A 'virtual surgery' protocol for back pain involves mimicking forced rest, strategic desensitization of pain mechanisms, retuning the body with mobility and stability, and movement skill training to avoid stress concentrations.

“I am anointed them and said there is your virtual surgery this worked really well on people who I'll paint the picture of let's take a stay-at-home mom with two young kids every day has to go to the gym and ride the elliptical for 20 minutes do something else as a stress reliever otherwise she's going to murder her husband you've heard that story before and uh I'll say good go get your surgery are you going to do that tomorrow no you are going to lay in bed you're going to behave like a postsurgical person you're going to get out of bed and go for a pee three times that is your total workload tomorrow and slowly you're going to build yourself back in other words surgery may work for you because it's forced rest now I'm going to give you a tool that will mimic the forced rest it's called virtual surgery tomorrow here's the plan here's how you're going to behave we are going to desensitize strategically the pain mechanism as we've measured it and we're going to retune your body with strategic mobility and stability plus movement skill so we don't replicate the stress concentrations that caused your problem in the first place”