CALL-IN TUESDAY, OZANICH BOOK CHAPTER 8

CALL-IN DISCUSSION; OZANICH CHAPTER 8: Growing the Pain

Tuesday, October 8, the call-in discussion group will be discussing Chapter 8 (Planting the Seeds, Growing the Pain -- Who is the Gardener?) in Steve Ozanich's book The Great Pain Deception starting at 9 pm Eastern Time. It lasts an hour, sometimes a little longer. Phone lines will open half an hour early so you can talk to hosts and early callers. Here's how to join the discussion (for detailed instructions, visit http://go.tmswiki.org/connect ):​

• If you're connecting by phone, dial 1 (347) 817-7654 and when prompted enter the meeting number 18311499.
• If you're connecting via your computer (Fuze Meeting), go to www.fuzemeeting.com/fuze/app/48fb7aa8/18311499 and follow the instructions from there.

Here are some thoughts on and a summary of the chapter:



Hearing Is Believing

It’s human nature to believe what someone in authority tells us, especially if a doctor tells us we have a herniated disc in our back or we have leg and ankle pain because we run too much on hard surfaces. That bad news goes to our mind and often goes from there to the part of the body that the doctor says is hurting us, and often the pain then feels even worse.

Bad health news really can be bad news seeds that sew pain in our body’s and mind's garden. Steve Ozanich devotes Chapter 8 of his book The Great Pain Deception to “Planting the Seeds, Growing the Pain – Who is the Gardener?”

The gardener for healing is Dr. John Sarno, who wrote about healing pain through belief
In TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome), that it very likely is not caused by anything structural but emotional, through repressed emotions.

But other gardeners plant seeds that grow fear and hopelessness in our minds.

Hearing really is believing, as it was when television news reported that basketball star Larry Bird had severe foot pain. It planted the seed of foot pain in what Dr. Marc Sopher called an epidemic in the early 1980s.

“Authority figures have power to plant failure or success into the collective unconscious,” Steve writes. He says we tend to look to others for answers and something to believe in regarding our pain. “Beliefs and fears, like common colds, are contagious and universally spread.”

I love the example Steve quotes about the natives’ reaction to the arrival of Christopher Columbus’ fleet in the Caribbean. The natives were unable to see the ships on the horizon because they had never seen sailing ships before. But when a shaman, who first doubted their existence for the same reason, finally was able to see them, the natives believed, because an authority figure they trusted told them he saw the ships.

So when a doctor tells a patient he or she has a bad back, knees or feet, etc., the patient believes the healer at a deeper level of consciousness, filling the patient’s “dry river bed,” helping to form their personal unconscious. Even if the doctor is wrong, most people will believe him or her because of their position of influence.

Steve writes that if the doctor does not know about or believe Dr. Sarno’s TMS theory that pain often is caused by repressed emotions, and you believe in your doctor, “Then that’s it… your healing has been negated.”

Steve puts it very vividly: “It’s not that the doctor can’t see the ships, but in his intense training he hasn’t been taught to look beyond his own horizon.” The medic has been conditioned to look for particular patterns, in X-rays or cat scans, and so what is in vogue is often determined by looking only at he or she expects to see.

“It is the sufferer who ultimately heals himself,” says Steve, through deeper belief, but he draws his own belief from the healer’s belief. If the doctor doesn’t believe healing is possible, neither will the patient.”

How strong and healthy are our feet? An Ethiopian runner won the 26-mile road-marathon race in the 1960 Rome Olympics while running it in his bare feet.

Dr. Sopher said recently that “There is a veritable epidemic of foot pain in our society. All of a sudden, everyone has foot problems, from pro athletes to the couch potato next door.” But he said that twenty years ago when he started his medical training, foot pain was not a common complaint, but now it is in vogue and everywhere you turn. There is no doubt in my mind that the overwhelming majority of foot pain attributed to plantar fasciitis, heel spurs, neuromas, or other physical causes is TMS.”

He says the same can be applied to the hands and all the new so-called repetitive stress disorders such as fibromyalgia, wrist or hand pain attributed to working on a computer, or sitting too long at one, and “good old back and neck pain.”

“Our feet can take much,” Steve writes. “They are strong like our backs. We are strong as our beliefs, or as Henry Ford said, ‘Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”

One of the healthiest seeds I grow in my health garden is a mantra: “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

That doesn’t mean you can fly with an umbrella if you jump off a tall building. It does mean that if the challenge is realistic, you can do it. If you’re hurting in bed, if you believe you can get up and walk, you can do it. Then if you think you can walk from your bedroom to your kitchen, you can do it. And then if you think you can take a walk outside the house, you can do it.

