My back’s story
When I was a sophomore in high school I went to block a
layup, bumped a hip midair, lost my balance and landed directly on my tailbone.
Something popped, cracked or shifted. Coach whistled and the drill was over. Practice
was over. It was time to run laps. Pride, fear and adrenaline got me to the
base line. That night at practice, I cried in front of everyone I respected
running those sprints. I knew something was wrong but these suicides needed running.
Since then, I’ve had chronic back pain. I’ve been told I
have signs of arthritis at the base of my spine. I’ve received pain killers and
epidurals. I’ve tried corrective stretching, strength training, yoga, foam
rollers, etc. These things helped a little, but the pain would always return.
Last month something severe happened. I was walking into my
bedroom and my back seized up. I felt the muscles of my lower back slowly,
powerfully, clench to a point that I simply couldn’t stand. I fell face forward
on my bed. I couldn’t move.
It’s weird thinking back to that moment. It was like when I was
in a car accident. I became completely, only, a witness to my experience. I had
no control as an actor or affecter. I just watched. I watched my body disregard
all conscious singling. I felt my back angrily spasm between contracting and
relaxing.
I laid there for a good 20 minutes before I called for help.
I was having a little existential crisis. I thought about how suicide seemed
like a sensible option if I lost control of my legs. I realized I feared dying
(for a long time, psychedelics had me thinking I wasn’t afraid of death. Naw. I
am.) I thought about what I would change if I could walk again.
That day was hard. But I got through it. And a couple days
later, while listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, I heard a man talk about a
doctor he went to see for back pain. The proselytizer was convinced this doctor
had a unique and successful perspective and treatment of back pain. Curious, I
Amazon’d the doctor’s book.
Dr. John Sarno
I read the book. Wow. Never had I read a book by a clearly
sober and scientific individual whose perspective was so psychedelic and
psychological.
John Sarno was a professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the
New York University School of Medicine. His perspective is simple. Most back,
neck, shoulder, and butt pain is not due to any physiological or structural abnormalities
in the spine. Most pain is a function of repressed emotions.
If you are a skeptic, please, read his books. Check his
studies. The results are impressive. I don’t have his book handy and I’m not a
doctor so I won’t try providing scientific evidence to support his theories. I’m
only here to share my experience.
Sarno’s treatment is simple. Step one, believe your pain is
due to repressed emotions and not due to structural dysfunction. Step two,
search for what emotions you may be repressing and work with them consciously. (Go
to the doctor and get their opinion and read his book if you have back pain. Do
your research. Knowledge here is particularly important.)
I’ve been using this perspective the last five weeks.
Whenever I feel the familiar flare of pain in my back. I take a moment and tell
myself that I have no structural abnormalities of the spine. I tell myself that
I am repressing an emotion. I take a moment to look at what emotions I could be
ignoring. Normally, the answer is always fear or anger, more commonly felt as anxiety
or frustration. I try to let the emotion come into consciousness and I accept
it.
That’s it. In my experience, once I take maybe a minute to
do this, the pain goes away. The pain fucking goes away. I’ve used this maybe
once every couple of days.
The new story of my back
Basketball was the activity I felt most alive playing. I was
just good enough, and naive enough, to genuinely believe I could play basketball
as a way of life. I let the dream consume me. I thought about playing
basketball more than I thought about sex as a teenager. I could only imagine my
future through basketball.
Yeah, I injured my tailbone in high school, but it healed
and I didn’t have back pain again for a while. The back pain started after I
had rotator cuff surgery. After thinking about when the pain would flair up, I
found it always got bad around the time I’d start getting really invested in
basketball again. I use to think the pain was always due to me tweaking a
lingering injury.
I tried a new perspective. The pain flared up whenever I
started reminding myself of my dead dream. Getting back into basketball shape,
and getting close to what I once was, triggered the repressed emotions I had
never dealt with. Giving up my basketball dream was forced on me and I had
never processed my anger.
After choosing to try this new perspective, I tried something
weird. I wrote a raw and honest apology letter to my body. I apologized for
pushing him as hard as I did. I apologized for being angry at him after he
failed to live up to the goal I made. I told him I was sorry and that I’m
grateful for everything he does. He regulates my autonomic nervous system, he
constantly breaks apart and reassembles molecules for repairing. He does a lot.
I apologized.
And, as crazy as it may sound to the skeptic. No back pain.
It’s gone.
What is happening?
I don’t know. Sarno’s theory is that repressed emotions
manifest as pain throughout the nervous system due to deoxygenation. He thinks
the mind creates this lack of oxygen to produce pain to help distract the
individual from an emotion the unconscious doesn’t think the consciousness can handle.
Skeptics and most people who consider themselves rational
would say this is a placebo. Saying “placebo” implies a kind of false cure.
This is an unconscious assumption of a dualist, rationalist, materialist, or
scientist. I don’t know if it is wrong to have this bias, but be aware that it
is an unconscious bias in many scientifically inclined individuals.
Experimentally, the individual is free from pain. You've been brainwashed if they hold any kind of knowledge above self-knowledge.
What you experience is beyond all other appeals to knowledge. (haha, this is obviously biased by my experience. Cue, paradoxical loop.)
We have thousands of unconscious beliefs running in the
background of our subconscious. Many of these thoughts trigger shame, guilt,
envy, etc. Many of these thoughts constrict our potential.
Experiment. Your life is your experiment. Explore your mind.
Wanderlust for new reality tunnels. You are thoughts away from drastically new
lives. Play.
Okay, done preaching. I love you. Thank you for reading.
Namaste.