The Sage Practice, LLC:
Pain Reprocessing Groups & Education
Do you live with pain or other chronic symptoms? You can reclaim your life.
Lara Birk, Ph.D., founded The Sage Practice, LLC in 2020 to offer others the pain reprocessing skills and education that she so sorely needed during her own experience with devastating pain.
“Through this work, I got my life back, only better. Everyone should get the chance to turn their pain and suffering into empowerment and growth. We only have this one wild and precious life.”
Learn to Calm Your Symptoms.
Prepare to Transform Your Life.
Suffering from pain & other chronic symptoms can be scary, frustrating, and lonely.
But you can reclaim your life.
The good news is new neuroscience provides evidence-based strategies for improving pain & other chronic symptoms. You can harness the power of neuroplasticity and learn to calm your nervous system and quiet the symptoms. The skills and confidence you gain will enable you to come out from the shadow of suffering and live a life you’re proud of.
The best part? You don’t have to do it alone.
As you surely know, living with chronic symptoms can be isolating, lonely, scary, and demoralizing. Almost worse, it can make you feel alienated from others and even from your own life.
In pain reprocessing, learning is itself therapeutic, and yet Lara believes that
learning together is the only healing format that has the power to repair that fundamental alienation and bring us back into belonging and connection.
Sage Groups & Courses offer pain reprocessing and mindbody education in a small group, discussion-centered format, in which you develop the skills, agency, self-trust, and connectedness you need to truly embrace your one wild and precious life.
Sage: cleansing, healing, and wise.
Derived from the Latin, salvia: a healing plant; salvere: to cure or to save; salvus: safe, secure, and healthy.
Why “Sage”?
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You will learn how to create internal safety & security to calm your own nervous system and quiet your own symptoms.
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The Sage mindset empowers you to harness your agency and live a life you’re proud of.
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Asking “what is the gift here"?” in any given situation can transform not only the way you see that situation but also how you experience it, to the point where some have gratitude even for the symptoms that guided them to their awakening.
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As you develop your own Sage practice, you will find the greatest healing comes from reconnecting with the people & pursuits that bring you joy, meaning, & belonging.
“Lara is the best teacher out there. Hands down.”
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“Lara feels like a guardian angel [who] helped me learn to live with the aftermath of a life-changing stroke… and gain confidence in my own inner strength. It feels like Lara is a mirror to my best and highest self that even I hadn’t seen. She is truly gifted."
- Rebecca B.
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“My new mantra is ‘I am not afraid of the storms…’ Thank you, this is profound and transformational: you’ve made me feel I can “sail my ship” with confidence and skill.”
- J.M.
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"Lara is a brilliant facilitator. She made a very difficult job look easy."
- Sarah
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"Dr. Birk changed my life. Within two weeks, the daily headaches that had plagued me for years had dramatically decreased. She gave me the tools I needed to heal from my chronic pain.”
- Katie P.
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"Take her class. Lara will change your life."
- Jesse
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“I consider it no less than divine intervention that my path crossed with Lara’s in this fortuitous way. As our group facilitator, she modeled a compassionate and supportive presence so beautifully in our time together. I feel well on my way to more self-compassionate living.”
- B.A.
Meet Lara
Lara Birk, Ph.D., is a prominent voice in the field of mindbody healing and pain reprocessing, as well as a passionate advocate for anyone who lives with a combination of structural and neuroplastic symptoms. After a misdiagnosis of a medical emergency in 1991, Lara required over a dozen surgeries that saved her legs but left significant structural challenges and decades of pain. Curable was Lara’s first entry into the empowering new world of pain science education, and it changed her life. With additional trainings (e.g., Health & Wellness Coaching Certification specializing in pain, PRT (Pain Reprocessing Therapy) & Advanced PRT Certifications, etc.), she has been a pain reprocessing clinician and educator working with clients living with chronic pain and other symptoms. Lara, formerly a sociology professor, founded The Sage Practice in 2020 so that she could offer to others the education and the group learning and support she so sorely needed when she was at her worst. Lara designs curriculum, teaches courses, facilitates groups, and creates content to help others learn the evidence-based skills that calm their nervous system and quiet their symptoms. Partnering with Curable and with local hospitals, Lara is dedicated to spreading her message: this work can help you too, no matter what your condition.
