LOOKING THROUGH THE SARNO LENS

For the better part of 20 years before learning of, and healing from, John Sarno's amazing discoveries, I researched and practiced a diversity of diets and healing modalities that shaped much of my life.

My recovery using Sarno's methods was very rapid and thorough, with few hitches along the way.

Alongside reading his books back to back over and over (20 times) and talking to my brain all throughout every day about all of the rage that I have buried in my subconscious, and that I understand that my brain is giving me genuine horrible agonizing pain symptoms as a distraction from my buried rage so DON'T GIVE ME THAT PAIN, BRAIN! - I also took his excellent advice to resume all physical activity in its fullest and to turn my back on everything that would distract me from thinking psychological. EXCELLENT MEDICINE!


Stretching, massages and accupressure, are all fine and harmless unto themselves (and very enjoyable), but they are definitely a distraction from dealing with your buried rage. The longer that you think that pressing on points in your hands is going to solve your pain (and it may, temporarily, with a placebo effect), the more challenging it will be for your subconscious mind to get the message that you get it that the buried rage is the real problem.

Herbal teas and supplements and tinctures are fine and fun and surrounded with folklore and mystery. Every morning my wife and I enjoy our pots of tea with our homegrown mints and holy basil and lemon balm with some yerba mate tossed in for a (probably placebo) caffeine kick. We put our homegrown dried fruits in the bottom of our cups which further flavours the tea and is delicious and juicy plump for a quick snack after teatime.

Probably the healthiest thing going on with our tea is the joy and comfort in hot tea, shared with a person you love and a chance to linger between blissful sleep and starting the day's chores (chicken feeding & egg collecting, cow and goat feeding and milking- the animals eat breakfast before us every day!)

Herbs have been a big part of our life and we have always grown a diversity that we have turned into tinctures and dried as 'medicines'. I even completed a course that made me a chartered herbalist 20 years ago! Our herb growing is mostly tasty tea herbs and culinary herbs plus some zinging spilanthes (with an undeniably extreme fizzing action!).

I no longer think of these herbs as medicinals. I think of them as tasty and enjoyable and harmless. I'm no longer interest in nasty tasting herbs with supposed superpowers (many of which would make me barf back pre-Sarno). I will no longer seek out expensive 'medicinal' must have plants for our gardens, unless it is some extra tasty fragrant mint or thyme or oregano or basil....

How about Food and Diets? This has definitely been my major focus and obsession ever since liberating myself from the clutches of childhood and school. An all encompassing obsession with all things food has led me through a life of travel, farmer's markets, learning how to grow organic vegetables and fruits, opening a mobile restaurant, and meeting my wife and true love and moving in with her on our amazing organic farm.

Once upon a time I did a bunch of travelling. In the beginning, I could eat whatever the heck I wanted, in blissful naievety (as in I hadn't been subjected to a pile of negative conditioning towards food).

Cheesy pizzas throughout Europe and Ice Creams and wheat breads and non-organic foods and sausages and jello/whipped cream desserts and whole chicken on a spit or whole roasted duck (all for me!).

More travelling and more reading in more countries and more influence from vegetarians and alternatively minded folks and homesteaders and working in health food stores and nutrition books and teachers of nutrition and magazines like Alive and on and on led me down many rabbit holes of nutritional do's and do nots.

No longer was I enjoying the freedom to safely enjoy food that is our right as humans alive today on earth.

Don't get me wrong- throughout all of this I have always been enjoying foods in many forms with great passion. Unfortunately, so many foods that I had 'learned' were bad for me would, when rarely eaten, would cause great digestive distress, migraines and such.

I had become a great authority on what was safe to eat and what wasn't and would spout off to great length to anybody that I would meet about what to eat and what not to eat and how terrible they would feel if they did it all wrong.

This is totally absurd and sad. I am guilty of all sorts of spewing all manner of negative conditioning to all sorts of innocent folks. Hopefully most of them ignored me (most did- and do still, unfortunately, about Sarno's methods- though not all!)- however, I have sent the Nocebo effect out to many people through dietary and nutritional beliefs that maybe even helped some people (possibly?).

When it comes down to it- its the same as uncomfortably putting a higher than average price tag on top quality produce or eggs- nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head telling them to buy this food, and likewise nobody is holding a gun to anybody's head when they offer well meaning, though potentially harmful advice that taints food enjoyment.

Over the years I have read many many books on nutritional healing and such.

One extremely powerful incredible historical book is: Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

This amazing book is the account of Price, an influencial american dentist, who travels with his wife to fourteen different peoples of the world who still have connection to their old ways of eating and living with the land, prior to and coinciding with the influence of 'Westerner's' diets- white bread, jams, sugars, tea, coffee, etc.....

This is a thick book full of photos from the early 1900's comparing the people (and their teeth) eating the traditional foods of their peoples, with photos of people who had grown up with these traditional lifestyles and diets, with those of folks who either left the tribe or were subjected to the opening of stores selling 'westerners' food.

