Mind & Physical Pain connection: A Neglected Frontier.

What is the degree to which one's mental states, beliefs and emotions influence physical health?

Let’s say you have a standard issue with something like weight, fitness or a daytime tv addiction. Widely accepted cures and how-to’s are available. The person usually will have no issue recognising that he is, perhaps, in some ways not at his best and might benefit from following some known remedies. This kind of solution is usually not that threatening for the ego.

This article is not about these situations.

It is about the domain beyond what’s considered average results, such as having an exceptionally healthy state. Today I want to focus on one issue that is relevant to many people at certain points in their lives: recurring physical pain and how it can be created and influenced by the mind.

One testament to mind’s power in this domain is the book “Healing Back Pain - the Mind Connection” by Dr. Sarno, in which he describes his work and research into “Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS)”.

Dr. Sarno is a physician curing all kinds of serious back issues, including things like herniated discs, without physical treatment. His prescription is ‘mental’. Before you think this is some quackery, I suggest you read on.

So what is TMS? According to Dr. Sarno, one avenue for the body to create pain is anxiety and repressed emotions triggering muscle spasms and depriving body parts of oxygen. Pain is often a maneuver of the body to distract the person, so the unwanted emotions do not reach the conscious mind. The diversion makes the mind focus on the physical pain instead. Dr. Sarno says self- motivated and driven people are especially prone to TMS. 

“The pain of TMS (or the discomfort of a peptic ulcer, hernia, colitis, tension headache or terror of asthma attacks) is created in order to distract the attention of the sufferer from what is going on in the emotional sphere. Focus one’s attention on the body instead of the mind. It is a response to the need to keep those terrible, antisocial, unkind, childish, selfish feelings (the prisoners) from becoming conscious. It follows from this that far from being a physical disorder in the usual sense, TMS is really part of a psychological process”

Dr. Sarno gives patients the TMS diagnosis and a certain understanding of what is going on with them. If they accept the diagnosis and follow some basic instructions about interactions with their brain, the pain stops. This is different to the placebo effect, which (as he shows in his work) is usually temporary. 

His methods prescribe an education program as treatment which can be summarized as follows:

1. Accept TMS diagnosis after following his lectures on the mechanics of it (or read his books several times for impact)

2. Think psychological not physical when pain happens

3. Talk to your brain - tell it you are not going to put up with this state of affairs anymore

4. Resume physical activity

5. Discontinue All Physical Treatment

Most patients had a resolution of their problems 2-6 weeks after Dr. Sarno’s lectures. 

So how does this work?

When the person really grasps what's going on, the trick to distract the mind with pain no longer works. The game is up. Sometimes the pain then moves on to try the diversion of attention on another body part, but if the person is aware about multiple ways TMS can show up, eventually the trickster gives up. 

Dr Sarno says the thing required for health is not to change yourself completely, remove all stressors from your life and express any unresolved childhood trauma. That is all not necessary to cause the healing. What is required is the understanding of the effect that the mental has on the physical. In addition he spends some time showing how one cannot overemphasize the importance of conditioning in TMS and the real physical impact of horrid sounding diagnoses that people get.

“Often people are programmed to have pain because of the things they have heard or been told by their practitioner. “Never bend at the waist” means the onset of pain is a sure thing when they bend from then on”

“In the long run, fear and preoccupation with physical restrictions are more effective as a psychological defense than pain. A severe attack of pain may be over in a few days, but if the person is afraid to do things for fear of inducing another attack, then the preoccupation with the body is continuous and the defense is working all the time.” 

The book discusses at length the variety of conditions and examples beyond back that are caused by TMS and its relatives' , things like tissue disorders, bone spurs, ulcers, inflammation, arthritis and all kinds of chronic pain. Even emotions as a factor in cancer processes are discussed, however he does discuss the difficulty that doctors have bringing this up with most  patients.

