Are there any TMS conferences?

That would be really wonderful. I could help approach local TMS practitioners to see if they would be willing to make a presentation.

Absolutely. The people who are organizing conferences tend to think very strategically and have identified that a problem in that most people in the world don't live anywhere near a TMS practitioner. The goal is to train more of them so that there will be a group of practitioners to help people, write books, do research, and teach others.

There are four active initiatives right now for regional meetings. The first is sponsored by the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association and is based on a two day training by Alan Gordon and Howard Schubiner. The plan, when we hold another, is to videotape the presentation and turn it into a program of online continuing education for practitioners. I suspect that peers would be welcome at this and in fact, we even looked for a volunteer "peer victim" for it here on the forum.

A second initiative arises from some of the psychologists who worked the closest with Dr. Sarno at NYU rusk. Two of the leaders were coauthors of the book Pathways to Pain Relief and together this group has a more psychoanalytic orientation. I actually presented my success story at their last "master class," but they deliberately keep their class size small (it's more of a seminar) and I don't know how they would feel about peer visitors. They have plans for more in depth, long term training that includes supervised work with clients.

The third initiative is @Georgie Oldfield's UK based Stress Illness Recovery Practitioner's Association (SIRPA). It seems quite active and has regular events, but she would be able to explain them better than I would. Here is their calendar of upcoming events:
http://www.sirpauk.com/events/cat.listevents/2014/03/04/-

Quite exciting, eh? There is a lot going on.

Finally, the fourth initiative are the local support groups. There have been groups in Kansas City, Boston, London, Indianapolis, and the Massachusetts South Shore, and rumors of groups in Denver and Colorado. The most successful of these is the Kansas City one, run by our own @Stella . The Boston one might come back if I have any time (unlikely) and I have high hopes for the Indianapolis one, which will hopefully be run by a pair of patients who know Dr. Stracks.

As I said, there is a great deal going on.

 

Another idea that might be interesting would be doing another success stories live panel. There were a pair of these events that @MatthewNJ organized several years back. Here is a portion of the advertisement:

Would you like to hear how others have succeeded in treating TMS?

COME JOIN US. Listen to what has worked for others with pain just like yours! If you like, you can ask the panelists questions about their success. There is no cost to join in.

Session Date: Sunday, October 17, 2010 Time: 12:00 - 2:00 PM EDT (-5 hrs GMT) / 5:00 - 7:00pm BST .

Format: In the same vein as Dr. Sarno's "Alumni Panels", we will have a 2 hour session on line using DimDim (a webinar meeting room). 4 panelists will take 10-15 minutes each and share their success story. While the panelists are speaking you can text in questions for the panelists. After each panelist is done, we will have a Q&A session with your questions.​

The events were wonderful successes and I think that a lot of people got a tremendous benefit from them. I think that there was something like twenty four people present at once because they were the first two community run TMS events. The conversation in the chat room (simultaneous to the success stories) was absolutely amazing because we just had a terrific critical mass.

Unfortunately, we haven't done any of these for several years because we've been focusing on other projects. @MatthewNJ has organized our Saturday Drop-In Chat for maybe three years now and does a tremendous job. It runs like clockwork! But that doesn't leave him any time for organizing special events.

Incidentally, Matthew was a patient of Dr. Sarno's so the "Alumni Panels" he mentioned in the advertisement and that the live panel was based on were an important part of his own treatment. It turns out that these Alumni Panels were actually created by Stephen Conenna, P.E., who will be tonight's special guest at our regular Tuesday night call in group.

In chapter 9 of his book, entitled, "Helping others get better faster - creation of the 'Alumni Panel,'" Stephen writes,

... after being pain-free for about three years, I created the “Dr. Sarno Panel Discussion.” Each month this panel would feature a line-up of four former patients who went through treatment with Dr. Sarno and became pain-free, each telling their stories about recovery from psychosomatic pain and answering questions from an audience made up of Dr. Sarno’s current patients. My intention was that, by interacting with a variety of panelists who had been through the process, patients would get better sooner.
I also envisioned that the panel would be self-perpetuating in the sense that people in the audience who were inspired to do so would eventually appear on the panel when they got better. Dr. Sarno was open to the idea and for over five years and more than 60 monthly panel discussions, the “Alumni Panel,” as Dr. Sarno named it in reference to people who have “graduated” from treatment, played an important part in his treatment program for over 5,000 participants.​

I've always thought that it would be tremendous if we could carry on Dr. Sarno's legacy by hosting free online success story panels inspired by the ones that he hosted.