This is a very compelling and convincing book that supports the eating of pastured or wild meats (especially organs), eggs, and dairy, while casting all of the blame of ill health onto the diets that those who either left home, or suffered the consequences of eating 'the white man's foods' (although aside from folks in Africa and many indigenous folks in parts of Canada and Inuit folks, Price also visits white people in their traditional lifestyles in Scotland and Switzerland).

His accounts and photos are truly startling. There are side by side photos of Scottish brothers- one with no cavities and the other with a mouthful of rot and decay.

There are photos of indigenous folks with perfect gleaming teeth who still eat their traditional foods, beside folks eating 'white man's foods'- mostly black, rotten and missing teeth.

These are heartbreaking photos of many suffering people.

It is an easily and understandably acceptable conclusion that it is diet that has caused horrible teeth pain for all of these sufferers who have swapped shellfish or wild eggs or livers and hearts for toast with jam and tea with sugar.

We have to wonder, though, what these people who have 'left the tribe', or have had a 'white man's store' opened up in their neck of the woods, have experienced beyond a change in diet.

These days we can mostly just fantasize about what life would have been like in a traditional society- where everybody knew their place and purpose. Food harvesting or growing techniques would be just part of the norm and your community would be filled with familiar people who you trusted and never questioned or doubted (maybe). There would likely be fewer big questions such as 'what will I do with my life? or what is the right food to eat today?. Everybody would have relationships, everybody would be watching each others' back, and life would have had far fewer distractions and cause for individuality. Ignoring war and famines and monsters in the woods, this existence would possible by a good time (if we didn't know about all of the fun stuff that exists today!)

What would happen if you decided to up and leave this society- and what would cause a person to leave such a society? What would happen if conquistadors invaded your tribe and threatened your way of life and traditions?

If we look at people and animals as simple life forms that only need water, nutrients, and light- then we are ignoring everything that Sarno has taught the world about buried rage causing pain and symptoms.

One can only imagine the sound of all of the teeth grinding going on in these scenarios.... To up and leave your family and head to the big city- maybe this brother of the healthy scot suffered a bunch of abuse, so bad that he went to the big bad city where family and tribal shame kept him awake at night with a sore jaw.

Maybe these indigenous tribes with the abysmal teeth were grinding their teeth day and night because they had suffered murders, tortures, and dislocation from their tribes.

Even good natural food doesn't taste as good when there's bad shit going on in your life and demons at your door....

I have suffered from less than ideal tooth health through my life. Any dental health offered by me should be promptly ignored.

For example, in the book 'Cure Tooth Decay' I learned of a man who had never in his life brushed his teeth but ate a diet of clabbered milk. This man had filthy teeth and ended up at the dentist who cleaned away all of the filth only to discover: PERFECT TEETH! Hooray for him!

I concluded from this book (about a decade ago) that I didn't need to brush my teeth anymore because we kept goats and had milk and ate meat. So I stopped brushing my teeth for a year (sometimes I would scrub them with a pounded stick!), totally convinced that our amazing diet would totally protect me from tooth decay.

Unfortunately, during this year, my tooth decay advanced.

During my thirties I had 4 teeth pulled (or more accurately, cut out of my mouth). In my teenage days I had braces for 3.5 years and fillings in most of my teeth and root canals.

Amazingly, after using Sarno's methods, all tooth pain has disappeared completely (agonizing tooth pain is why I had 4 teeth pulled). I even chomp on frozen fruit and swish icy water between my teeth- just because I can!

Part of my success with Sarno's methods and at least my teeth pain going away has been plenty of brain talking and telling my brain to stop jaw clenching and teeth grinding (this has been very successful).

At one point a dentist strongly recommended that I get a plastic device for night-time tooth grinding which he could obviously see was wearing down my teeth and breaking them crack and snap.

I regularly brush my teeth now (who the heck, other than a crazy person, doesn't brush their teeth to enjoy the fresh clean feeling).

Weston Price's fans are big supporters of pastured milk, meat and eggs and are a really great bunch of folks for righteously supporting livestock farmer's rights. I am totally in with this. Eggs, butter, bacon, steak, whipped cream- yum yum yum. Brains and livers- no thanks! Those are for the king of England (the royal family, and many people around the world, supposedly enjoy fried calves brains- probably tasty enough, but we don't serve that up around here- our cat and dog or liver and brain fancying friends would all be missing out!).

Another book 'The Devil in the Milk' by Keith Woodford, paints an incredibly compelling case of how genetic differences in some cows (specifically Holstein-Fresians, the main Black and White cows) are responsible for all of the ails that plague people kind. This fellow compares health statistics of people living in their native lands, to those who have emigrated to other countries. He has concluded that even though these folks eat the 'same foods' that they ate in their home countries, the biggest difference is the breed of cow producing these milks and cheeses and yogurts.

'I pity the poor immigrant, who wishes he would have stayed home'. That song is very telling.

What sends people leaving their homelands to new countries to eke out new lives? Adventure? Excitement?

Maybe, but more likely things like political problems, war, famine, lack of opportunities, abusive families and so on.

