Enabling and empowering people challenged by chronic pain is not a new idea, but what do these things actually mean and how can we actually do it? In this talk I will argue that Explain Pain 1.0 has stood the test of RCT-time, but it is far from perfect. In fact, its effects on pain and disability are just ‘good’, perhaps ‘a bit better than good’ when combined with graded reactivation. This underwhelming reality has triggered a new line of research that looks closely at both the content and strategy of pain education, drawing heavily on the insights of recovered patients, contemporary learning theories, tactics and tools, and the principles that govern the operation of neuroimmune networks. Explain Pain 2.0 – or perhaps ‘pain science-informed adaptive recovery training’ - has refined the content, strategy and operationalisation of pain education so as to more often enable and empower people with chronic back pain to move towards recovery under their own steam.