Hope For Healing: John Stracks, MD & Patient Michael Murray Talk About Finding the Path to Healing

good evening and welcome to hope for healing i'm your host dr john strax joining you this time from my home office in chicago don't worry about the plant that's normally over my left shoulder it'll be back next month and for those of you who don't know me i'm a physician who focuses on the reduction and elimination of symptoms using mind-body medicine methods if you'd like to learn more about my practice including how to work with me or any of my team you can find more information about our services at www.doctorstraxx.com this hope for healing videocast series is one of many joint efforts between me and the folks at curable for those who are not yet curable users curable is an amazing app that offers science-based techniques for chronic pain recovery we've been working together since their inception about six years ago we created this video series to further help you understand the connection between what's happening in your life and what's happening in your body today my guest is michael murray i first met mike about three years ago after he'd experienced an unrelenting cycle of pain over the course of about a decade in the later of those years he had started to develop a number of physical injuries seemingly with no explanation after going through hip replacement surgery mike began to understand the connection between mind and body and that's when his true healing began he's agreed to join me here this evening and talk more about this and what he's learned in that time since then mike's thanks so much for being here and welcome to hope for healing great thanks for having me you are welcome so um glad you're here and excited to spend some time talking with you it's always helpful for the people who are listening to know what you were dealing with before you started to get better before you learned about mind-body medicine can you describe kind of what happened and what life was like for you over the course of yeah just so many years correction um my pain started in so prior to that i was i was healthy so i i thought you would mention the decade it was really only three years okay so um i was fortunate enough to be able to retire at a young age in 2007 really into the outdoors spent a lot of time in wyoming where we have a second home and then in 16 you know i was out just kind of hiking around in the mountains developed a hamstring problem um about a month later developed shoulder problem um and i really became really anxious uh started crying a lot and started isolating myself um and you know these injuries just they weren't stopping me from doing anything but i couldn't do much um within probably what was it three months of developing the hamstring problem i finally had an x-ray and um the doctor's like you have arthritis in the hip and hip replacement can work well here and i just you know more tears and up to this point you know i ski 60 days a year i bike five days a week i'm a fly fisherman so very active um and my world was just shattered so for the next probably 15 months from that point i saw 17 different medical doctors i had pain in my feet and my knees my neck whole shoulders heartburn i couldn't sleep develop ringing in my ears um i had a hip replacement i had two spinal injections and when none of that worked the doctors would always kind of move the goal post and tell me there's another structural issue going on and the interesting part is going into all these doctor's appointments the anxiety i was carrying was intense and a lot of them i couldn't even speak becky my wife we would start every appointment saying just so you know you know mike is he's really upset um and he's having a hard time with this and i don't even know why well i know i was upset because i was i felt i was losing my body and my one gift i felt like was being in the outdoors so it just all unraveled quickly and you know western medicine you know certainly didn't help so it it it happened quickly and i just was on a conveyor belt of doctors um and you were you're what in your early 50s i was 52 at the time yeah and so and just go over it again so it was hip you had the hip replacement but also what shoulder i i i ended up you know i had shoulder surgery seven years before that incident but looking back with the new lenses i have an awareness of the mind-body connection i am apple absolutely certain um those surgeries were not needed because those popped out of the blue um and part of the whole journey for me is discovering this anxiety um and these insecurities have helped my held my whole life and they were buried beneath a veneer of success and confidence um so two shoulder surgeries i didn't need hip replacement i certainly didn't need and two spinal injections that that didn't do anything for me and you were getting getting worse and so this went on for a couple of years and then at what point did you discover curable or dr sarno or something about mind-body medicine where did that come into the mix so one of the last doctors i had seen convinced me well he did a a test and told me i had neuropathy um so he he's like don't panic which of course i started to do went down to boston and the neurologist said the test my physiatrist did wasn't complete so we had to do another one and he's preparing me for needles you know this guy was all business and i just said you know i've been really anxious the past two years could this have anything to do with the pain and i had mentioned this to the six 16 previous doctors and never one not one of them commented on it but he said absolutely anxiety can cause nerve pain but there was no further discussion after that so a month later you know i was out in wyoming by myself couldn't sleep i was really upset because i had hyped three days in a row no issue and then weather came in i couldn't hike and my feet were frozen so a friend had given me a book on how to live with chronic pain he'd given to me like five months earlier and i didn't want to read it because i wanted to beat it and not manage it but at this point i was i hadn't considered suicide but i thought about it a lot and thought about others that really were at that