The Power of Now

Has anyone read the book called The Power of Now? A few people recommended it to me on here. Does it help with anxiety?

 

The Power of Now is more conceptual than specific to TMS. It will not tell you what to do about anxiety, but rather be a spiritual guidance through the tough times in life. I would read it as a supplement to all the TMS healing that you still need to do.

 

I am reading it now. It is an amazing book. It has helped me better understand the underlying reason for TMS. I don't even want to try and explain it, because I will do a dis-service to the book. But it opened my eyes. It contains a spiritual explanation for TMS as well as anxiety, depression, and most other mind-body issues created by the ego-brain as a distraction for really living and being. After reading it, I believe TMS can be a blessing in disguise; a way to almost force us out of our ego-mind and into a better life. To the extent you are suffering from TMS, your ego is still in control. But the good news is that means you are really close to freedom from it.

Here is an awesome quote from the book about pain: "The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don't face it, if you don't bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. The pain-body may seem to you like a dangerous monster that you cannot bear to look at, but I assure you that it is an insubstantial phantom that cannot prevail against the power of your presence...So the pain-body doesn't want you to observe it directly and see what it is. The moment you observe it, feel its energy field within you, and take your attention into it, the identification is broken. A higher dimension of consciousness has come in. I call it presence. You are now the witness or watcher of the pain-body. This means that it cannot use you anymore by pretending to be you, and it can no longer replenish itself through you. You have found your own innermost strength. You have accessed the power of Now."

 

Personally I thought it was preachy, pretentious, repetitive, and boring. Not to mention not very practical for people living a dynamic life with jobs, kids, etc. -- what Jon Kabat-Zinn calls "full catastrophe living." I couldn't finish it. Thich Nhat Hanh is much better.

 

I really like this one, it is on Buddhist somatic psychology:

https://www.amazon.com/Touching-Enl...TF8&qid=1476730076&sr=8-1&keywords=reggie+ray

Not an easy read, but made a big difference in my outlook on life.

 

I like the Power of Now and I know quite a few people who have said it helped them greatly. Some will like it some will not. Try it out and if it click then you will find it very helpful to you. Many public library have it. You don't really need to buy it.

 

I was thinking of buying this book but if the whole book is written like this quote I don't think it will be for me. I find that way of writing too hard too flaky and hard to understand. I think I'd get burnt out after a chapter. Ironically, it's very hard to stay focused reading it. I felt the same about The Presence Process. I couldn't finish reading it.

 

Someone suggested watching a you tube video by Tolle called Dissolving the Pain Body. It is 19 minutes long, so I decided to check it out. It is actually an audio of Eckhart Tolle that evidently is quoting is discourse on "the pain body" that is found is his PON book. I found it interesting, although I agree with Penny2007 in that ET can be difficult to understand. I needed to listen to it several times to better understand the message. I thought it made sense vis a vis the TMS protocols. In a way it was somewhat comforting, maybe because of ET's description of the pain body as an entity of its own within our bodies and how we can get rid of it. Why that is comforting to me I do not know, maybe that I can imagine it is not really me doing this pain to me and therefore can be easily ejected.
Also I agree that Kabot- Zinn and Thich Nhat Hanh are more palatable.

 

Right - that's why I looked him up because someone suggested that clip on Youtube. I've anyhow got too many books on my to-read list so I should probably scale back. I'll listen to the audio instead. I find his voice really mechanical sounding and monotonous to listen to though

 

I found Tolle's follow up book A New Earth a far better read than The Power of Now. He expands more on the concept of the pain body in this which is very interesting. I love the duck with the human mind story as well.

 

Just as an aside to that video...I was actually out hiking today and found myself caught up in one of those thinking narratives where you start having an internal dialogue with yourself about a past sleight. I managed to catch myself and break the loop and it suddenly dawned on me that the ability and desire to tell stories (both internally and externally) is probably humankinds greatest strength and weakness at the same time. I think Tolle highlights this perfectly here.

 

Different strokes but i find it way too dense cryptic and jargon heavy.

 

@Huckleberry - thanks for the video clip. That is a concept I've tried to adapt of late - that thoughts are not facts. Listening to him being interviewed is much easier then reading his writings.

 

you dont need to buy the book just watch the video dissolving body pain, it's the same concept as Alan Gordon's somatic tracking just in other words.
Its also an interpretation of sarnos famous quote: whenever distracted by pain think psychological.
Monte heuftles tms recovery program is entirely built on tolle's concepts.
@ezer beat suicidal pain of 12 years by following Monte heuftle and tolle.. read his success story.

