Bookmark

Mary, Lainey, Katrina and nancy, thank you all for your kind words. I'm so glad that I have been able to distill some wisdom from the past decade that is helpful to others. This forum has been a life-saver for me and I remember well the years I combed posts here (and tmshelp) for insights and answers. These days I do what I can to help provoke epiphanies and to connect healing dots for others.

Jules, I love Sarno to bits but I really think the repressed emotion paradigm is too narrow. Undeniably emotions are key but in terms of healing I find that whole field very unhelpful. That's why I got so stuck for so long.

When I left the forum for two years I gave myself tacit permission to expand my healing repertoire to include more body-oriented methods. At first I experienced the voice of internalised reproach but after a while it softened and fell silent.

I needed to include my body in my healing. I needed to break the orthodox TMS protocol conditioning that denied any and all physical intervention. I had created a nest of obsessive healing prohibitions and beliefs around the pain. I had to be away from well-intentioned people confusing the hell out of me. All of this was pre-Alan Gordon days so the healing ethos was very much the pure psychological Sarno.

Alan Gordon's new program helped me break the last of the conditioning. (I know you have done that to death too so I'm not about to suggest any re-explorations. I am saying that no efforts are ever wasted and at some point in the future don't be surprised to find pieces falling into place by themselves.)

All the psychological stuff didn't help me at all with my pain initially, those boons would come later. The post I wrote above is a devotion to those insights. However I had reached the point where 'trying to heal' had generated so much additional tension I needed more to break the deadlock. I am also someone who is very kinaesthetic and benefits greatly from the physical relief.

Hand on heart, my pain-reduction was most dramatically affected by sleep, the combination of swimming and prolonged use of the massage jets in the jacuzzi, and by Yin Yoga. These elements used in conjunction with the emotional healing (the self-soothing and self-care) were the combination I needed.

Life is physical and is subject to wear and tear. My car has had need of a couple of repairs lately and that is not due to emotional issues! Our bodies have physical needs too and we need to honour them. We need to respect the experiences that shape us.

You speak of your body's battle scars...my hubby had a bad fall as a kid which resulted in a traumatic brain injury (TBI), in exactly the place where Parkinson's would later manifest. So while I am very optimistic that he can heal symptomatically, I acknowledge that something very real and very physical exists. These wounds are part of our story and I prefer to embrace them than try to ameliorate them out of existence. Some things we have to live with and the emotional healing rests in making peace with that.

Mind~Body healing has been practised for thousands of years in every culture of the world. Everything from song, story and dance through to diet, herbs and massage with all manner of beautiful rituals inbetween. It seems absurd to me that we get stuck on one way of healing and one way of living. Carving up the mind from the body from the soul is a very modern practice which really makes no sense at all. They are indivisible. This perspective gifts us with a cornucopia of choices, that we may be creative with. Doing nothing is sometimes an excellent choice, which brings us full circle to the point of your post. It's perfectly ok to down tools and take a breather and somewhere in that space your intuition will pipe up with the next right move.

Plum x