point um so i'm like i gotta no i've got three kids wife i need to i need to figure out how to live with this so i picked it up and as soon as i picked it up i start reading it talking about western medicine how they've missed the boat and they view the body as a complex machine and i closed the book really quickly just to read the title again and in smaller print which i hadn't seen was the mind body condition it was a book by john sarno um and i got up made a pot of coffee i read the whole book in one sitting and i remember texting my wife at three in the morning and said i think i've finally figured out what's wrong with me um and that was it and it resonated just the the the way he described the hopelessness um the way he described pain can be um can mean more to someone if it really prevents them from what they want to do and that's really you know my story gets more complicated from a personal level but i define myself as an athlete and when all these pains i felt like um i couldn't do anything else and that's where it just it snowballed from there so it did not take me long like within five minutes to realize this was me however i i often wonder because i've seen so many doctors and tried so many things i did wonder if this was just that as well just grasping at another solution i don't think it was but um yeah it very much resonated with me and do you remember what resonated in that way and so you know whoever it was your friend had given you the book and in the giving you had heard here's a book about living with chronic pain as if the pain was gonna be with you for the rest of your life and you would need to to learn to manage it and so what was it about reading it if you remember that made you say oh i don't have to live with it i can figure out how to let it go is he there was a page that he listed off all the symptoms that can come from it and i was on like you know probably a dozen of them so so it was that but it was also he talked about what pain can mean to individuals and it can be all encompassing and not long before i picked up the book i remember going for a walk with a friend and telling him i spend 80 percent of my time thinking about my pain in reality that was a lie it was really close to 100 truly um and then i started putting together and then i started thinking about what the neurologist said and about that anxiety can cause nerves and so it all just kind of came together and just this just this wave of this is it this is this is the path i need to take and you know and two important points there one like it can it gets so consuming the people who are listening many of them think about this 80 of the time 100 of the time what is it how do we get rid of it my own experience same thing like just you know when i first learned about this 25 years ago it was all i thought about all all i talked about all i researched and it does that to our brain it just pulls us in and we think about nothing else and then also people get surprised especially after they learn about it that our mind can create pain this bad in our body we think that if if the pain's that bad it somehow has to be coming from the body because of an injury but the pain pathways are the same and so no matter where it's coming from it can be that intense and it can be that terrible yeah he he also spoke about just there's a section about conditioning like certain things can happen in your condition your neural pathways to create and and i didn't recognize for a lot of time but um when i was in wyoming i could be like really active and the pain would kind of disappear and i'd come home land in boston and within you know it's like clockwork on the drive back or live an hour from boston the the anxiety would come back and some pain somewhere would return um so it took me it did take me some time to actually see that trend um but without question it was there and so so you picked up the book you read about he said okay i think this makes sense and so what happened from there then you had been involved in the conventional medical word for world for a couple of years with injections procedures and everything else and so when you were ready to make that switch walk us through what happened yeah so well when i made that switch i i did think i was healed but it doesn't work that way um i was just committed to it you know he he has uh in serena's book what he calls the daily reminders so i would take a you know it's all psychological you're not broken there's a whole serious thing and i literally this is part of also my obsessive behavior i took a picture with my iphone and every day i would just read them read and read and read them um so i can't say for the next two months i saw any improvement i was more optimistic um and then i picked up a book called explain the pain explain pain and and that was because sarno would have since learned while a true visionary uh he was off the mark on a few things like the oxygen deprivation and which i didn't understand but reading explained the pain really filled it in for me and in just one short short story um after i read those two books i was in wyoming and decided to go for a mountain bike ride i was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease and spinal stenosis and i was told to stay away from any pounding and i'm like forget that and i went for a big mountain bike ride i'm coming down and i ended up hitting a rock and tapping my front brake at the wrong time and i went right over the handlebars really scared crashed hard got up made sure my hip new hip was fine my neck was fine probably a half hour goes by i finally relaxed and it was time to move on i grabbed my bike and i looked on my bike and there was red all over and i quickly realized it was blood looked at my legs from my legs were fine i looked at my arms and they were all cut up and as soon as i saw that they were cut up guess what happened all of a sudden the pain so it was my first experience on how the mind controls the pain both ways you can send pain if there is no tissue damage or can repress the pain so that was a really powerful experience for me and it validated kind of everything i was doing but when i came home to new hampshire that summer the pain