We are what we believe. The writer Norman Cousins who healed himself from heart trouble by laughing, said that every person who goes to a doctor goes to the doctor with two diseases. The first is the disease that is diagnosed, and the other is the disease of fear or panic.

“Your physician didn’t make you ill,” Cousins said. “Your subconscious needs and beliefs did. But he or she does have the power to help you, or to harm you, through the power [of being an authority figure].”

Steve writes more in his chapter on how we think we are in pain by quoting Dr. Sarno: “As long as the sufferer is in any way preoccupied with what his body is doing, the pain will continue.”

Steve recommends focusing on something other than the body, some competing stimulus, such as a new life-goal, thus “changing the channel on pain.”

Servicemen and women returning from the Middle East wars without limbs have not let anyone tell them life is over for them. Many have, with artificial limbs or even if they are blind, become athletes either standing and walking or running or in wheelchairs. Many of their comrades are helping them achieve what naysayers said was impossible, by planting seeds of recovery in the garden of the injured person’s their mind.

“Identifying a sense of purpose in life, and refusing to feel like a victim, eases pain,” Steve writes.

We are what we believe. Believe you can heal with TMS and you will heal.

 

Great summary, Walt. I found this chapter really empowering when I first read it, and it always helps to review it. For anyone lookimg for practical help with working with beliefs, another fantastic book I use all the time, both personally and professionally, is Byron Katie's Loving What Is. Basically it's working with what I actually know is true, rather than what I have been told by others, so it is very much in line with Steve's book.

 

I remember one 18 year old kid who went barefoot all summer while hanging around in Camp 4 in Yosemite Valley. By the time the summer ended and he went back to Junior College, he could walk up to Half Dome and back, a round trip of over 18 miles, on his bare feet without any problem at all. His feet were really callused. Then, I know a young woman about 3o years old who fell a few feet in Josuah Tree National Monument two years ago and has had chronic foot pain ever since. She's constantly going to foot doctors and contemplating operations. She goes to Happy Hours with her youthful co-workers from a video game company and can't dance or stand. Stays sitting down in the corner. Bet she's like that because she keeps going to doctors who write prescriptions for physical therapy and tell her to stay off her feet. Too, too obvious what's going on here!

 

Thanks, Tarala. I tried adding my own experiences-thoughts about that chapter and it made me realize
how right SteveO got it in his book.

Thanks for recommending Byron Katie's book. It's powerful.

 

Hi, Bruce. You give some good examples of those given bad medical advice when TMS could have helped.

 

TMS is so simple, yet profound.

 

Funny, Walt, how knowing about TMS and TMS theory allows you to see this kind of conditioning occurring in people all around you. Understanding what Dr Sarno is talking about really is personally empowering and enlightening.

 

When people understand TMS they can see it in everyone. But wow, no one wants to hear it. Be careful trying to help someone heal, it's dangerous. No one puts up a bigger fight to stay in pain than someone who needs their pain aka TMS.

I read the Lightning Process to see if I could recommend it, and the author said he and the doctors and scientists involved in the healings had received death threats. I haven't had one yet, but been spit at and had a few things thrown at me, and dozens of angry fingers pointed in my face.

TMS healing is like holy water against ignorance, it burns like fire, and the thing being burned is ego. The ego burning up is the fire that lights consciousness.

 

I don't think the resistance to TMS is just due to the natural conservatism of the ego, Steve. There are people with a great deal of vested interest in conventional treatment because of the huge amount of money that is being wasted on unnecessary physical therapy, chiropractic sessions, and, yes, surgical procedures. Patients want to believe in something in which they've invested so much time, energy and money. Like a bad marriage or a GF with endless "problems" you've tried to fix.

 

Yes, Bruce you're right. I was referring only to sufferers, people on the TMStreets. Certainly professionals and some lay-sufferers have other vested interests to not care about true healing. The response is often violent and dangerous. I will say, that last week a chiropractor told me he read my book and that I was 100% correct. Almost everyone he sees is suffering from tension, and that they think they need re-aligned. But he never said if he was going to stop manipulations.

 

Boy did this one resonate with me, Bruce! I spent 2 long years all but incapacitated by foot pain, before I discovered the link to TMS.
On the plus side, I'm walking a 5 K in two weeks
This program works. Thank you SO much to all of you who are a lifeline.

 

A PT (with the equivalent of a Ph.D. in physical therapy) once confided in me, "If Sarno is right, I'm out of a job!" So, no doubt about it, there's quite a bit of capital invested in the whole physical therapy "industry" even before you begin factoring in knee, back and neck surgery in conjunction with hospital time. This huge investment of capital ensures resistance to Dr Sarno's TMS recovery program simply because it would put a lot of people, with a lot of expensive training, out of work.

