Day 8 Returning to the path of TMS recovery

Hey everyone,

I first began recovering from TMS 6 years ago, while living in Japan. I was suffering from severe sciatica that I was sure meant I should stop exercising. Before the pain started, I had been jogging, rock climbing, and working out daily, but I wasn't enjoying my job. So I went to see a chiropractor for this back and butt pain. He took X-rays and said I had a herniated disc. He recommended I see a masseuse, who told me not to workout so much. I was a little suspicious of this herniated disc business, because along with the sciatica pain, I was experiencing an old pain in my groin that I had had surgery for a year prior. I hadn't had pain there for a year, and it seemed really strange that the return of that pain would coincide with the sciatica.

I went online determined to find a solution that I could have control over, and was lucky enough to find Sarno's book. I knew immediately he was talking about someone just like me, which made it easier to accept and apply the techniques. Within a couple of weeks, I was able to process my frustration with my job, fear of falling in climbing, and my loneliness living outside of my home country. And the pain was gone, along with the tightness in my muscles. The chiropractor couldn't believe it, and told me to be careful. Instead, I began riding my bicycle up to 30 miles every day, in addition to all my running, rock climbing and lifting.

I'm definitely a TMS success story, but that doesn't mean that the pain is totally gone. I continue to experience pain and tightness all over my head, back, chest, neck, and legs. The pain is usually beneath my awareness, but when I slow down or smoke a little weed, I'm very present to how much pain I'm in. It's for this reason and because I want to get to know the TMS community better that I decided to participate in the Structured Educational Program.

I've been thinking a lot about complements to the SEP method. While we usually associate recovery from the direction of confronting underlying emotions through journaling, we could also consider a therapy through motion. Dr. Schubiner, Schechter, and other TMS doctors are quick to advise their patients to get moving! That's partly because moving makes us stronger and healthier, but it also has a neurological impact on us. As we move muscles that our neurons are mistakenly associating with pain experiences, we show our neurology that this isn't the case. We also have an opportunity to potentially trigger a firing of the neurons associated with that particular muscle-pain neural pathway. Since our pain is connected to emotions and talking about our emotions can release us from the pain, the opposite might also be true.

I recently decided to train as a yoga instructor as part of my total recovery from TMS. TMS is all about learned neural pathways that trigger negative feedback loops in the body, and that's connected with emotional reactions to "traumatic events." And people with a lot of yogi training often say that as they deepened their practice, a lot of traumatic events came rushing into their memory. Yogis sometimes breakdown crying as those memories return. An instructor told me today that Yoga is not a muscle-building exercise, but functions on a neural level. We are teaching our neurons what our actual range of motion and capabilities are! Consider that an anesthetized patient has full range of motion - their muscles are totally relaxed!

I look forward to reading about all of your journeys. Let's go out and show the world what we can be!

 

Fantastic entry. You covered a lot here. AND you taught me a few things! Thank you! I totally ascribe to what you're saying re movement being a neural activity. I'm conquering that right now. After increasingly conditioning myself to a very immobile life, I'm 4 days into the most beautiful journey of moving like I always did.

I've had no major problems other than some tight deconditioned muscles but we will get there. My brain continues to try to trick me but it's not working. I'm definitely winning. It's like a gift or a new lease on life. I'm so excited to live. You know?

Amazing to you for plunging back in. I don't think a hard core tmser ever fully recovers. I think it's something that as life gives us stressors, we constantly have to exercise our power to choose. To be powerful and not powerless.

Congratulations to you. You are on your way.

 

Hi, laughalot. Welcome to the TMS community. Your post is wonderful and your healing story very inspirational. It's great that you have become a yga instructor. I love your TMS nickname. I am a strong advocate of laughing our troubles and pains away.

Crissyfox. I totally agree with you that TMS is an ongoing process in dealing with pain or any of life's stressors. I love your phrase: To be powerful and not powerless. Your reply to laughalot is right-on.

 

Thanks to you both! I appreciate your enthusiasm and support

I am not yet an official yoga instructor, but I am on the path to it! A yoga instructor in training, who hasn't yet started his yoga instructor training course

I agree with you about laughing. Learning to laugh at our self, at circumstances, at how big we make small things and how small we make big things.

Crissyxox - I totally get the excitement to live! We are living created lives outside of the pain/fatigue/anxiety! We are free and unconstrained! And life is full of circumstances that occur for us as challenges, and we can either shy away or face them full on (and we'll probably do plenty of both in a lifetime).

 

Amen laughs lot!

I used to think yoga broke me...and now I know I broke myself!!!! ( joking...I don't think I actually broke myself....that would be self abuse!

 

that's the norm, for sure!