was still there and that's when i decided to reach out to you and i met you that august so um it was probably two months went by between two or three months went by and um and i started my journey with you yeah it's so interesting the idea how the pain shifts when we get the context for it and so how it you know really got bad when you realize you were bleeding the story that i tell fairly regularly my friend peter henry who was the dean at nyu business school for a number of years he and i were playing basketball when we were kids and you've probably played some basketball over the years you know that if you if it hits your finger in the wrong way you can hear that pop and and so we were playing somebody through peter a pass we heard the pop so everybody looked over at him and he was shaking his hand he's like and and he looks down like we all followed his eyes and his little pinky had gone out sideways because he had dislocated it but it wasn't until he saw it that he really started screaming and so like once we um and laura mosley describes us really well and explain pain once we kind of see what the ramifications are then is when the pain sets in and and so so our mind and our knowledge have so much to do with this overall experience it's amazing yeah and so so you came out here in chicago and you and i met that summer it was summer of 18 correct coming up on three years ago i wrote it down it was summer of 18th that's correct yeah and uh and so you've been working on this for a little bit and so continue to walk us through what you learned from talking to me and what happened as we you started to move forward and what was the next stage so being a big part for me was allowing myself to open up and express myself which i really didn't do much when i was younger even as adults so that was a big part so um you know you were the most compassionate person i've ever met you you responded to my emails of panic like and we had a number of phone calls where you know at the time the pain was brutal but now i know it was really the emotional pain that was really scary for me um so your calls are incredible the mind body class um you know after and during the class i would be pain-free and it was just for me being able to express myself and share with other people and hear what they were doing um but again it's still nothing was really changing for the pain i was i was having more confidence um i could still be active but when i wasn't active the pain was there and so it was hard to really appreciate the fact i could go out for 40 mile bike ride because when i get back i would forget about that and all i know is my feet really hurt and then we had a discussion about psychotherapy after when um i probably was engaged with you for three or four months and through a mutual contact you kind of suggested i i work with a therapist and that was my next step yeah and and i agree with you that like you know things had shifted so i mean you were you're out in wyoming you were skiing hard on a number of days you were you were riding your bike and so it it wasn't that the pain was completely keeping you from doing what you wanted to do but to your point it no matter how much you worked on it there'd be days or times or weeks or longer where it would set in and you'd feel like it just you couldn't you couldn't get a handle on it yeah in reality the pain never stopped me from doing anything in fact that's when i felt the best but because there's more moment you can only be on a bike for so long right so there was more moments where i would have pain or sensation and because my world view was so small i couldn't see beyond the pain even if the pain wasn't there plus the there was the whole emotional aspect that i was just scared i was i was scared and it was embedded in me and um yeah yeah and so then so at that point we decided that for a variety of reasons that psychotherapy might be helpful for you and i and i introduced you to dr eric sherman who's actually been a guest on our healing series and is a very experienced psychotherapist in this mind-body world and so if you're comfortable talking about it can you tell us what that experience yeah have been like i know there's a lot there is a lot and it was um you know when you suggested there was no hesitation on my part uh but there was you know it was scary i i didn't know what psychotherapy was to be honest with you uh it turns out it's just a conversation um well it's more than that but i didn't know i was scared but i was committed to it you know he um eric was awesome i i kind of describe you as my two mentors or complete opposite dr strax midwestern friendly eric the true new yorker loud loud and to the point um you know he helped me one um recognize the insecurities i had been carrying my whole life and which then allowed me to see how they have been moving me around and how i chose to define myself by those insecurities um he helped me realize the importance of communicating i had many times with him where i would have a spike in pain over an argument or something triggered me and after that conversation there was just this release and pain um and he helped me i i struggled as a student um and i turns out a very low self-esteem from that standpoint um and he helped me kind of frame um what anxiety can do to a kid i was diagnosed with dyslexia and my parents never took the time to tell me what that meant uh so i came through my own conclusions and um so he was really help helpful to kind of identify those things and put it in perspective on what i went through as a child very benign stuff you know there's no violence in my own anything like that um and then he helped me which is where healing truly began he helped me see my triggers something that you would kept on asking me about is pay attention for spike in pain and for me i was always in pain whether i was or wasn't i was always in pain so i rationalized us i'm i'm always in pain therefore there is no spike so eric was was there was able to guide me after four months of therapy to finally see my first spike in pain um so it was it was it was pretty powerful and he was compassionate and you know he a few times if i was in pain i would tell him that and he would