Before one throws their hands up and calls me a heretic, I wonder how many physicians have a huge fan list of people whose lives were changed after no one could help them, a movie with Larry David and others praising his work ?  So if it’s that good, what are the reasons that his method is not practiced everywhere and you will not get his treatment at your average doc? 

It’s basically a collective issue with the reluctance to surrender our smarts. It would make the doctors dealing with only the physical obsolete. Their expertise and power would be rapidly diminished. 

On the patient side, many refuse to consider that their diagnosed, severe, physical pain has in fact a psychological cause. It is often the case that life needs to push one to the brink before one is willing to consider surrendering his smarts. In this case it is everything he thinks he knows about mind-pain relationship and “traditional” healthcare. 

For who is this very hard to do? People who consider themselves Intelligent and educated, that have achieved certain things in certain areas. I have been there, done that. For many it is offensive to even consider surrendering pretty standard beliefs like:

• Physical pain and its degree always have a physical cause

• The mind and emotions cannot change the degree of pain, create or treat a physical condition

• The whole healthcare industry cannot possibly be so off base, the wider implications are too big to comprehend

• I will wait and see till its mainstream before I will be seen associating myself with these weird ideas.

The thing is - these beliefs can be taken apart by acquainting yourself with plenty of research, for example here and here. But usually it’s only people who are desperate enough for a solution, those for whom the current state of health is really intolerable, who will consider anything.

So, was my back cured by Dr. Sarno’s method? 

There was no need for this. I read about him after my own back issues were healed through a much ‘weirder’ method, described below. However Dr Sarno’s insights and methods belong in any family’s library and are a great resource for us in the future.

So what cured my and my family's issues and body misalignement? There is this woman in London… Maria Beremovich used to be an obstetrician, but is currently offering a specific service in her practice - Spiritual Spine Realignment. You come in, get observed, get measured by a huge ruler in various parts of your body, showing the differences in dimension in various body parts. Pictures of your misalignment are taken.  You are also shown the difference in the length of your legs as you sit down and a marker is drawn on your feet to mark the ‘before’ state. Then, Maria ‘sends energy’ into your feet when you lie down, without touching you. It takes less than a minute. I feel a warm electric jolt. I get up and my body, shoulder and leg differences are realigned. I feel different and can see and feel a straighter back. I lie back down whilst she is doing more healing stuff above the body for an hour, clearing your “energetic” body. After that hour the body is physically transformed.  Those with strong issues feel an immediate physical difference.  This was 3 months ago and my back is still great. Bi-weekly osteopath has been fired. My husband, parents and friends went.  My mother had severe dislocation and issues after a car accident years ago, now she stopped limping and neck pain is gone. My dad is a scientist who was very skeptical, but is a convert as his severely crooked back is better after this. 

Is any energy worker going to be the real deal? No, just like most doctors or drugs are not going to make much of a difference for recurring issues, otherwise the issues wouldn't be so prevalent in the population. However, for my family, Maria has been nothing short of miraculous.

What does this have to do with parenting? 

Healthier parents are beneficial for the child - that one is kind of obvious. But there is something else.. Throughout history, 99% of widely held beliefs have eventually been proven wrong when viewed through a long enough time scale. If I am serious about exploring ‘cutting edge’ human flourishing, it is only natural for me to look outside prevailing scientific and social consensus. In future writing I will explore the degree of ‘mind priming’ that’s happening , how it impacts mental / physical wellbeing and potential in kids and teenagers. And what can be done to empower them.

Resources:

Dr Sarno book: Healing Back pain . The Mind Body connection.

Heart Math Institute has plenty of research on mind-body connection:

https://www.heartmath.org/research/research-library/

A collection of various studies by others confirming Dr. Sarno’s work : https://drbrosh.com/pain-treatment-with-tms/tension-myositis-syndrome-resources/

An interesting interview with Dr. Sheldrake on how the cult of scientism is blocking shift away from the no longer defendable materialist worldview and thereby scientific progress infiniteloopspodcast.com/204