PROBLEMS WITH STRETCHING, YOGA, MEDITATION, ETC

I should clarify here that anybody who stretches, practices yoga, meditates, gets reiki, seeks massages, and whatever else and is totally have a 100% good time and positive bunch of experiences should continue what they're doing.

Who the heck doesn't want a massage? Getting your back cracked feels great. Yoga seems like a fun time! I have heard that meditation can allow you to travel through your mind in amazing ways.

20 years ago I had some weird hip pain when living in the city, sought the help of an 'orthobionomist', did a bunch of stretching excercises for a while (good times), and overcame my hip pain. I had many years thereafter of no pain as I worked on organic farms and travelled in warm climates during a totally carefree time in my life.

20 years later and in that period I have experienced a plethora of terrible horrible pains including pounding migraines with barfing, neck stiffness, knee pain, elbow pain, horrendous tailbone pain, tons of food intolerances and more. I have been able to overcome all of these symptoms using John Sarno's methods exclusively.

My family has a beautiful organic farm in the Nicola Valley, BC, Canada, where we have orchards and gardens and animals. I have for a very long time made up a pile of excuses for why meditation, stretching, and yoga didn't work for me (although I used to really wish that I could fit them into my life).

I would always think 'Why do I need to stretch when I do so much stretching and bending when planting, weeding and harvesting'. And I would think 'Why doesn't meditating while walking count as meditating (it probably does), I can do mind work while I'm busy walking around the farm or up the mountainside for a change of scenery. (I always now talk to my brain about all of my buried rage while I walk about doing chores or whatever, when there is some symptom that needs addressing- great time to talk to your brain!).

This was all before I knew about John Sarno's methods and I was just making excuses for not dedicating time in my day for alternative therapies that seemed to me to be the gold standard for being truly hip and alternative.

At the peak of my pain I was experiencing such excruciating tailbone pain that I thought that I must have prostate cancer or something (at 39 years old!). I was reduced to tears daily for a long grueling winter where I couldn't sit in a chair or lift anything and felt like a completely ruined wreck of a human being. I envisioned my life farming as being some sort of impossible future because of all of my terrible pain. This is old news.

Reading Sarno's books (back to back and eventually 20 times over a few years) and ignoring excercises and such and focussing completely on my buried rage and talking to my brain has served me extraordinarily well. I feel super duper most of the time. Life can still overburden you when you need to do extra brain talking and suffer mild shadows of old symptoms- so it goes.... The work never stops!

So what really are the problems with alternative therapies like yoga, meditation, stretching, chiropractors, etcetera etcetera in connection with John Sarno's healing methods?

Well, one thing that he points out is that this draws your attention away from your buried rage, and keeps you thinking that there is something physically wrong with your body that these practices can help.

Think psychological, not physical.

Now what I see that can potentially be totally completely enraging about any alternative physical therapies is the real life challenges to finding time, cash, and space to practice these therapies.

If you need a quiet sanctuary somewhere in your home for a set time in your day where nothing coming up will prevent you from sitting in silence- you might be shit out of luck. You may be a parent with kids flipping the whole house upside down and sideways. You may be working overtime to keep food on the table. You may be flat out exhausted from your busy life and there is no darn place that isn't cluttered to sit in silence.....

I have taken one yoga class in my life and it was free and I enjoyed it. I can only imagine the challenges of living in a city with a busy life and lots of bills to pay and trying to fit in commuting and paying for yoga classes that are supposed to help but are actually totally enraging because they are one more disruption to your already overloaded schedule- one more appointment.

Plus, I can only imagine being in a yoga class feeling completely self conscious to if your armpits smell or if you aren't in tip top shape like everybody else in the room.

I am not criticizing meditation or yoga or stretching on behalf of folks who live for it and fit it easily into their lives and offers nothing but beneficial feel goodness. I am just pointing out potential problems for many folks who might try to fit these therapies, as well as countless others, into their already challenging lives on earth.