always say mike i'm sorry you're in pain and the way i reacted to that was it was telling because it moved me it could tell that's what i needed as a child like i don't think i really felt seen so every time he would recognize me it was you know i'm not trying to be corny but pretty emotional um so that was kind of one of the first steps of really paying attention to what's happening in my body and uh and recognizing those things because the body holds unbelievable wisdom and do you remember so you know you'd worked with him for a while and he was asking you about the triggers and the spikes and and so you ha do you have a memory of the first time you were able to see that i do um i've got three kids they're all athletes that i love can compete um i have a hard time but i'm not the type of parent that is like uber like go go go you know i want them to work hard but i just want them to be happy and i i carry this heavy burden with my kids i have a hard time seeing them disappointed and i hold it into myself which is part of the which is the main problem so it was one uh my daughter was a sophomore in high school uh she started her freshman year lacrosse her sophomore year there's no reason she wasn't gonna be starting and i was by myself becky was away and the scrim it was a scrimmage she started at midfield and with five minutes into the game they removed her from the game and all of a sudden i could feel this like really scary and uncomfortable angst developing in my body i knew i wasn't mad at the coach because i knew it was a scrimmage and she was just trying out different places like like consciously i could rationalize it but something was happening in my body um and within probably five minutes of this angst and and hurt from my child even though she didn't care well she cared but whatever um my feet became frozen um stand in the coldest ocean or mountain stream except it was 60 degrees outside it was a beautiful day and my feet were frozen and i had to watch the remainder of the game from the car um she got in the car we didn't talk i just held the steering wheel i mean addition to the the physical pain was the feet over the next two day pain through two days the pain subsided and i didn't think much about it i was just like glad the pain was gone um a day or so later i get a text message from a friend and he made an innocent comment but i created a story about what he really meant and suddenly i was very mad and very hurt and within the matter of three minutes my feet became frozen like frozen and at that point i put it all together and we had my next call with eric and we do it facetime and i shared with him i just shared with you and he cracked a smile and it's just like not bad for a dumb kid referencing this kind of false belief i had um created about myself through even though i was very successful in business and all those things i really had a little bit of an imposter cinder but that was that was the first time i recognized the triggers um and and and and when you and eric would ask me pay attention to what's happening in your body when you're triggered you know i always thought you want to pay attention to the spike in pain or the emotional angst and those are things to be on the lookout but something happens before that and it takes it takes time to build this awareness but you can feel these subtle shifts in the body it's almost as if the body is warning you before the mind's able it's quite powerful and it took me it took me a long a while to develop that and and one of the ways i was able to create that awareness was through meditation is you know meditation is probably been my you know the biggest healer for me and it's a couple of important points in there so one the the meditation is so helpful for four people people can learn that i mean people learn it all different ways curable app has a number of meditations but what we know is that meditation just by itself is unlikely to cure somebody's physical symptoms and so it's like this necessary but not sufficient quant quality that that helps people move forward and so what you're saying is that the meditation puts you in a place where you could start to observe what was going on you got a little bit of a space i think you know one of the first things you told me is try to get my nervous system relaxed and that went right over my head i had no idea what you're talking about none i just nodded um what meditation did is just that it it it dropped it calmed my nervous system which dropped the pain which allowed me to see this triggers and and for my opinion and everyone's journey is different it's all about the triggers it's all about the triggers and then following the money line because that will tell you or at least it has for me what my issues were yeah and then and so you get this physical reaction that's that's short of pain but different than where you were and so you're talking in some sense about the wisdom of the body and how the body knows what's going on one of my favorite studies about this and you you or people listening may have heard me talk about this before but they put people in a room and they did a they played a card game with them and they would flip over cards and you'd win or lose play money depending on what it showed on the card and there were two decks and one deck was big wins big losses but ultimately you'd lose if you kept playing out of that deck you go bankrupt the other deck was little wins little losses but ultimately you'd you'd keep winning and you'd gain more play money doing that and so they'd ask people like you know which deck you're going to play out of i don't know i don't know and about halfway through they say it's like 50 flips of the cards they'd say people would say like i think i should do this one like i don't know why but i think i i want to keep playing out of this one and then they'd go through all hundred like through both decks they'd say oh i see this deck it's you know i'll keep winning money if i use this desk i'll go bankrupt but they also had them hooked up to sensors and blood pressure monitors and heart rate and and sweat monitors and how many flips like it took 100 flips for them to articulate how many flips before their