Dr. John Sarno: A Medical Pioneer

Dr. John Sarno

Last month an article in Forbes by Edward Siedle, “How America’s Best Pain Doctor Took on the Medical Community – and Won” (see link below) featured my favorite chronic pain mind/body specialist, Dr. John Sarno. Sarno’s innovative treatment could only have been accepted because he put a distinguished career on the line. He possessed the expertise to back up his claims. Essentially, he was disgusted by the way the medical community took advantage of chronic pain clients, or clients with the mysterious fibromyalgia. He asserted that the way peers treated pain was “gross malpractice, generally practiced.” 

It’s not that his theory required clients to spend years in therapy. To the contrary, Siedle explains: “Sarno’s brilliant insight was that by making the conscious mind of the patient aware that his unconscious was creating the pain to serve as a powerful distraction from deeply troubling, emotionally painful issues, the patient’s pain would cease to be an effective distraction and would eventually go away.” He wouldn’t be so popular if his revolutionary approach didn’t work so effectively on people who had been around the globe (or at least their city) seeking answers to their hellish existence.

Image: ABC News

The way I describe it, based on my own experience, is like... a Twinkie (I heard Hostess is going out of business – how is that possible?). Some of us use sadness to shield an angry core, and some of us do the opposite: we become angry more easily to shield a vulnerable and grief-stricken core. If you are willing to get to the cream in the Twinkie and to acknowledge the feelings there, so much gets freed up. It’s like getting your life back - a little messier, but better for it.  However, it’s painful to feel those deeper feelings and we spend a lifetime finding ways to distract and defend against them, as though we’ll die if we go there. What we discover is that we don’t die. We learn to do the Buddhist thing and “sit with the feelings,” and, almost magically, we discover that they release. Feelings don’t fester unless they are repressed or suppressed. Feelings WANT to process out of us. Learning to feel to the depth of our being is a practice, and, as we get good at it, feelings pass through more fluidly.

Go to the place you are afraid to go. Some people are truly suffering with an undiagnosed ailment, but I knew of a woman in wheelchair for months with severe back pain who was out within a week after seeing Dr. Sarno. Another wise soul who offers tools to manage feelings is Dr. Laurel Mellin. I recommend her books: The Pathway: Follow the Road to Health and Happiness or The Solution.

People are too busy to feel, and the body eventually slows them down. Instead of running from doctor to doctor and quitting all of the activity you love to do (which, ironically, will only make the pain worse because you will resent it), what if you were told that all you had to do was to feel? Could you do it?

Image: Betty Matteson Rhodes

While I am deeply grateful to Western medicine for the advances in treating serious illnesses, and I believe that most doctors make their patients’ well being and health top priority, sometimes old ideas are perpetuated. Like teachers, doctors are often expected to do too much in too little time. But some just don't want to lose money or take the time and effort to change tracks. Siedle writes: “The good news: Sarno had developed an alternative approach to treating pain that was immensely more successful (and cheaper) than the radical, costly conventional procedures of the day. The bad news: doctors whom he relied upon for referrals enjoyed the revenues related to conventional treatments they administered and would rarely send their patients to him.” Even well meaning alternative practitioners want to find an answer, and unless they incorporate a psycho-emotional component into their work, they are likely to mistakenly attribute the ailments to physical or structural abnormalities.

Fortunately, Dr. Sarno has succeeded in spite of resistance. And, the people whom he has healed celebrate his name and theories. One day he will receive the credit that is due him.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2012/11/28/how-americas-best-pain-doctor-took-on-the-medical-establishment-and-won/

Love Lasik

Baby bird in Niwot, CO

Dance transformed me into a more open-hearted woman. Becoming a counselor is yet another quest to chase out the places where I am afraid of intimacy. Witnessing (and urging) another person into the terrifying territory of feelings has required that I be equally brave.

Being open-hearted sounds either medical or perhaps like what follows will be Hallmark sentimentality. Sure, I’m now a big mush-ball when it comes to the people whom I love, but recently, my new understanding has been like Lasik surgery to the heart. Lasik permanently changes the shape of the cornea. In the same way, what I need to do to love more fully has become clear, and my heart and self are permanently altered.

Rainbow over Niwot, CO

Why is intimacy terrifying? (Counselors ask a lot of questions.) Being “burned” makes it less enticing to jump back into the water. And I’m not just talking about the relationship between couples. It applies to the connection with our parents, children, extended family and friends. We throw daggers between ourselves and others just to keep them back. Like some fake watch salesman on a NYC street corner, we hide the daggers inside special pockets of our coat – just in case someone gets too close.

Niwot, CO

  How do we do it? We judge. The other
  is too slow, too uncultured, too smart,
  too shut down, too fat, too emotional,
  too unemotional... the list goes on. Our
  egos convince us that it’s super
  important that we teach the other person
  a lesson (even if the person will learn whatever they are supposed to
  learn in their own way, on their own time). Or we argue politics
  when in fact our tantrum may have to do with poor early attachment
  to a parent. Or we hold strings to the money or time that we give. (I
  was there for you; therefore, you should be here for me now.) Or, we judge based on another’s appearance or seeming difference. And we are equally harsh on ourselves.

Captured on a visit to my sister and family

Our only job is to love... and that requires that we become bigger than ourselves, entering possibly unknown territory. When we love we set ourselves and the other free. Our egos, pesky little buggers, have the power to convince us that if we don’t do what they tell us to do everything will fall apart. And if everything falls apart, we will have no control, and then it will be our fault that the world ends because someone didn’t load the dishwasher correctly.

