What Chris Hemsworth Taught Us About Living With Pain

If you’ve ever lived with chronic pain, you know it is not just the ache in your body. It is the exhaustion, the frustration, the fear that you will never be able to do the things you love. And sometimes, it feels like the pain is winning.

Turns out, even superheroes struggle. Chris Hemsworth (yes, Thor himself) has battled back pain since high school. In his show Limitless, he traveled to South Korea to explore how to change his relationship with pain. What he learned was not a magic cure but a toolbox of strategies that anyone can use. These tools are the same kinds of practices we lean into here in the Tribe.

Pain 101: Friend or Foe?

Dr. BJ Miller, the pain expert guiding Chris, explained it clearly: pain is your body’s alarm system. Acute pain, like touching a hot stove, protects you. Chronic pain is when the alarm gets stuck, blaring even when there is no real danger.

The important part is that the brain can actually turn that alarm up or down depending on how we respond. Pain is always real, but our experience of it can shift.

Four Tools That Help Us Manage Pain

Chris explored several techniques, and each one lines up beautifully with what we practice in Health Warriors:

1. Social Connection
Laughter and community boost endorphins, your body’s natural painkillers. When Chris played Jenga with his childhood friends during a painful experiment, he went from tapping out early to lasting all the way through.
➡️ In our Tribe, connection is not just nice, it is medicine. Every time you laugh, share, or encourage someone else, you are raising your own pain tolerance too.

2. Graded Exposure
Little by little, exposing yourself to safe, controlled amounts of discomfort can retrain your brain. For Chris, it was martial arts. For us, it might be a short walk, a gentle stretch, or saying “yes” to trying something new.
➡️ Baby steps are not weakness, they are science.

3. Meditation and Mindfulness
At a monastery, Chris learned Buddhist practices that separate pain (the physical sensation) from suffering (the emotional story we add to it).
➡️ This is why we use journaling and visualization prompts. They help us observe our pain without drowning in it.

4. Reframing
Chris realized that fighting his back pain made him more miserable. Accepting it as part of his life softened its grip.
➡️ Instead of saying “My body is broken,” try saying “My body is healing.” The pain may still be there, but the suffering lessens.

The Special Forces Test

At the end of his journey, Chris faced the ultimate challenge with South Korea’s special forces: electric shocks, freezing water, pepper spray, and military drills. Brutal stuff.

But here’s the lesson. He did not “win” by being tougher. He made it through by leaning on teamwork, humor, reframing, and acceptance.

That is the perfect picture for us. You do not need to be a superhero. You do not need to push through alone. You just need the right tools and the right people walking with you.

Key Insights for Health Warriors

• Pain is always real, but our relationship to it can change
• Fighting pain often makes it worse, while acceptance opens the door to healing
• Social connection, laughter, and mindfulness are as important as medication or movement
• You do not have to be pain free to live fully

Try This Week:

• Notice when pain shows up and separate the sensation from the story (“This hurts” versus “This will never end”)
• Reach out to someone when you are hurting instead of isolating
• Try a short meditation or visualization from our app to practice observing pain without judgment
• Reframe one thought about your pain into something kinder
• Remind yourself: pain is part of life, but suffering does not have to be

And So …

Chris Hemsworth left South Korea still living with back pain, but no longer afraid of it. That shift changed everything.

And that is what I want for you too. Pain may be part of your story, but it does not have to own your story. Together, we can keep building our toolbox, supporting each other, and finding joy even in the hard moments.

Pain is real. Your strength is too.

P.S. Want tools to help you practice mindfulness, visualization, and reframing? You can find them right inside the FREE Health Warriors Journey app at app.healthwarriors.me.