body knew what which deck to play out of do you think i would have no idea it was like 10. it was like it's like 10 of the time for their body start to get anxious when they go over to this deck over here their heart rate would go up they'd start sweating a little bit and so we oftentimes discount what our body says because it's not necessarily speaking in english but if you can get to the point where you can tap into it there's so much information that comes out of it i couldn't agree more and um you know that it took me some time for me sensations were fear you know i think my nervous system would become so scared of anything someone saying something or a sensation in my body and it would it would literally lock up uh so what meditation has allowed me to do is you know focus on my breathing but just just try to pay attention to sensations in the body and and understanding that a sensation will come and will go um i mean i've i've had pain it was probably a year and a half ago i was doing some weeding and and felt just a swipe twinge because i reached for something and i could feel myself panic and then seconds later i felt like my whole back just locked up and um but through the healing that that that that panic and fear response doesn't doesn't happen like that anymore and so you know i like what you're saying in terms of you know there these stages and these steps that you took you you read dr sarno's book you you looked into it you reached out to me you talked with me you took my class you take the step took the step to to meet with eric and so none of those steps on its own is what made you better but each step built on the one before yeah and and it was it probably took a year and a half for me to truly believe i was healing i just i felt like it i was the whole thing was put together by a piece of thread and i was improving but it was it was just hard to see at times it really it was hard to see and and trust um but you know just i believed in it so much and reading for me was another thing i mean it started with tms and then it you know went to spiritual readings and buddhism and you know not buddhism from a religion just kind of a common sense practical way in you know the two words that stick out my mind are impermanence like everything changes you might have pain but it's going to change you might be happy it's in and and and that has been an important lesson because if i do get triggered i now know it's impermanent it's it's going to come and go and then the whole clinging and grasping i mean that was i want things you know as i said we have a place in wyoming i love skiing powder i'm addicted to skiing powder and i want my kids to experience it and when they come out if they don't get it i would be in i know how silly this sounds i would be in terrible emotion on physical pain and um and i was clinging i was grasping to wanting it to be perfect but unfortunately this world doesn't care what we want and and i found that i was resisting anything that didn't fit my box and that only contributed to the suffering right and so so you had this recognition and and breakthrough when you first started to discover that there were changes in your body in reaction to things that were going on in your life that you said i think was about four or five months after you first started working with eric so how did you build on that then what were some of the next steps so the the meditation was huge i kind of ramped that up i meditate every morning for 20 to 40 minutes so i really started to you know hone that practice i started recognizing the importance of communicating particularly with my wife um there was an incident kind of probably i think the summer of 2019 it was a long labor day weekend and i didn't make plans because i wasn't sure i was going to feel and then i started to feel really guilty for my wife and then all of a sudden i developed this groin pain and it took me a little bit but to recognize the pain came from not just the guilt of not making plans it came from the fact that i didn't share it with anyone and i finally spoke to becky i said i know this sounds crazy but you know i was fearful i was gonna need another hip replacement um and i expressed you know i think this groin pain is the fact i felt really bad and within a day the pain just went away um so so i really started to trying to communicate better with her um which is obviously brought us you know to a different you know relationship which is you know which is kind of an amazing thing um yoga i developed a yoga practice before the pandemic and i would practice yoga try to do it every day and i i can't tell you why i was drawn to it other than i felt better coming out of yoga than i did when i walked in every single time and yoga's you know i was never yoga never considered it that and meditation were like you know i could be quite the cynic with those things and those two practices are really truly where the healing for me came from um and when you meditate so you said 20 to 40 minutes what's been some meditation strategies that you found are helpful for you i think a lot of people who are listening some people are very experienced meditators some people are just some people literally just will have learned about this yesterday and so how did you what kind of strategies and techniques did you draw on to get to the point where you could do that on a regular basis yeah so i remember early on you suggested i meditate and i was like why would thinking about nothing heal my pain that literally is what i thought and then i started to see and all the reading i was doing was popping up everywhere so the first time i tried to meditate i mean i was still really anxious i laid down closed my eyes and within probably two minutes i became scared of the dark i was fearful and i sat up i couldn't believe what was happening wiped the sweat off thought of you and then i laid back down try to do it again as soon as my eyes closed and i became fearful and what i've come to understand is that you know the natural human state is calm and comfortable but if you carry a great deal of anxiety the mind doesn't like that and it freaks out which is why meditation is so beautiful um so i gave it up for a