Tolle as a person seems extremly boring (at least to me lol) but his ideas are truly revolutionary and I really think thruth lies in them.

 

@CarboNeVo - is this the video you mean:

I started listening to it and it was the same as the text for me, hard to understand, "jargon heavy" as someone noted above. Ironically, he's all about presence but I can't at all stay focused when listening to him.

Who is Monte heuftle? The link goes to Alan Gordon's recovery program.

 

Monte heuftle says tms is not a huge repressed emotion that is causing your suffering but rather your day to day, moment to moment thinking and behaving that is creating the repression of emotional energy (alan gordon would call it creating danger signals, both theories dont matter in recovery).
If you analyze your thoughts and behaviors throughout the day it will be something like this:
"I hate my job, i gotta do it anyway, damn the pain is awful today, how am I gonna do my work? feed my family and pay all the bills? Is this pain ever gonna stop? I stopped buying into it, why is it not going away?.... "

It's just an example of how we chronically think, and this thinking is creating the repression/ danger signals that are creating pain, because if you analyze it, you will notice:
I hate my job(negative emotion), i gotta do it anyway(negative emotion), damn the pain is awful today(negative emotion), how am I gonna do my work? feed my family and pay all the bills?(negative emotion) Is this pain ever gonna stop?(negative emotion) I stopped buying into it, why is it not going away?(negative emotion)...

Now what Monte or Tolle say, start listening to these thoughts and whenever you catch your self immersed in them, redirect your thought or behavior pattern in order to be less tenssion generating by attending to your internal state and being with whatever feeling is there without thinking.
This is the practice in Alan gordon's video somatic tracking 1. By that you would have shut down the danger signals/repressed emotional energy and stopped the brain's negative chatter that is creating TMS.

 

Here is the link to Monte's site. He seems to have gone quiet for a long time now. If you go into the TMS Updates tab on the top of the site there is a load of information...he also has a number of good videos on YouTube.

http://www.runningpain.com/ (The TMS Master Practice Program - The New-Sarno TMS Program - Home)

Purely my opinion of course but I consider Monte to be one of the best TMS practioners...yes, he does sell a structured course (I've not bought/done this) but I like his delivery, style and theory. Monte totally downplays the Sarno/Freudian aspects of the TMS theory and argues that tension generated by current real time faulty thinking and behaviour patterns causes the pain syndrome. I also like the fact that he dismisses the idea of getting caught up in TMS theory which leads to the all to often seen problem of ending up TMS'ing about TMS. Monte states that one we understand the concept it is time to stop the reading, forum visiting and intellectual analysis and then just get on with the hard yards of changing our thoughts and behaviours. I think the advances of neuroplasticity in the last few years back up this approach. He is well worth checking out.

Edit: Carbo beat me to it as I was posting but I'll leave this here.

 

Thanks to both of you. I'm finding more and more that there is a lot of overlap in the different approaches which I have/am dabbling in. Mindfulness meditation seems a lot like somatic processing and CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is all about changing the way you think to get rid of your anxiety and/or depression. I will definitely check out Monte's site. Thanks!

 

So true, I too think Monte explained TMS better than most of the TMS docs and practitioners.
I liked it when he said, I can tell you about TMS in 10 minutes, then you just have to go and do the job.

 

Yep, this is the problem. There are a lot of passionate and meaningful people in the TMS treatment sphere but I also think there are quite a few egos and financial motivation flying around. As mentioned below, Monte basically said he read HBP by Sarno, understood the concept and cracked on with recovery...he didn't read another book. This does make me wonder why we should read his though. anyway, the point is the idea of psychological distress causing physical symptoms and pain is nothing new and is as old as the hills. Sarno did take this and place it within a Freudian framework but in many ways this has muddied the waters and caused confusion. There are so many different theories etc to contend with now that when you couple this with a typical TMS,ers tendency for perfection , doing things right and intellectual analysis it is all too easy to fall into the trap of analysis paralysis. You see on here regularly people asking what books to read next etc etc which sort of indicates nothing has been committed to and the person is still locked in that state of analysis limbo. I've been guilty of all of this and have read pretty much everything going. We do it in the hope of getting that golden nugget of wisdom that will make everything fall into place but that wishful thinking is as much TMS as that chronic low back pain. It really is about trusting in the core concept, taking a leap of faith and remembering that belief is all.