Unlock The Healer Within

As I journey further into healing from chronic pain I see the tendency to fix symptoms, eliminate them, reject, distract from rather than become aware, tolerate and choose to respond differently. We are very outcome focused rather than processed focused which leads to frustration and dashing of hope. As many including Dr Hanscom and John Assaraf and Karsen Radens point out this than actually serves as a negative reinforcing pattern as we feel we are not overcoming our struggles or getting to our goals. This doesn’t mean we give up on our goals. The goal is to reach a set point of homeostasis, however the process and staying focused on that as well as changing our beliefs about ourselves and what is possible is ultimately what allows us to find peace. It’s that peace rather than the drive to fix that kicks in to allow the nervous system to reach that point of reset.

The process of acceptance and staying “outcome independent” as Alan Gordon would say is lost in modern medicine and a big reason for the struggle to help people with chronic conditions. Acceptance and letting go is perhaps the hardest paradox for human beings to accept. But it’s also the piece that makes the biggest difference if we look at others documented healings from chronic conditions. This concept which is detailed in Cured, Spontaneous Healing, The Way Out, The Great Pain Deception and so many personal accounts such as Rita’s and Tamara’s. Dr. Joe and his testimonials from those who have healed speak essentially of this as he speaks of the remarkable healings he has seen noting that almost every person said to him that it was when they stopped caring whether or not they had the condition because they fell in love with their lives so deeply that the condition went away. This is the interface where he would say their energy matched a certain frequency in the field where all potentials exist and the dis-ease could no longer survive in their body. Dr. David Hawkins highlights this in Letting Go and Healing and Recovery as Well. If we are to apply a Buddhist outlook on this idea this goes with the age old saying whatever we resist persists.

So how do we start to or ultimately get there? We e must lean into and feel what’s occurring to gain awareness, allow this to occur without resistance and then actively choose to switch our focus or beliefs to something else. In this process we build new perception. Perhaps this was one of Dr. Sarno’s greatest successes. He combined the belief for patients that nothing was wrong with them, and then had them accept the diagnosis of a benign condition distracting them from deep seated emotions. As they accepted a new identity outside of pain, they reconciled their beliefs about pain, damage, an identity of being broken, and a bleak life outlook and instead turned their attention on the psychological they had been unknowningly resisting.

Dr. Schubiner and Charlie recently gave a talk at the BPE seminar I attended explaining predictive coding. This is an innate human function that exists within our brain. Dr. Rediger calls this the DMN (default mode network), a complex system in our brains that allows us essentially to function automatically. It’s house in specific structures such in the brain that light up on fMRI in subjects doing tasks that have become automatic to them or thinking in patterns that are habitual. These patterns result in neural networks that as they run activate the neuroendocrine system which in turn has the ability to send hormones and chemicals to receptors on any and every cell in the body. Run this enough time in the direction you don’t want to go and your system becomes inflamed and sick through the constant fight or flight messages it’s receiving. While our DMN’s are essential for tasks such as walking, driving, doing our jobs and we can’t pay attention to everything in our environment, we want to create the subconscious beliefs and programs that lead us to health and wellness rather than disease.

The good news is that knowing that the DMN is what allows us to code for what stimulus are pertinent to pay attention to and what we can tune out, we can choose to consciously stimulate and create new networks through different thoughts, beliefs and perceptions that take us in the direction we want to go. This can then be programmed in a way that we eventually function in certain patterns that are automatic and subconscious that serve us well. So while current patterns can be maladaptive in many ways such as how we think about life, paying attention to and ruminating on pain, anxious thought patterns, fears, and behaviors such as unhealthy eating or exercise habits and these patterns serve as reinforcing beliefs we have about ourselves we can choose to consciously change this until this becomes unconscious.

The first part of this becomes stepping out of our comfort zone and gaining awareness of what we are habitually thinking and paying attention to. We must see how our minds our filtering things so we can change out the filter. As we become conscious of the stimulus in our environment, we begin to see our brain looks for how to reinforce this. This can be painful to realize that the uncomfortable becomes more known and comfortable than engaging with new thinking patterns or or perceptions and seeing ingrained neural networks these neural networks are. This can be even more painful when we realize how conditioned we have become by our parents, our peers, society as a whole, the things we consume whether that be on TV or in the workplace to have come to these beliefs and patterns.  These then result in chronic conditions such as pain, depression and anxiety. It’s here where the work really comes in for those especially with chronic conditions. It is meditation in action: making the unconscious conscious through observation. But rather than resisting or forcing what becomes conscious and maladaptive away, it’s acknowledging it and working with tools such as somatic practices (base, PRT, mindfulness), tolerating and feeling our emotions, journaling, meditating and more and then consciously choosing to switch gears. And as Dr. Joe would say, “when it’s the hardest it matters the most”.

As we do this and calm down in mind and body we then begin to incorporate new beliefs through new information, insights, visualization, stillness and self views that rewire our perception and allow us to instead create the lives we want. Ultimately the peace that occurs with this acceptance allows us to let go of the outcome as we have found the peace within ourselves to no longer be threatened by our old triggers. It’s those who do this and let go who ultimately find healing and purpose in a life that once seemed lost and in turn regulate their physiology to health.