 I want to tell you a bit about a book I’m very keen on, because of the magical effect it had on my life: Healing Back Pain, by Dr John E Sarno. Now, before you decide to stop reading this, because you haven’t got a back pain, may I ask you to bear with me? Because I hope that, whatever your situation, you’ll feel as though you’ve gained something from this article, by the time you get to the end!
Chakras, emotions and healing
You’re probably already familiar with the new age theory that, if you’ve got a pain or illness in a particular part of your body, then it will tend to correlate with a particular chakra and particular emotional problems. This means that, if you want to relieve yourself of the pain or illness, you need to relieve yourself of the emotional pressures underlying it. You can read more about this in books like Your Body Speaks Your Mind by Debbie Shapiro, Heal Your Body A-Z by Louise Hay, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Your Body by Chris Thomas and Diane Baker.
Well, for the first few months of this year, I had a frozen shoulder. The pain was bad in the day-time, and even worse at night when it prevented me from sleeping. In the end, I was so tired and miserable I could barely think, never mind do my job – which of course involved using the arm now so stiffly attached to my shoulder to type all day long.
Now, as you can imagine, I felt that a lot depended on me being able to carry on thinking and typing. As well as being a rich source of fulfilment and learning for me personally, my work is what I most want to give to anyone who wants it, not to mention the fact that quite a few other people’s livelihoods depend on me getting my job done! So you can imagine that I sought relief from pain with somewhat frenetic zeal!
Testing the theory
Knowing that, according to new age theory, a frozen shoulder is connected with taking on (shouldering) too much responsibility, I shed responsibilities like a tree sheds leaves in autumn. No stone in my inner life was left unturned, in case beneath it was lurking a responsibility that I somehow unconsciously desired to shed. Bottled-up emotions were also examined, as were childhood issues, in case any energy blockages in my psyche were causing blockages on a physical level.
This resulted in a lot of inner work, and a good deal of re-organisation at Cygnus, all of which have been very positive I’m happy to say. And Geoff and I have had more holidays this year than we’ve had in the last five! I also visited some excellent therapists, who taught and helped me a great deal. Thus I was enabled to spin a good deal of gold out of the straw that had been handed to me. However, all that did nothing, absolutely nothing, to shift the pain in my shoulder. What on earth was I doing wrong? What was the universe trying to tell me, and why was I so deaf I couldn’t hear it?
You can imagine that, after a few months of this constant inner questioning – without getting any answers – I was feeling like a pretty hopeless case. I could do nothing but wait, with the consoling thought I always comfort myself with at times like this – that, even if I’m not getting anywhere spiritually, at least lots of other people are! And that’s what matters to me. After all, at our core, we are all one.
Giving the theory a new dimension
Then a Cygnus member recommended Healing Back Pain, by Dr John E Sarno, and I got hold of a copy. I read it on the Friday, did what Dr Sarno suggested, and by the Monday I was pain free and catching up on my sleep. Hooray!!!!!
So how did this apparent miracle occur? Now in his 80s, Dr Sarno has pioneered a totally new approach to physical symptoms, which has met with a huge amount of success in his medical practice as a specialist in back problems. He has passed his expertise on to a number of other doctors in the United States, who are now using his methods to treat all kinds of physical problems, not just back pain. You can read about Sarno’s work, and the sound science behind it, in Healing Back Pain, but here’s a brief summary of the basics.
Sarno says that, inevitably, as a result of the conflicting pressures and responsibilities of life, we are bound to build up a certain amount of repressed anger. This is not the sort of anger that you actually express (or are aware of but try not to express), but the stuff you don’t express, because you’re completely unaware of it. Our brains, knowing that this anger will be unacceptable to our conscious minds, have a clever way of making sure it doesn’t reach our awareness. They simply reduce the oxygen supply slightly to a certain, carefully chosen part of the body, causing enough physical discomfort to create a marvellous diversion. And hey presto! We are totally absorbed in finding relief from our pain, and any risk of us finding out about our repressed anger is avoided. This happens particularly, says Sarno, in people who have a strong urge to be good, caring and conscientious. Recognise yourself here? I certainly did!
The remedy
The remedy, says Sarno, is simple, and need not involve us in jettisoning our responsibilities and commitments, unless we can and we want to. We just need to tell our brains, clearly and firmly, that the game is up. We know about the repressed anger, and are perfectly capable of dealing with it, so there is no point in any attempt to hide it. Sarno offers a whole procedure for getting this message across to our brains, which you can read about in his book, and explains that, in most cases, this simple awareness is enough to produce relief from symptoms. Well, it worked for me, and accepting that I was not the perfectly nice person I wanted to believe, but in fact harboured a good deal of repressed anger, seemed a small price to pay for wellness, and the freedom to carry on doing what I love.
And I was so glad to learn that, contrary to what my understanding of new age theory had led me to start thinking, the only cure was NOT to retire to some sun-drenched shore with a huge pile of interesting books, and totally forget about my responsibilities. Because my responsibilities, too, are what I love.
The message
So here is the message I finally realised the Universe wanted to give me, and perhaps many of you too, if your letters are anything to go by:
'The changes you have made on a physical level are useful and good, of course. However, what really needs to change, is not so much your actions as your attitude. You need to recognise and accept, more clearly and profoundly than ever before, that your work and responsibilities, burdensome and gritty though they may sometimes seem, are just as much a part of your deepest desire as other, more ‘spiritual’-seeming things. For your responsibilities allow you to fulfil a vow you have made, and that you deeply wish to keep, no matter what. In fact, you wish this vow to be the magnet that aligns all the ‘iron filings’ of your being. And that vow is: to devote yourself, as best you can, to the imperatives of Love, ‘until your last breath and beyond’.’
For that insight, I give thanks. It was worth the journey.
With much love, Ann Napier
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