couple months because i didn't know what hit me um and then i started going i would i would i would go to youtube and just pick one that resonated with me a guided meditation i started with at first you know started with five minutes and worked my way up to a half hour um but i ultimately have gone to silent meditation because it truly one can almost say that a guided meditation is a distraction um so for me and i started with guided but for me silent meditation i try to just watch my breath deep belly breathing because that really does calm the nervous system down and that is proven um and then i just listen for sounds just watch observations in my skin thoughts a thought comes into my mind i just kind of let it drift and it dissolves um about i don't know it's probably two months after i started meditating i had to drive from wyoming to denver uh to bring my daughter's car back to school for and road trips i used to always love them but during this period i struggled with road trips because i was alone and get really upset and the pain would come back on this road trip all of a sudden before i was into it i was noticed i was really calm and i had no music i was just calm and then it hit me it was my meditation practice and it was like the first time i noticed meditation like kind of really starting to spread its tentacles and then i started thinking oh worrying about why aren't i home with my wife or why didn't a friend join me and then those thoughts dissolve too and it was really it was the first time i realized that kind of thoughts are just thoughts they're they're not really real you're just making them up yeah thoughts are just thoughts and it's one of the lessons that we really try to emphasize with people because until you know that you have no idea you think that thoughts are truth i think most people will grow up and have the you know voice going on in their head and just assume that whatever it says is true and i think what we're finding is that the thoughts are where some of the fear comes from you talked about the fear of the sensations but also when people are in their head saying things to themselves like you know the pain's never going to get better it's going to be like this for the rest of my life i'm going to need a hip replacement another shoulder surgery that our thoughts can actually literally change the way our body is reacting to create the fear we're also starting to learn that those thoughts can create changes in the immune system as well the biological changes that are happening in the body i mean it's essentially fearful thoughts over a long period of time at least from my opinion are really changing things that happen that's why and i don't mean to interrupt but like i had an anger problem i would have an anger you know not a yeller and screamer my anger was shutting down but it was like i was injected with a drug like i never understood it if something would set me off i could literally shut my wife out for minutes hours and days sometime no matter how hard i wanted to open up but now i understand there were these things that were happening inside of me through fearful thoughts yeah absolutely and then what about communication and so you've been working on the communication you've taken your relationship to a new level are there specific strategies that you've incorporated is it more of a general sense like you know it's important and so you work on it yeah i mean i would say this on that healing you you have kind of knowledge and and tell people to relax and understand how pain works and those are all like really important but deep healing is is is where it's at so you can tell someone to calm down but that that really doesn't do a whole lot um so it was really it just would happen um and it did happen um that i noticed you know i would just notice things like if we're going [Music] out to dinner my wife was five minutes late i noticed i didn't care so we're five minutes late like little changes like that um not being quite as anxious about things yeah these times if i if something happens now that i will not a full blown trigger like i used to but you know we had an incident a few weeks ago that i needed to just try to just be very aware of what was happening and take deep breaths and it helped it didn't it it still needed to run its course but it it helped so for me it's it's kind of just an overall feeling of calm that has happened through all the things that we're talking about and so and so with all of that the the recognition the work that you've done and so then at what point did you feel like all right the pain and the symptoms really started to shift and calm and you started to be in a different place where was that yeah so i would say probably last winter um well no excuse me the winter of the pandemic so would that be 20 20. yep you know i i was still getting triggered but they really spread out you know maybe maybe once a month um and they were significant but i was seeing them you know my wife was being supportive of them and they were not lasting as long and then when the pandemic hit i was still working with eric um but i had felt psychotherapy at that point was had kind of run its course i felt like i was bringing up the same stories and i didn't like that i felt like okay i've uncovered that i understand my anxiety as a child i understand my father's anger um so at that point uh last a year ago february i i stopped working with him and i i started working with a yoga teacher who um you know specializes in healing trauma and and that's that you know through working with you through reading and eric i was traumatized as a kid um in a very benign way i am and she she had a heavy influence in buddhism she was very familiar that and that very much resonated with me and and we started practicing and after probably a month of working with her she developed yin yoga practice for me which is um you know it's essentially holding a stretch for five minutes and and the theory goes is those those those stretches are teaching the nervous system that if you can hold that stretch which is very painful once you come out of it you'll be fine so it teaches the nervous system to cycle into a difficult moment but more