Megan<\/a> summarized the findings\u00a0this way: “Most recurrent or long-term pain in the neck, shoulder, back, and buttocks is caused by your autonomic (unconscious) nervous system restricting oxygen flow to these regions, and this oxygen deprivation causes pain. Your autonomous brain does this to distract you or relieve\u00a0you from having to deal with difficult emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear, especially when these emotions are not deemed acceptable by you and\/or your society (e.g., it\u2019s not ok to be angry).”<\/p>\nIt turns out that\u00a0the unconscious nervous system controls a vast array of body systems, including the regulation of\u00a0blood flow, digestion, healing, immune system activity, and many more, so there are plenty\u00a0of plausible pathways for the mind to create physical pain and discomfort. Meanwhile,\u00a0our cultures\u00a0have a\u00a0tremendous number of ways of encouraging us to repress and numb our emotions.\u00a0So the ingredients are all there, bountifully. It turns out that this isn’t\u00a0pseudo-science \u2014 nor ridiculous at all.<\/p>\n
Yet the idea of psychologically caused pain is still so foreign to the\u00a0Western world\u00a0that no doctor or physical therapist in ten years ever said anything to me about this area of study. I’m not here\u00a0to vilify them \u2014 on the contrary, I had some wonderful physical therapists who taught me exercises that I still practice for general strength and health. But I do feel a responsibility to spread the word, because\u00a0so many others\u00a0also experience chronic back, neck, shoulder, stomach, and other types of pain and related conditions.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, I can’t summarize in a short blog post the core\u00a0of the cure \u2014 namely, learning\u00a0to face the emotional difficulties that are the true cause of\u00a0most chronic pain. But Dr. Sarno says that the material covered in his book was\u00a0sufficient\u00a0to help the vast majority\u00a0of his patients. I count myself among them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A remarkable thing happened to me about a year ago. The simple\u00a0act of reading a book healed the intermittent back pain that I had lived with for almost ten years\u00a0\u2014\u00a0pain that had resisted multiple rounds of physical therapy, massage therapy, yoga, stretching, standing desks, and ergonomic chairs. Again: I merely\u00a0read a book, and the pain … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “The mind-body connection is no joke”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2089"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2104,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions\/2104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}