When people realize that ultimately in the case of chronic pain as Dr. Sarno and his followers have elucidated that there is nothing wrong with them structurally and what they have is physical abnormalities, they heal very quickly and permanently. Perhaps the best book to elucidate that this belief has to be healed for ultimate healing is Steve Ozanich’s book The Great Pain Deception. Between Steve, Dr. Dan Ratner and most definitely Charlie Merrill, I owe much of my own recovery as they have played integral parts in reminding me that this is the case especially when new symptoms arise. Nicole Sachs and her podcast show this too. Some, including a few I know have healed from being bedridden within weeks. Charlie Merrill who is my personal mentor does a great job elucidating how this actually occurs in all of us. They call this “the human condition” similar to blushing when you are embarrassed and many people even those with pain for 20 odd years can be pain free within days. Depends who you are, I’ve been a slow learner with the old science too packed in my head.
The symptom imperative has been the name of the game for me. It’s also turned in what were original injuries into longer led pain and fear and disability than needed to be. I highlight this for my own sake because it’s been my biggest hinderance into recovery, throwing me for a loop each time it occurs and responding through the same lens of conditioning: fear, focus, fixation, frustration (Thank you Dr. Schubiner for the 5 F’s that I so often recognize now in myself).
This also leads me to the power of the placebo and the nocebo which I have been subject to each time a new symptom arises. The placebo is the ultimate standard of comparison in any randomized control trial which serves as the highest regarded proof of a treatment of scientific standard. What placebo studies fail to highlight (Dr. Dan Ratner is great at pointing this out and same with Dr. Rediger, Dr. Schechter, Dr. Schubiner and Nicole and Charlie) is that people literally physiologically change their bodies through the simple belief that something will work such as a sugar pill or saline injection. Not only that, these changes stick and are the same biologically and physiologically as those who received the actual treatment. Dr. Rediger points out that this occurs even when people realize they are getting the placebo treatment. If anything demonstrates the power of the mind to alter the body it’s this. The nocebo is the opposite; a doctor tells you there is something wrong with you. This lights up the amygdala of your brain with fear, you enter a neurochemical state of fear that releases a host of endocrine and inflammatory mediators which rev up your fight or flight engine and if this isn’t stopped, the response continues. It’s reinforced by your fearful thoughts and beliefs about what is wrong with you which serve to rev up this engine further creating a host of inflammation in your body. If this is stopped by something such as new information that nothing is actually wrong and you have a normal abnormality or are stuck in fight or flight, hope about treatment proposed by a doctor, belief that a Higher Power will take care of things, support from a loved one or soothing factors or your finding out that people do get better and heal without some horrid course to recovery, then you may not be in fight or flight for long. However if this is allowed to keep going by the belief that you are damaged, well then you enter a conditioned loop on a neurochemical level where the body and mind interchange signals automatically reinforcing this loop and belief. The first step in healing then comes from new information and was the ultimate success of Dr. Sarno. He highlighted so profoundly to people that nothing was wrong with them and they simply had chronic pain due to fear that they were damaged and repressed emotions. Once the conditioning was undone by this simple information, many healed within days or weeks. This phenomenon in the mindbody world and Dr. Sarno’s personal TMS follower world is known as the “book cure”. This was where when those with simple herniated discs, carpel tunnel, bursitis, tendinitis, pelvic floor dysfunction, anxiety, depression, OCD, plantar fasciitis, bone spurs healed themselves of years of chronic pain simply by reading one of his books and applying the principle to “think psychologically”. Alan Gordon, Dr. Howard Schubiner, Dr. David Schechter, Dr. David Clarke and Dr. Dan Ratner as well as Charlie are some of the greatest teachers of how to do so and have workbooks, meditations, their own books to help others learn to do so. The movie “All the Rage” on Dr. Sarno is great for those looking to see the proof. Alan Gordon and Dr. Schubiner’s recent Boulder Back Pain study was one of the first and most profound studies to prove that the brain can be rewired from chronic pain in a matter of a few weeks, even when the source was deemed to be structural to patients by other doctors (severe scoliosis, compression fractures of the spine, herniated discs, etc.). More studies have continued underway proving the same over and over, get to the root of the emotions, teach people they are okay in their body through things such as PRT and meditation amongst other mindbody practices, have them journal out repressed emotions, and poof, the chronic pain disappears.
Unlock The Healer Within 