importantly cycle out and that was my problem is when i would become fearful subconsciously i i would lock up and i wouldn't i wouldn't know how to cycle out until days went by so we would do that and i practice it on my own and then probably a month into it after the yoga practice i was lying on my back and um just lying and i noticed my right butt butt cheek starting trembling i then noticed my left leg started trembling and then all of a sudden my whole lower torso was um was shaking and um dr peter levine's work of somatic experiencing is is releasing trauma through the body and what happens is the um these long yin poses were allowing me and pushing my body that while when it came back into rest it felt comfortable enough to just let go to just let go and the last major trigger i had was when the pandemic started and since that point um i've got this and that and then that trembling went on for almost two months every day um and it was fascinating um i've been cautioned by my my spiritual leader if you will that you know that everyone's experience is different someone's trembling others could be a flushing of a skin you could be crying uh but but since that this just this amazing sense of calmness um confidence things that you know anxieties go into my kids athletics game it doesn't doesn't mean i'm not emotional but it doesn't if my daughter's taken out of a game like she was the other day it does it's like oh no now what or i had a little problem back here a couple days ago it sent gone uh but there was not this panic so yeah so that was and i think my work up to work i i don't i think if i had gone to her directly before i i think eric was part of the solution i think reading was part of it i think working with you and the mind body i think it was all together and and i think also everyone's journey is different you know i i think you know you got to try what works for you and listen to your body and that's probably the the one in addition to meditation and yoga the one thing is listen to the body not when you get sore if you're exercising it's these these subtle shifts that happen or if someone says something and it kind of annoys you like that's a trigger and and you can start to investigate those things and and for me once i've learned this awareness i can't let's how i live my life now and it's awesome you know i have this amazing awareness of what's going on around me and in me yeah and and so there's a lot in what you said there i know it's great it's great one highlight that i'll make is just how much you had learned so that your body can start trembling and you watch it with this attitude of curiosity and and calmness so that it can let it take its course because so often what happens to us if something like that happens we immediately think like oh my goodness i have multiple sclerosis who am i going to talk to so that i can get this diagnosed and and treat it and and you're describing essentially the exact opposite of watching something very unusual happen in your body and letting it play out and not letting it alarm you and then your body our bodies know how to work out what needs working out our bodies know how to heal you know people used to always tell me that i'm like that's a load of crap you know i'm in pain for three years now the ball he doesn't know yet but it truly does i was resisting you know the fact is you know i didn't know this now and i needed to go through what i went through but for the first two years of this journey i was essentially holding my breath waiting for the pain to disappear so i could finally exhale and say it's going to be all right but the fact is because i was doing that it was it wasn't it can't work that way for me for me it really it isn't about the frozen feet or the painful arms it's what happens before that i mean that was just the way my emotions pour out of my body um you know it's that i think what you said it's that in between space where like subtly things start to shift and when you can notice that then you can figure out how you want to react when the when the significant pain comes your feet are frozen it's sort of you know things have moved forward and you've missed the cues that should right now you know i don't know if i could have done anything quicker my senses probably not so my only advice is just stay the course and trust the process because i i still don't believe what i went through and there's thousands of people like me it's truly amazing that that emotions well it's not amazing actually but how emotions can impact our body and it shouldn't be that surprising i mean think about a when a young boy blushes when he sees a pretty girl you know something like that or you get an upset stomach before big public speaking event i mean the mind has manifest manifestations in the body yeah absolutely we've always known this humans have always known it but the the medical system kind of has learned to dismiss that in people and so you said very early on that the system sort of sees our bodies as machines and you just tinker in the right way and your story is the opposite of that of learning how to connect with your your mind and your heart and your spirit and all of that that's what ultimately made you better you also said that everybody's journey is different which is something that i've learned over the years the other part of it is that you couldn't have predicted how the journey would unfold when you started it and so yes yes yes exactly yes but at each step you learned what you needed to learn and in the process of doing that it unlocked another step for you it did and i would also say this that signs of healing typically were not recognized in the moment it was kind of recognized the day later like huh that happened or you know i noticed one day like our guards looked really rich and bloom i'm like becky what'd we do she's like this is how they look every year it's like really this is sweet it's funny sort of how we we sort of open our mind to that i have memory i played um i played golf in college and and went to college in new england and every year the the colors would start to change the day after the golf season ended like i would notice that the golf season would end and be