Stop Throwing Spaghetti at Brick Walls! Why Pain Education Matters
By: Nataliya Zlotnikov, MSc, HBSc ∙ Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Communication, education, and the curse of knowledge in clinical practice

Are you teaching your patients Mandarin?

Just because we know something doesn’t mean others understand it, or even want to.

In a short and memorable video from Mike Stewart’s popular online course, Know Pain: A Practical Guide to Developing Your Patient Education Skills, this idea is brought to life in a surprising way: through Mandarin pick-up lines.

It’s a lighthearted but powerful reminder of how easily we can fall into the trap of assuming our patients are “on the same page” just because we explained something clearly...in our own language.

This blog offers a window into this engaging and evidence-informed course.

From Mandarin to muscles: Why communication matters in rehab

Have you ever treated a patient, prescribed exercises, and they felt great, only to return two days later with the exact same issue?

In retail, repeat customers are great.

In healthcare? Not always.

If patients consistently return with unresolved problems, we may need to look beyond manual skills and clinical protocols and consider how we're communicating.

Mike Stewart challenges clinicians to ask themselves:

Are we giving our patients expert advice…or speaking to them in a foreign language?

Education is not copy-paste

As physical therapists and allied health providers, we often focus on diagnostics and treatment techniques, but how much emphasis do we place on education?

“Patient education forms a significant component of modern health care.”

Dreeben (2010, p. 4)

Despite this, many clinicians have a limited educational toolkit (Hinchliff, 2004).

Education is frequently undervalued or assumed, both in practice and research (Bolton, 2010).

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Anyone can teach.” But ask yourself, how many truly great teachers have you had in your life?

The psychologist Fordyce once said:

“Information alone is like throwing spaghetti at a brick wall—it doesn’t stick.”

Too often, we cast patients as passive recipients of information.

We explain, instruct, and prescribe.

They nod. We assume it’s working until the spaghetti falls off the wall.

Education is therapy

Education isn’t just about compliance. It’s about transformation.

In brain scans from Shpaner et al. (2014), a single participant is shown before and after 12 weeks of CBT-informed pain education.

• Image A shows heightened activity in anxiety-related regions.

• Image B shows a quieter, more confident brain.
  
  

This shift reflects what many clinicians know intuitively:

When patients understand their pain, their fear decreases,
and their capacity for recovery increases.

Course highlights: Know pain with Mike Stewart

Mike Stewart’s course on Embodia helps you become a more effective educator and communicator, so your patients leave with more than just instructions—they leave with insight.

You’ll learn how to:

• Transmit knowledge effectively

• Understand the stages of learning

• Identify and remove learning blocks

• Balance challenge with support

• Sustain curiosity and engagement

• Use creativity and divergent thinking in clinical education
  
  
  

Click here to explore the full course

👉 Prefer a live experience?

Join Mike for his upcoming 2-day live course:

A Practical Guide for Persistent Pain Therapy - November 2025 edition.

Saturday, November 22nd and Sunday, November 23rd, 2025, from 10 AM EST - 6 PM EST, each day, hosted on Embodia.

Test your communication skills: The collaboration game

In one of the course activities, Mike uses a playful and enlightening game to explore the dynamics of communication.

Try it out with a friend, colleague, or patient; you’ll quickly see just how easy it is to think you’re being clear when you’re really speaking Mandarin.

Watch Embodia co-founders Maggie Bergeron and Elie Afif demonstrate it in this clip from the course.

The takeaway?

Great communication isn’t about delivering information—it’s about shared understanding.

Communication is therapy.

If we want to empower our patients, improve outcomes, and reduce pain, we must learn to speak their language, literally and figuratively.

Start learning with Mike Stewart on Embodia

Final test:

Do you remember how to say it?
“Your eyes are very beautiful,” in Mandarin.

---
Last update: 7 August 2025