it can also unlearn a pain signal.  Unlearning involves redirecting the brain to other thoughts every time the pain comes on.  For example, if exercise leads to pain, then imagining a calm and healed brain and body right after exercise should become a daily practice. 

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Part of the technique involves really working to make this "calm" visualized state as real as possible in the imagination.  Just like any form of learning, this involves developing skills that really do block the pain.  After a while this pain blocking will become second nature and the pain itself will go away.

 

Will this "visualization technique" always work?  Obviously, this will take time and there will be setbacks, but this is a real and proven way of defeating chronic pain.   

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