I am currently reading a book called Pain Free For Life by Dr. Scott Brady. I have listened to the audio books of John E. Sarno name The Mindbody Prescription and Healing Back Pain. Both have greatly helped me overcome RSI or Carpal Tunnel. I haven’t had wrist pain in months!

As Dr. Sarno has pointed out, once the pain starts to leave one area, the subconscious mind will move the pain to another area. Essentially you apply the same principles to remove the pain. This definitely happened to. After my wrists stopped hurting the pain moved to my upper back, then my lower back. It moved around – back into my wrists, in my achilles tendon.

Eventually it stopped and I was able to resume activities with confidence, such as playing basketball in our church men’s league.

Recently my back has been acting up again. I know the pain is from tension or “inner rage” as Dr. Sarno puts it. I don’t like the term inner rage though because I don’t think rage has ever described me. But as I understand it, that is part of the problem. I am very good at suppressing this rage.

I have learned a lot about myself over the past few months. I’ve learned that I am very much a people pleaser, which I would have never admitted to in the past.

Whenever I have pain start acting up again I generally start listening to one of Dr. Sarno’s books again – generally in the morning and in the afternoon as I’m riding home on the train.

I don’t seem to be holding off the back pain this time though for whatever reason. One thing about Dr. Sarno’s books is that there is no clear step-by-step approach to solving the inner rage problem.

I was reading though some reviews of his book on Amazon and I noticed one reviewer complaining of the same thing. Someone recommended Pain Free For Life as a supplement to help you know WHAT do to now that you know all about the problem.

Unfortunately there is no audio book so I have had to read it and it is a slower process as it is harder for me to make time to read. I get sleepy when I read so I generally can only read and comprehend for about 15 minutes.

But I’m making my way through it and I have learned a lot of new insights that have been very helpful. Dr. Brady gives a daily step-by-step regimen to follow that he believes will heal pain within 6 weeks. Each day he suggests you do the following:

  1. Establish a strong mind-body-spirit link – for five minutes per day.
  2. Take control over your subconscious mind – for five minutes per day.
  3. Write about your repressed emotions using the depth-journaling technique – for 20 minutes per day.
  4. Spend time in prayer and meditation – for as long as you can
  5. Resume physical activity – for as long as you like!

So this my first step getting into journaling. There was a time for about two years where I wrote in a journal (which was actually a blog) every night. It was actually a general conference talk by Henry B. Eyring that encouraged me to do it. He said every night he would recored an experience where he saw the hand of the Lord touch him or a family member. I did the same. Looking back, even though I wasn’t writing about repressed emotions, I don’t remember having back or carpal tunnel pain much during that time. I doubt it is a coincidence.

So this is just a fair warning that for the next six weeks I may be writing about a lot of emotions and tracking my pain progress. My back has been in pain for about 3 weeks or more now. Sometimes I can barely move, other times it is barely noticeable. Most often it hurts the worst first thing in the morning and the pain lessens throughout the day. It was the same way with my RSI when I first started getting into the Mindbody approach. My theory is that because it is subconscious, I can’t fight it while I’m sleeping.

I have a few journal entries that I have written in Day One App, that I was trying out. I like the interface of that journal app, but I prefer having all my entries in the blog – available from any computer.