 

Bruce, great thinking.
I hope more doctors switch from prescribing pills and surgery switch to becoming TMS practitioners.
They can still call themselves healers. Just a different kind.

 

Just reminding you all that the discussion group is tonight! Like always the lines will open up 30 minutes or so beforehand, but remember, the official discussion will begin at 9pm ET so please, hold your comments about the book until then. That way those who cannot attend the discussion live (such as, unfortunately, myself) can have access to all of your wonderful insights via the recording of the discussion. Feel free to log into the text chatroom at www.tmswiki.org/chat as well. Enjoy yourselves, and I'll have the recording for you all Thursday

 

Hi everyone! Looking forward to tonight. I may have to mute myself for the first bit as I get my daughter in bed, but I'll try to join in after!

 

I think (by am not certain yet) that I won't be able to make it tonight. The low beams went out on my car and it's in the shop. The problem is that it will probably be done at 6 pm, so I'll have to drive down in my old truck, pick up my car with hopefully fixed headlights, and then bike back down the hill to pick up the truck. All depends on whether the mechanics call me to say it'll be ready at 6 pm. Sound complicated? Yes, I've got my cell phone on to receive a status report and it's 2 pm already. Wait and see!

 

Hope the cars beams came out alright buddy
We missed ya tonight-
Pandagirl was on and njoy was giving some good advice
Forest and Jay was there, Tennis Tom had 1 question
and he might of got disconnected somehow
I know he would of had some great responses
We had jan. joan. mousemom.
It was another night full of wisdom and insight

I hope all's well on your end
Your presence was missed my friend
We had ya back though, maybe next week for sure buddy
Have a great Day -
God bless

 

NOTE: This is a second summary of Chapter 8, originally posted in a separate thread on October 9 2013 at 11:08am . The two responses following (by hecate and Herbie) were part of this original thread. All three of these posts were moved to this current thread on October 10 2013 at 12:45pm .

Steve introduces us to the word “archetype,” with which you may not be familiar, or know it in the way he refers to it in TMS healing.

The word comes from the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, from the Greek meaning “original model.”
Steve says examples of archetypes are the mother, father, drunkard, wise elder, bum, cripple, wounded one, teacher, child, warrior, or even the villain or hero.

A Jungian archetype is a mental predisposition, a psychic force not grounded in experience. The archetype has shown itself to us over the years as repeated images or experiences in our collective unconscious. We’re all born with these models or images in our heads as heroes, our parents, drunkards, wise old men, etc.

They are generic personalities, pre-existing forces of nature that are shared by everyone, coming to our minds anytime, anywhere. They govern our behavior and perception. Jung said an archetype is like a dry riverbed that has a pre-formed impulse to create imagery, outside of conscious forces.

Archetypes reside in everyone’s psychological life. They exist along with personal experiences and, together, fill the dry riverbeds which becomes our personal unconscious.

So, simply put, the behavior, attitude, instruction, or other characteristics our parents, teachers, wise elders, heroes or villains give us leave an indelible imprint in our minds – our personal unconscious -- for good or bad.

Steve then tells us about “the Healer Archetype.” Healers today they include doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists. IN American Indian tribes they were called “medicine men” or “holy men.” Years ago and in some cultures today they are called shamans.

Healer archetypes determine the health realities for individuals and entire societies or nations, based on their experience and training with causes and effects. If a doctor tells a patient they have bad knees or feet, back, or neck, the person believes the healer at a deeper level of consciousness than a non-medical person’s prognosis, filling the patient’s dry river bed. This professional medical input helps form the patient’s personal unconscious.

A doctor’s prognosis may scare a patient so much, the pain can become more real and even increase. We normally trust a doctor so we believe what he or she tells us, especially if it allows them to stop doing something they don’t want or would rather not do. Even if the doctor’s prognosis is wrong, most people believe what they’re told because they trust the medic’s professional knowledge and experience with other patients with similar symptoms.

Steve then says something very important regarding TMS: “If your doctor doesn’t believe Dr. Sarno [that your symptom may not be structurally caused but brought on by a repressed emotion that may have been because of an archetype in your past or present], and you believe in your doctor, then that’s it – your healing has been negated.”

Your doctor’s medical training has very likely conditioned him or her to look for particular patterns regarding your condition, so what is currently in vogue such as back pain, he or she
concludes that’s what you have and it is caused by a slipped disc, recommending painkillers or surgery. A chiropractor may say your spinal discs are in misalignment and recommend adjustments that can take visits to their office for the rest of your life.

