Assuming you don’t have any broken bones or cancer, would there ever be a structural reason for pain relating to posture/alignment?
I’m in the midst of recovering from a severe back muscle spasm. I have been reading Dr. Sarno’s books and doing this program for many years now, and I have understood that flat feet/fallen arches, pronated feet, sitting in any type of chair, ways you bend/lift, etc. does not cause pain. But after this spasm, I have several well-meaning relatives who are trying to convince me to think structurally again…
I’m also reading “Effortless Pain Relief” by Ingrid Bacci. She healed herself many years ago from what would have been called fibromyalgia today. Half of the book purely aligns with Dr. Sarno – she discusses repressed emotions and how they can manifest in physical pain. However, she also became a craniosacral therapist and a practitioner of the Alexander Technique, and the other half of the book is on these concepts. She says that it’s not about sitting or moving the “right” way – it’s about finding the right way for you. For example, she noticed that when she was stressed out and coming home from work on the subway, her back would be hurting. She also noticed that she was standing there and locking her knees. Once she noticed this connection, she would recognize that stress was causing her to lock her knees, and then she would soften her knees and it would reduce the tension in her back. Also, when she was talking with her mother and angry about their interaction, she noticed that her neck was tensing. So she took that as a cue that when her neck was tensing, she could consciously loosen the tension in her neck and figure out a better way to deal with her mother.
She also states something critical about Dr. Sarno’s work, and I wonder if anyone here has thoughts about it. On page 181, she is discussing specific cases of repressed emotions held in the body:
“Marilyn’s story and my own demonstrate the types of situations in which Dr. Sarno’s purely psychological approach to back pain, valuable as it is, may not work. When a person has strong conflicts over establishing boundaries, it may not be enough to suggest that repressed feelings – in particular, repressed anger – are the reason for his or her chronic pain. Those feelings may be too deeply buried. In such cases, bodywork such as craniosacral therapy, which engages the emotional subconscious through the tissues, can prove invaluable. A person may also need to vent emotions repeatedly, so that he or she can get a clearer sense of the legitimacy of his or her own feelings and of his or her ability to take control over his or her own life.”
The text in bold above is mine. I have experienced something like this myself, many years before I had heard about TMS. A PT was working on my leg/hip area for back pain, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness. Another time, she was working on the same area of the body, and I started crying but without feeling sad.
What’s interesting to me is that Bacci has taken the emotional work and mixed it with the physical – with the body as the expression of the subconscious mind. She’s basically saying, if you have pain in your back, it’s most likely from another area of your body that you’re tensing because of emotional stress and it’s throwing off your alignment. Notice how stress does this, think about ways you can reduce your stress (changing your situation in life, your perspective about the matter, feeling your emotions, etc.), and then recognize how you’re holding certain parts of your body in tension and how it’s throwing off your body’s natural ease of movement.
Is this total quackery? Anyone get back to moving better and less pain by using Dr. Sarno’s techniques AND advice like this?
I’m in the midst of recovering from a severe back muscle spasm. I have been reading Dr. Sarno’s books and doing this program for many years now, and I have understood that flat feet/fallen arches, pronated feet, sitting in any type of chair, ways you bend/lift, etc. does not cause pain. But after this spasm, I have several well-meaning relatives who are trying to convince me to think structurally again…
I’m also reading “Effortless Pain Relief” by Ingrid Bacci. She healed herself many years ago from what would have been called fibromyalgia today. Half of the book purely aligns with Dr. Sarno – she discusses repressed emotions and how they can manifest in physical pain. However, she also became a craniosacral therapist and a practitioner of the Alexander Technique, and the other half of the book is on these concepts. She says that it’s not about sitting or moving the “right” way – it’s about finding the right way for you. For example, she noticed that when she was stressed out and coming home from work on the subway, her back would be hurting. She also noticed that she was standing there and locking her knees. Once she noticed this connection, she would recognize that stress was causing her to lock her knees, and then she would soften her knees and it would reduce the tension in her back. Also, when she was talking with her mother and angry about their interaction, she noticed that her neck was tensing. So she took that as a cue that when her neck was tensing, she could consciously loosen the tension in her neck and figure out a better way to deal with her mother.
She also states something critical about Dr. Sarno’s work, and I wonder if anyone here has thoughts about it. On page 181, she is discussing specific cases of repressed emotions held in the body:
“Marilyn’s story and my own demonstrate the types of situations in which Dr. Sarno’s purely psychological approach to back pain, valuable as it is, may not work. When a person has strong conflicts over establishing boundaries, it may not be enough to suggest that repressed feelings – in particular, repressed anger – are the reason for his or her chronic pain. Those feelings may be too deeply buried. In such cases, bodywork such as craniosacral therapy, which engages the emotional subconscious through the tissues, can prove invaluable. A person may also need to vent emotions repeatedly, so that he or she can get a clearer sense of the legitimacy of his or her own feelings and of his or her ability to take control over his or her own life.”
The text in bold above is mine. I have experienced something like this myself, many years before I had heard about TMS. A PT was working on my leg/hip area for back pain, and I was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness. Another time, she was working on the same area of the body, and I started crying but without feeling sad.
What’s interesting to me is that Bacci has taken the emotional work and mixed it with the physical – with the body as the expression of the subconscious mind. She’s basically saying, if you have pain in your back, it’s most likely from another area of your body that you’re tensing because of emotional stress and it’s throwing off your alignment. Notice how stress does this, think about ways you can reduce your stress (changing your situation in life, your perspective about the matter, feeling your emotions, etc.), and then recognize how you’re holding certain parts of your body in tension and how it’s throwing off your body’s natural ease of movement.
Is this total quackery? Anyone get back to moving better and less pain by using Dr. Sarno’s techniques AND advice like this?
