#43 — Max Shen | How Trapped Emotions Create Physical Pain

#43 — Max Shen | How Trapped Emotions Create Physical Pain

From The Metagame by Daniel Kazandjian

January 7, 2026 · 1h 32m

About this episode

Max Shen discusses how trapped emotions can lead to physical pain and shares insights from his research and personal experience.

Max Shen is a pain researcher with a background in computational cognitive science and degrees from MIT. After developing severe RSI in grad school, he devoted himself to understanding pain from the inside out. Remarkably, his pain was cut in half just from reading Dr. John Sarno's Healing Back Pain . Max’s work blends active inference, non-dual teaching, and Pain Reprocessing Therapy to create practical, self-guided tools for lasting pain relief. He’s also the creator of DebugYourPain.org. Resources: * Max Shen’s Substack (Debug Your Pain) ' * To find out about Max’s coaching, see here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit themetagame.substack.com

People in this episode

Host: Daniel Kazandjian

Guest: Max Shen

Topics covered

  • pain research
  • emotional health
  • self-guided tools
  • Pain Reprocessing Therapy
  • computational cognitive science

Keywords

  • pain relief
  • trapped emotions
  • RSI
  • active inference
  • non-dual teaching

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: DebugYourPain.org, MIT

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