Years ago, ulcers were in vogue as one of the most common ailments. But even in today’s hectic world, few people are diagnosed as having ulcers. Stomach aches, yes, but those are said to be because of an upset stomach due to what or how much we eat or drink, so antacids are prescribed.
You see shelves full of them in the drug store. But what caused the stomach ache may not have been something you ate or drank, but by a repressed emotion involving a parent or other archetype that came to your mind because it was triggered by a similar emotion from someone or something today or recently. The stomach ache was TMS.

Steve says “It is the sufferer who ultimately heals himself through deeper belief [in the cause of the ailment], but he draws his own belief from the healer’s belief. If the doctor doesn’t believe healing [without medication or surgery] is possible, neither will the patient.” Unless the patient knows about and believes in Dr. Sarno’s TMS theory that repressed emotions may very well cause our pain.”

Steve tells of having gone to a doctor at the age of 14 and being told his spinal discs were herniated in such a way, that if he gets hit in the back a certain way, he will be permanently paralyzed. That diagnosis kept him in constant fear of activity and in pain for 30 more years.

“The doctor legitimized my pain, making it worse through his foolish warning of dangers that ‘could happen,’ limiting my life potential and belief in myself. But it was ultimately me who debilitated me, because I trusted and believed in him [a very influential archetype].”

Steve healed his pain through following Dr. Sarno’s belief in TMS.

“What one says, another may believe,” says Steve in this chapter of his book. “When people have been defeated by tragedy, or isolation, or have experienced prolonged periods of pain and sleeplessness, they are extremely suggestible. If they have been conditioned to be good or to toe the line [from their parents or others], they are in further danger of falling for anything that comes their way.”

Steve concludes by quoting Dr. Sarno: “As long as the sufferer is in any way preoccupied with what his body is doing, the pain will continue.” The solution is to focus on something other than the body, some competing stimulus, such as a new life-goal.” That diverts the brain, rendering it unable to process the sensation of pain.

“Identifying a sense of purpose in life, and refusing to feel like a victim, eases pain,” says Steve. “Find a way to turn your obsession toward an activity that you love, and focus on it., and the pain will slowly leave, as this new, more productive obsession becomes the competing stimulus.”

So, ask who is the gardener of pain in your life. Is it a doctor or a remembered pattern or experience of a parent living or deceased, or other archetype, causing the pain? Consider letting TMS be your gardener.

 

Belief in the 'healer' archetype in the form of Doctor (see - I've even capitalized it!) assisted me in more than 20 years of pain and disablement. We are raised to look up to people with education - especially doctors. so when I was told I had a disease - I believed it. When I was told there was no treatment - I believed it. I then went in search of other 'healers' in alternative fields - and each time I believed them - I would get better from their treatment - but I did not. Which compounded my belief in doctors again!! It's a vicious circle. My husband never gave up - he always said - one day you will get better. And he was right. Finding Dr Sarno's books (there's a guy who deserves the capital!) and then Steve O & Nancy Selfridge's and finding this amazing website, set me on the road to recovery (which I am now sprinting down!)
We have to be very careful to respect peoples education/knowledge in an area - but not give ourselves up totally to it. Retain some scepticism maybe. Judge by results not by letters after a name. Most of all have a sense of our own self-worth and our own intelligence. At the end of the day - with all the help and support, the books, the websites, - it is only OURSELVES that can heal ourselves...

 

That's an awesome post hectate105
Nice to hear ya sprinting down the healing journey
Yea I believed it when the DRS told me id never be normal again
as in get the back surgery or grow older and crippled.

Then as time passed I started to not believe all they had to say anymore
I started noticing my friends with 30 different bottles of medicine
for a different ill of an ill.

I thought man at 1 time id never had second guessed my MD
Im glad now I did, it was many years ago when I thought if these guys are always so right
then why do we seem to be getting sicker and sicker
even though we have a pill for every ill
its not really healing anyone.

I started my journey to freedom then, 13 years ago
and on my own with clean thinking healed nicely of body pain that
I was supposed to have the rest of my life.
I did it by not fearing it anymore-
I hadn't learned of sarno at the time but I did his protocol.

I thank God for the Drs. on my last Hospital visit though-
after the fevers and all, they gave me antibiotics.
The antibiotics pulled me through a rough bout of tic fever
My mind was primed for the experience at the time.

I know the MDs are really needed at times-
but we've stumbled upon something life changing here
with tms healing-

It'll be a nice day when we can all say
the DR. said I might need surgery for my back
but I know that's not correct since the pain is caused by
my emotions and repressions.

The Docs have the specialties-
Even they know that they dress the wound
and the body heals itself.
The mighty dollar will always be in the way
creating false archetypes, whether it be A Dr. or a friend

So many cant see the forest from the trees