Beyond dangerous milk, what other things do immigrants experience? Racism, dislocation from their 'roots', change of profession (doctor in the native country- taxi driver or fast food worker in the 'promised land').

Even if the food is 'the same'- it probably isn't. It may come in a package, or isn't fresh, or not funky enough- who knows?

Beyond tooth grinding, we can only imagine the incredible array of ailments that could befall folks who have to uproot and leave home! Even if it is a choice, it may have been a necessary choice to save your life.

'Devil in the Milk' is a compelling book- seemingly harmless. However, the studies in this book have created the A2 milk movement and is causing dairy producers to swap up their cow breeds in New Zealand, Australia and beyond. This is probably no big deal, as the so called A2 cows are pretty darn good cows, like Jerseys and Guernseys, fine cows that produce plenty of cream (unlike Holstein's- whose milk is supposedly valuable for washing the dishes when the power goes out! this is a mean joke for holstein herders- sorry.)

Whatever, we love Tina, our Jersey cow (check out Tina the Flying Cow on you tube- the amazing helicopter rescue (seriously) of our cow after our farm was trashed from a flood) and simultaneously, since using Sarno's methods, have had no problem eating liberal amounts of 'dangerous' A1 Holstein milk, whipped cream, and cheese (when we were evacuated).

There are so many people- vegetarians, omnivores, and carnivores, around the world who live in good health and into old age around the world. Many are famous and outspoken, and many are ordinary common folks like the rest of us. Many of them smoke and drink and eat whatever they want, and many abstain from all intoxicants and eat simple mindful food.

Looking into the mouths of people today all around the world could lead people to all sorts of conclusions. There is unfortunately way more rotten teeth than the human race deserves.

As for not rotten teeth, my amazing wife has never had to have a cavity filled in her adult life! She lives in the same house she lives in since she was a teenager, and is close to her family. She was a vegetarian for many years (at least a decade if not more) and chewed lots of chewing gum as a teenager and kept jolly rancher candies in her locker (which she told me she wouldn't crunch down on). She is an excellent avid tooth brusher and kept goats for milk for ten years before I met her.

So I just don't know what to think. I know that I will definitely never stop brushing my teeth.

Probably most compelling lifestyle diets like Weston Price inspired diets, or macrobiotic diets, or blood type diets, or raw food diets are pretty harmless. If you love and enjoy these diets and they work great for you and your lifestyle and you don't worry about OPP's (other people's problems, or maybe the way you perceive that other people's diets are a problem) than great- good food.

If you find that blue jello is the perfect remedy for you, or that there's nothing wrong with eating fast food once in a while, or that chips and white bread and PB & J and cheesy pizzas aren't causing any problems, and you darn well enjoy this food- then good.

I am not talking about eating into oblivion where you can't stop eating massive quantities of food and this is causing you to gain way too much weight- this is a different situation altogether.

I am definitely not the right person to offer any nutritional advice whatsoever. My family eats almost exclusively a completely organic diet of our own homegrown fruits, veggies, meats, milk, cheese, and eggs, and we grind organic grain for our own breads and baking, and otherwise buy in anything else that we need in organic form.

We eat salad year-round either as lettuces, micro greens, and sprouts.

We naturally ferment pickles and age meat and use unrefined sea salt. Our breads are all sourdough and honey is our main sweetener and fermenter with unrefined sugar filling in the gaps.

And really, I have no intension of changing up our delectable diet for any reason whatsoever, in the same way that I will never in my right mind not brush my teeth.

Even though I am convinced that John Sarno's techniques have done more and are continuing to do more to overcome any pain and ailments that I used to suffer than any diets or nutritional advice I had ever encountered (or dreamed of), I still eat a great diverse diet and brush my teeth because I like to do this.

I also enjoy that I can eat cheeseburgers when we are in town, or roast a genuine pink hot dog and eat it in a white bun at a halloween gathering, or that I can pile my plate high with all sorts of foods I would never have eaten in the past at a community Christmas dinner, or that I can enjoy cheesy pizza on a white flour crust (like we ate for dinner tonight) and not fear and experience the next morning sitting on the toilet in fist clenching agony.

So basically I can eat whatever I want now. I no longer have to place food burdens on anybody in my life anymore.

Our dietary choices don't just mess with us- they also mess with our families, especially our kids.

If we're forcing our kids to eat strange foods because they are 'good for them' or giving them grief because they prefer foods that are not 'nutritionally superior', then we are definitely loading them up with buried rage.

If eating some particular food means pulling out the big book of nutritional wisdom, turning to page 888 and adding up all of the pros and cons of what your kids are agonizingly waiting to devour, and then saying yay or nay- then this is dietary madness. PURE RAGE.

If you're dropping a plate of liver or a heap of swiss chard in front of a kid who really doesn't like it (maybe some kids do?) then this is definitely filling the RAGE BANK

And if you're dropping this same plate of food in front of you while you plug your nose and eat 'the good food', while you would rather eat a plate of crispy chicken wings or a BLT or cheese and crackers or veggies sticks and dip, then you really need to do some brain talking.

I've been blabbling way too long and so I will stop now.