The beauty of Sarno's methods is that they are completely personal and completely free (if you borrow his books from libraries and such. They really are worth the price of buying your own copies so that you can read them in the bathroom and in the bathtub and not worry about ruining borrowed books).

One of my main spots to sit in our cozy farmhouse living room is in front of our woodstove, on a hinged wooden box (full of costumes and hats and stuff) with a crocheted throw over top. I sit cross legged on this hard wooden box every morning drinking tea with my wife, and at other times in the day eating dessert or whatever. I sit cross legged and can bend over and touch the floor- no problem bending straight over and putting my hands on the ground!

I remember that after Sarno's methods really started working, that for months afterwards, and still to this day, I bask in the extraordinarily feel good sensation of sitting, totally pain free on this hard wooden box where, pre- Sarno, I was howling with pain and tears not being able to sit down anywhere!

Happy Healing

 

Awesome! Yoga sounds great!

 

This is an older, but excellent thread (that starts from an 'Ask a TMS Therapist' question). There are some helpful ideas about examining the purpose/expectations of engaging in a yoga practice here:
https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/tms-and-yoga.7910/ (Amber M. - TMS and yoga)

Your farm sounds like an amazing, gorgeous place!
I think it's worth being easier on ourselves. Walking & reflecting in a safe scenic place can be so enriching. Reflecting while working can also be restorative. I absolutely love my regular walks and hikes, and I reflect while working on various things.
Trying to put everything in a category and making it 'count' towards something can jam us up. Sometimes there are activities that are just great for our bodies and our spirit (and mental health too). And, we don't have to do them exactly like everyone else does or like the way books or videos or whatever tell us how to do them (thank goodness, right?).

 

I have that book on my kindle now! I got sidetracked by "Scarcity Brain" (so good).

I've heard Nicole Sachs say something about how anything can be integrated into your life or "journey" as long as are you approaching it from a place of love vs fear or obligation. I was doing yoga and meditation out of obligation and getting so stirred up! I was doing several daily Bible studies in the YouVersion app (with my Aunt, Mother and Cousins) and I finally had to quit that! I got back into what I enjoy doing and it pushed me even further along. So, that's kinda how I view things now: Am i doing this from love? Or Fear?

 

I am too new to TMS to understand much of how it works. But something struck me in the work I was doing in my head (while digging potatoes, @Michael Coutts!) yesterday.

About 20 years ago, I suffered from carpal tunnel in my left wrist. For about 2 years. It started because my baby leaned in hard on my wrist when I breastfed her. It was so painful that I thought my wrist was broken and I had it X-rayed twice over the 2 years even though I had no insurance.

One day, a new yoga studio opened near us. As an introductory offer, they offered free hot yoga sessions (90 minutes) every day for 7 days. I went every day. By Day 5, no more carpal tunnel pain! None. Like it never happened. And I never felt it again (even though I was still breastfeeding). I was not expecting that, I was going as a staycation.

Looking back, I am sure I was dealing with TMS pain. But somehow the hot yoga overrode my neural pathways for the pain without my investigating all the stressors in my life.

I have tried yoga once or twice since, but it paled in comparison to the hot yoga sessions I had experienced. It was something else!

This time around for my back pain, I can attest that no amount of stretching or PT has helped at all. So here I am, trying to untangle things at the source. With so much support in this forum, it’s an exciting ride too!

 

John Sarno had a 90% success rate in healing his patients after screening out the ones who weren't likely to accept his theories (which TMS Wiki may naturally do as folks not open to mindbody will probably just leave this site)

At a point in Sarno's career he had to stop including physical therapies as part of his program. He described this as a sad situation as the folks doing the physical therapy were good people.

