Day 38 How to live

One of the readings from earlier this week quoted Dr. Sarno as saying "If only we could learn how to live instead of how not to die, we would be much healthier and happier."

I recognize that so much of TMS work is focused on "how not to have pain", which feels like a cousin, of sorts, to "how not to die." And it is amazing.

Yet, the other headline is that pain distracts us from learning how to live with joy and hope.

By thinking about the life I want to live, I demote pain.

I've found the TMS poem by Drs Schubiner and Lumley to be a nice and (mostly) lyrical way to help me think psychologically when pain shows up.

The TMS poem encourages us to...

Notice what has been hidden;
Understand what has been a mystery;
Speak what has been unsaid;
Confront what has been avoided;
Accept what needs to be accepted;
Forgive what needs to be forgiven;
Change what needs to be changed.

 

@Ithantech, I had never seen this before, and I love it! I just had too google it, though, to find the original post - which is on Dr. Schubiner's Unlearn Your Pain blog site, where he says:

I was talking about this the other day with a good friend and excellent psychologist, Mark Lumley from Wayne State University. He and I actually ended up writing a little poem about the layers of work that many people may need to do to get better. I must warn you, neither of us are poets, so the so-called poem isn’t very poetic. But we like it because it means something important to us. Here it is.

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