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HI, I just want to share my experience with this amazing pain recovery program. I had been suffering coccydynia (pain in tailbone area) and mainly lower back pain for at least 15-18 years. My main symptom is I could not sit long in (especially) soft cushioned chair. My job is desk bound, you can imagine how agonizing it became for me for my daily life. Everytime I tried to change sitting setting (sit posture, different chair), or pick up different exercises, the main painful area might be ok for a while, but some other part of my body (upper back, shoulder, neck, sole, knee... you name it) would get painful by trying of compensating the unnatural posture. The first orthopedic doctor did MRI to me and said my L5-S1 is 'slightly degenerative' and I have referred pain. That's all, and nobody can pin point exactly what happened. To a point suicidal thought was quite often came across my mind.
About 2 years ago, I sort of decided this could be brain induced, inspired by a casual remark by my husband, although I didn't know how much this brain activity actually has to do with my pain. I came across someone mentioned Dr. Sano and TMS in one of the online article, and slowly I tried to read many Dr. Sano's books, and finally I ended up in this wiki and this pain recovery program. It was a great euphoria for me. I remember when I realized all these are TMS related, and the 'pain ' feeling was like the tide slowly ebbed away. I felt great.... I practiced many techniques like daily pain and trouble diary, self affirmative writing et. al, some worked great and some not so much. And I got rid of some routines (like stretches, chiro...) because I believed they are not helpful to my condition. Generally I was able to contain the pain to about 10% more or less...... until last month.

2020 had been difficult to many ppl, my job became 50% work from home, and I enjoyed the less stressful routine and pick up some exercise routine as well, which was great to my physical and mental health. Starting of 2021, I was required to go back to work 100% of the time, I guess this was too overwhelmed to me, just 1 week after I started the 100% routine, I had minor backache episode again. It was annoying but I was able to deal with it. But after that things was getting worse, and to my worst nightmare, the butt pain (tailbone pain) was slowly creeping up again!!! I felt so helpless and confused, didn't I do all the right thing? why are those stuffs apparently not working anymore?! within a few weeks, my anxiety level was rocket high. I had started to pick up old and (I believe) taboo habits, like stretches every 30 mins, sleep with some specify posture... franticly tried to make myself not painful, but it was not helpful.

Out of despair, I decided to revisit this pain recovery program again, hopefully to reinforce my understanding, and pick up something that I missed. I was following the youtube clip shared in this page, following what Alan has guided to that poor nurse (which I can so relate with), .....and boomed! my pain ALSO melted again at the same time. And the whole process repeated again when I listened to the Alan and Christie's voice clip on the next page. That moment I really cried, I didn't realized my brain has been so depressed and screamed for help for all these years.

What i gained new insight this time (compared with 2 years ago) was all these pain activities indeed started from the brain. when your brain is clouded and anxious, it slowly developed to other physical sensation like pain, or heartbeat fast or even shortness of breath. But you need to snap yourself out of it, look at your surrounding , listen to what is around you, help to convince yourself that you are indeed safe and you needn't be scared of what happen. When you really manage to tame your brain and feel calm, all these other physical sensation will go away. It is hard to realize it, I didn't really realize it 2 years ago, but when you finally do it, it felt calm and great, and grateful.

Like what Alan said, what I managed to achieve here is a technique that works for me to realize that my brain has induced anxiety activities, and a way that works for me to calm it on the spot. So I tried to actively monitor the anxiety level of my brain, when I feel that the fear has built up, I tried to snap the cycle to not scare of it, and to feel calm all the time. The main focus become what happen to my brain, not to whatever other part of the body. But it doesn't mean the panic cycle doesn't comeback, at least not so soon. So after 1 week of my euphoric discovery, I still deal with panic cycle many times a day, just that I know how to tame it and face it, and hopefully like what Alan predict, a new neural pathway will be formed by doing so and in a few months' time I can get rid of all these forever! (fingers crossed)