Sarno recommends to THINK PSYCHOLOGICAL, NOT PHYSICAL, and this is why he talks about therapies like massage and excercise to be used only because you enjoy it and it doesn't do harm (as in, it doesn't distract you from understanding that your buried rage is causing your symptoms). He strongly recommends that you keep your mind foccussed on mind work- as in talking to your brain about all of your buried rage.

Taking a week long hot yoga class when you are a young mother with an endlessly needy baby (who you adore), a farm, and a partner, could easily be seen as an incredibly welcome break from incessant motherhood and responsible adulthood.

This also sounds like it happened at a time when the many years that can accrue major mountains of buried rage spent in responsible adulthood were yet to come.

20 years ago I also had a successful encounter with alternative healing. Working at a health food store in the city, I started experiencing a bizarre painful hip symptom. I was recommended to an 'Orthobionomist'. I paid 50 bucks, walked up and down the hall while the practioner observed, had some mild body manipulations, and was sent home with a stretching program. I had good success. In hindsight- it was quite exciting to hire an alternative healer for the first time in my life (I had only ever been to conventional doctors and dentists for mundane ordinary reasons). I also changed my lifestyle and location (off to organic farming) which was a huge relief from city life, and so of course I healed up with minimal problems for many years.

A short trip in the U.S (I'm Canadian) while I was practicing a (short-lived) vegan diet left me rolling over in pain in my guts. At the end of this trip I took a 3 day cooking/healing class with a food and nutrition writer that I was a big fan of. She was grandmotherly and cooked good food and told me to stop eating a vegan diet (and also set me up believing that I had wheat & cow milk allergies for many years- nocebos) and so of course that stopped the stomach pain- a good dose of love and nurture.

Yoga and stretching and massage and qi gong and special diets and walking in the woods and gardening are all, totally personal, healing modalities that are totally individual.

I am going to mention a brand new therapy called 'White Stripes Therapy' that I just made up today. Before learning Sarno's life changing therapies, I was in the throws of intense regular migraines amongst other pains. During my migraines I had to avoid bright lights and sounds and such...... However, I would find that when I would crank up noisy White Stripes and Jack White albums on the stereo full blast, my migraines would lessen! How crazy is that.

I have actually met another person who I talked to this about who claimed that Jack White's music also helped him through some rough times.

Now I'm sure that there are enough White Stripes fans in the world that would probably accept and be benefited by White Stripes Therapy, and probably already are.

One of the best things about this type of therapy is that when you crank up the noisiest of the White Stripes, it can drown out conversations in your household that you don't want to hear in the other room, from people who might actually be contributing to your reservoir of rage (this is probably why it is so therapeutic).

Really though, White Stripes Therapy has absolutely no place whatsoever being talked about on a John Sarno page.

Although Yoga, meditations, walks in the park, screaming into pillows, throwing rocks, hot baths, board games, good food, funny TV shows, inspirational books, and on and on, can, on a personal level (and shared level) be therapeutic tools, they are totally distracting from John Sarno's methods.

Why might all of these different modalities be effective pain and symptom relievers? Perhaps, if because when we really like doing them and can identify positively with them, then they are welcome breaks to rage burying. If we really love to do something and find healing from it so much that we will change our schedules, turn off our phones, close the door with a DO NOT DISTURB sign, or drive away to a welcome appointment, then we are really feeding our ID, our Child Self, in a big good important way. We are setting a form of boundary, even if that means turning up a stereo so loud without consideration for other people- we are setting a boundary and doing something truly for ourselves.

I could write a list that would be dizzying with all of the fine, enjoyable and thought provoking books that I have read in my lifetime.

The reality, though, is that they don't belong on this website.

The only books that, in my strong opinion, are worth mentioning on a John Sarno healing website are John Sarno's books, as well as Marc Sopher's, and Ozanovich's (although I haven't read his books, because they weren't in our library system, I know that John Sarno himself recommended these books), and any other books that truly and completely focus on John Sarno's healing program: acknowledging and accepting, through the education of reading the literature and practicing the work, that our pain and symptoms are completely and utterly due to the buried rage that we have accumulated (and continue to accumulate) throughout our lives. And telling our brains that THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE- STOP THE PAIN, BRAIN!!!