In NYC with my girls

  We live in an angry
  culture, and it’s not just
  road rage. Yesterday I
  saw a father walk up to
  his teenage son in the
  airport and twist his
  arm so hard I thought the boy would cry out. Love, and the healing of the
  world, begins at home. Undoing the fear of love begins at home. Where do
  you throw daggers to keep people back? Who do you need to manage so
  you will look better? Will you need to wait until you are dying to decide that
  love is really worth the pain?

LASIK is a surgical procedure intended to reduce a person's dependency on glasses or contact lenses. LOVE is a radical choice intended to reduce a person's dependency on the illusion of separation.

Where the Light Leads

I really like being in a body!  Lemon bars and enchiladas; ripe figs and Honey Crisp apples; stroking the soft coats of my big gray cats, the pink and orange of winter sunrises; the snug feel of suede half chaps and galloping pony along the back roads; slow kissing and the smell of roses; music, "This American Life" and crunching through dry fallen leaves; the little birds and plump squirrels more visible in the bare trees, the feeling in my heart on Christmas morning, my daughter’s faces… When I take time to dwell in my senses – to appreciate the detail of the world around me - I feel so alive and grateful. Knowing that my range of movement will someday be restricted inspires me to dance to capacity, to fill out space and be present every second to the process – the connection between hundredths of seconds: to be inside the movement and watching it at the same time. Anything can be done with deeper presence: cooking, sex, biking to work, massaging a friend's back or listening to our kids. Lately, I am most aware of my body while dancing - celebrating how much the collage of muscles, veins, bones, organs do all in a day.

Working with the newly bereaved through Hospice Care has only increased my sense of feeling blessed, but, too, it has confronted me with questions like: Who will be with me when I die? Who will be around to help me through it? Some of these people have lost partners who’ve been with them almost 50 years. They didn’t bargain for going it alone, and it breaks my heart to watch them grasp for hope in the confusion of grief.

  

Sure, I’ve listened to Death Cab for Cutie’s song, “What Sarah Said” that ends: “So, who’s going to watch you die?” many times, but witnessing people who have just lost their "other half" face these bigger questions, I am compelled to do the same. People can’t just drop everything, and sometimes it’s the people who we least expect who come through during hard times… or even, in the end.

Some spiritual folk say that the reason spirits hang around is because death is not that big of a transition and the spirits occasionally need guidance towards the light. Not knowing where the light will lead, sometimes it’s more comforting to remain in the attic of the beautiful home they had built. "They" suggest that when a person dies we say: “Your spirit just left your body. Go look for Aunt Shoshana” (or whomever they know who has already crossed over). Otherwise the person might hang around wondering why no one is speaking to them. I've also heard it said that death is a continuation of how we live and maybe if we die with presence, we won't need anyone pointing us to the light.

I wonder what it will feel like to dance on the other side. But, for now, I really like being in this body!

photo: Eliza Karlson

Does Guilt have a Home?

photo credit: Blogos

Some say guilt is necessary, that it keeps us from doing things we shouldn’t do and makes us do things we should do.

Really? It's useless.  (Sorry guilt. I know I’m pissing you off here.) We have a conscience to serve that purpose. Conscience is like Obi Wan Kenobi, Gandalf or Glinda. Guilt is like a raging, alcoholic father who never got his needs met. With whom would you rather hang out or align yourself? The term “guilty conscience” is odd. If a conscience is what helps us determine the best choices for ourselves why would our conscience be guilty if we choose something that does not serve us or the greater good? We would have just made a mistake. We make amends, forgive and be forgiven.

I’ve heard many people talk about their relationship with guilt. Some say: “Guilt keeps me in line.” (Sounds like Mr. Sheen talking.) Or I’ve heard: “I went to counseling, and I learned I was just going to have to always live with a low level of guilt in relationship to my mother.” WHY? What part of us believes that guilt is good and essential?

It’s like when we’re born some of us are signed up for the guilt club and we don’t realize we can get out. And, if you choose to cancel the
membership, other tribe members will sneer and boo, but when you
get a good distance away you will begin to run and never look back.

photo credit: LegalSchnauzer

The inner critic (in some spiritual circles referred to as “the ego”) punishes and clings. And if you’re not holding on too, it condemns you for not caring, for thinking you are better than you are, for being “selfish.” The freer we are, the more generous and compassionate we become. The clearer we are, the better we use our valuable time. The more honest we are, the less feelings get hurt and the more people who cling learn to take responsibility for their behavior. Conscience means doing something we might not otherwise do because it serves the greater good. Guilt means doing something we might not otherwise do and then resenting it.

Part of the reason we experience guilt is because an inner judge is sitting in the seat where our self observer is supposed to sit. We make impulsive decisions and judge ourselves (instead of making a thoughtful choice to begin with). We choose to take a mental health day off from work, but a co-worker finds out and chastises us; instead of standing up for ourselves with esteem and the knowledge that we will work twice as hard upon return, we agree with the inner judge and beat ourselves up. We cower and destroy the joy of nourishing ourselves. It’s like there’s a whole Supreme Court in our heads. No wonder our culture is losing its heart.

I’m not sure when my justices moved out and took residence elsewhere, but I believe that my health is a direct result. My body, mind, soul and conscience are healthier (and happier) without guilt. Personal freedom is a gift, a choice and a step towards Heaven on Earth. I am blessed and my hope is to help others take action to free themselves from thoughts and people who bind so that they may discover and celebrate their unique voices.

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