I feel like it is totally acceptable to appear to be overly zealous on this subject because this is a website full of folks who have truly healed, or are trying to heal, from their pain using John Sarno's methods. This is a JOHN SARNO website- correct?

Although I was the sort of high school student who literally fell asleep snoring with his head on the table in class, or, if a subject bored me, would make an excuse and wouldn't come back, I feel like at this point I need to blow a whistle and shout PAY ATTENTION!!!

Recess and lunch are a great time in school for kids to talk about their favourite TV shows, books, comics, games, sports, adventures music and so on and so forth. This website is likewise an easy opportunity to talk about our enjoyable extra curricular healing activities that make us feel good. Some people could easily add smoking a joint or drinking a beer or vegging out in front of the tv all day for a highly recommended escape from pain- especially if if we enjoy these activities in an ID feeding sort of way....

I can only talk from experience when I say that reading John Sarno's books back to back (with other genuinely Sarno centric books included) over and over (20 times) has been the most highly effective pain and symptom healing program that I never ever fathomed existed.

Even if White Stripes Therapy takes off and heals many people on some sort of temporary level, like placebo pills, it really doesn't belong on TMS WIKI. My only hopes about mentioning it here is that the word can get out to Jack White about John Sarno's methods, so that he can use them to vanquish his pain and continue making great music (in my opinion) for many many years. I wrote him a letter about John Sarno before our farm got destroyed by a massive flood in 2021- though I have never sent it. We have only had the internet here for a year, and so I actually had no clue as to how famous he actually was until nature blasted us out into the big world, and my low self esteem has prevented me from mailing him a letter about Sarno (his albums first showed up on our local bookmobile).

Anyways, especially for folks who are new to Sarno's methods, I recommend this: If anybody is recommending any other books or healing techniques then put them on your backburner and ignore them until Sarno's methods have really sunk in deep into your subconscious (this is the program).

Reading other non-Sarno books may only distract you- maybe even our brains do try to distract us from Sarno's work by sending our attention elsewhere, to other enjoyable physical therapies and thoughtful meditations on life.

I have loaned out over 40 John Sarno books from our Healing Pain Library at our farm. I mostly never met any of these people, and few have returned these books. For the few people that I have been personally loaning his books to and keeping in conversation with, I have noticed that some people will read a Sarno book once, then read a whole bunch of other interesting mind-body books, and will return a while later kind of confused about Sarno's methods and I will need to explain them again.... I wonder why they don't just bite the bullet and keep reading Sarno's books again and again thereby really getting the message down. It is kind of like studying for what for many people could be the biggest test of their lives. BUCKLE DOWN AND STUDY SARNO'S BOOKS!!! Howard Stern recommends this too!

I am trying hard not to offend anybody on this website. I really don't want to get banned from here. I do see that some issues need to be raised, especially when they direct our attention away from Sarno's teachings.

Even though it is fine to recommend other healing modalities and literature, it is especially important with people who are new to Sarno's theories, that we all work hard to keep them on track.

Three Cheers For the GREAT HEALER JOHN SARNO- HOORAY!!!!

 

@Michael Coutts, I hope I didn’t come across as suggesting hot yoga is a reliable treatment modality. It was an epiphany to me in the last day or so that maybe I had already experienced TMS before. I got lucky that something random unexpectedly helped the pain at the time. The other part of the epiphany was realizing the hot yoga experience had worked through my brain, while all these years I thought it had worked its magic directly on my body! Now I feel I am doing the work at the root of the symptoms and that is pretty cool. Even cooler in fact. I am definitely convinced.

Anyway, you should send the letter! ;-)

 

If hot yoga or any other type of body work or excercise or nature walk or rock climb or stretch program or dance program or whatever makes you feel good, then great- stick with it as long as it works for you.

I do believe it is very important to think about why these things actually do make you feel good, as in that you have less pain or other symptoms.

I think that it is likewise a good idea to reflect upon past healing situations that also coincided with a diet change, new 'healing' practice, or whatever.

For my own self, I think it is a good idea to see how this can fit with Sarno's teachings. Could something that I really enjoy also coincide with breaks from the life stressors- work, family, expectations?

Do your other feel good activities also coincide with the day's end, when there's no more expectations upon you- your work is done. Likewise for weekend and holiday, or important activities where you have booked time off from work or family- where you have put your foot down at last, fought for the right to practice your feel good activity, and wouldn't change it come hell or high water.

Do all of these other feel good activities, seemingly separate from Sarno's teachings (dietary choices, yoga, massage, white stripes therapy), also make good food for our ID, or child self?

At last- no more goodism and responsibilty (this is probably why TV, bags of chips, joints, beers, etc... could also provide extra pain relieving symptoms for some people)- this is some self care that works!

I also don't believe that we are entering into the world of over-intellectualizing here.

When I first experienced great healing with Sarno's methods, I was literally phoning a new person every night for many months- old friends or acquaintances, distant family, and people I barely knew. This was after total phone fear where I would barely touch the phone more than a small handful of times every year.

One lady I phoned up was taken aback. She told me that she had just remembered that she had used Sarno's methods decades prior to overcome some shoulder pain or something.

She had forgotten all about his methods! I was shocked- HOW THE HECK COULD YOU FORGET ABOUT JOHN SARNO'S AMAZING DISCOVERIES AFTER THEY HAVE ACTUALLY WORKED FOR YOU?

What I can imagine, is that she continued along with life after Sarno. It was probably easier to forget about the mind work and Sarno's boring old books (not to me!). Other more attractive 'healing' modes probably came along that worked for a while and may not have continued their work and on along with more symptoms.

Suddenly Sarno's incredible methods probably just ended up on the long list of 'alternative' therapies, to pick and choose from at will.

This lady was quite thankful to be reminded of Sarno, and was eager to seek out his books, as she realized that her symptoms she was currently suffering from was probably TMS.

We can't forget that our SNEAKY BRAINS try to distract and draw our attention from the psychological, towards the physical, as some form of wacky misunderstood haywire 'self preservation' system as in 'WE REPRESS RAGE BECAUSE WE LEARNED TO DO IT AS CHILDREN AS A PROTECTIVE MECHANISM. IF YOU SCREAM, YELL, FIGHT OR SWEAR, YOU WILL GET SMACKED, YELLED AT OR WORSE. OUR BRAINS LEARNED THAT IF WE KEEP THAT RAGE BURIED THEN WE ARE SAFE- LESS BEATINGS! OUR BRAINS WILL POTENTIALLY CONTINUE TO DRAW OUR ATTENTION AWAY FROM OUR UGLY OLD BURIED RAGE BY GIVING US PAIN AND SYMPTOMS, AND MAY EVEN TRICK US INTO THINKING THAT OTHER, NON-PSYCHOLOGICAL 'HEALING' METHODS WILL HELP US.

And they probably do- all of these great other therapies. But again, why do they?

Why is it important to think about the why's in whatever makes us feel good?

Because what if we are no longer feeling good using these methods? What if we get some bona fide severe injury that prevents us from doing our favourite healing therapies? Life changes. What if the yoga studio burns down or the small town yoga teacher dies? What if doctors tell us to give up our habits that actually make us feel good? There is enough hype about marijuana being a super medicinal, it could dangerously even infiltrate the minds of mindbody people, where a placebo affect clouds their judgement. What if you decide to stop smoking pot, and you have attached other therapeutic properties to it beyond just the buzz?

THINK PSYCHOLOGICAL, NOT PHYSICAL