like whoa like it is fantastic i'm so glad i'm in new england and and it took me a number of years to recognize that like it didn't actually change the day the golf season ended it's just my focus opened up and i could i could see it um it so so your story is is amazing it's an amazing journey and these days my sense is there's very little physical pain certainly and and not really any fear of the pain it's not that you don't get symptoms anymore correct that is correct i don't get pain i don't get pain i do at times get sensations um and that would be from a triggered event and but they are super subtle and they could be just maybe some warmth in my arm or my feet might get a little cold but um i now know what to do i i need to communicate i need to practice yoga and i need to be aware what's happening in my emotional world so i can understand this i mean part of um and i had mentioned to you through this journey i hope you don't mind me mentioning this that actually when i started going to psychotherapy um after i met eric the first time i was reading a book called um the surrender experiment by michael singer i know if you're familiar with that book but um he talked about just surrendering wherever the life takes you whatever whatever your purpose is and don't fight and at that moment i i became committed to writing a book and wanting to share with the world um what i've been through um and uh i am going to get it published here a publisher so i'll be coming out um in december sometime and it you know it it's it's a memoir but it's it's also a self-help um you know we'll talk about what is childhood trauma and what does that look like talk about kind of western madison and they do some fabulous things but they also really really miss the boat and become over-reliant on x-rays and imaging uh and a big part it is the healing part of it um and it's funny when i first started writing the book and started sharing with people um and i just i i'm writing the book to help people and if i can help one person that's great um but friends would be would say that must be so therapeutic for you and when they would say that to me it would trigger me because i thought what i thought they were saying is you're not gonna be good enough to write to help people but maybe it'll help i thought real thought was condescending and i truly was offended like in the body i felt the movement i felt the like that the child liked her and that went on for probably at least a year while i was writing the book and then you asked about healing it was about six months ago someone said that to me must be so therapeutic to you and i said you damn right it is like it feels and it has been i mean you got us to journal one time i remember and that went right over my head you know i tried i'm like this is awkward but writing this book is essentially journaling and it's the the the healing i get from reading my work is you know it allows me to see like truly see where i was hiding and why what these insecurities i carry and i might be you know i don't know i might be this like an outlier i don't know um maybe i was pretty extreme but i i think hopefully when you get away from the extremes people will able to see parts of themselves in there and um and maybe if nothing else it will help them stay on the path you know and not give up yeah and so what's the book called did you say the name i just came up with the title but last week it's um my pain body solution a journey to the other side of suffering right and pain body was coined by the spiritual leader eckhart tolle um and uh yeah good and when's it gonna be available for people that will be available probably the latest the first of the year okay great well we will keep an eye out for it i'm super excited for it to come out so anyway we'll we'll go ahead and wind up just thinking back on what essentially has been a three-year journey now and for people who are listening and trying to sum up because we've talked about a lot and you've done a tremendous amount in a variety of ways how do you look back on it to the short version of what was the pain about when you were experiencing it i guess that's my question like how do you look back on it and say like okay i know the pain was there because what yeah i i think mine was it's a really good question i i think for me it was two issues i um had a very low self-esteem and felt i was not smart i felt that's what everyone thought of me and those really carried with me from a very very very young age so low self-esteem as well my i was from a big family and i was one of the youngest kids and i think there was some abandonment issues um and i and i learned that not from so much recalling the story of growing up because i had a fine childhood it really did but as you listen to your body when you start to see when you get triggered you're like huh just because a friend doesn't return a text message that's like like that's an abandonment issue um so those are kind of the the drivers um and it then kind of spilled out from there i'm not sure if that answers your question well it does and then i think what happens in the body is that we get triggered because of these experiences that we've had something you know you think somebody says something about your intelligence or your example you text somebody they don't get back to you and then the body starts to get brain starts to get scared and and in order to deal with that then it starts to create pain and then we can focus on the pain instead of focusing on the fact that we're feeling inadequate or our feelings are are heard do we have to take a step in communication that we don't know how to or don't want to do and so the pain functions as a distraction for us and a place to move towards so that we don't have to deal with something that's so uncomfortable and what i love about your story is that you learned how to enter into those uncomfortable places so that they are no longer particularly uncomfortable for you or you've learned enough that you can sit with the discomfort yeah and allowing them to be okay the the pain at some point during my journey the the the pain and triggers became an opportunity for discovery is really kind of what it was all about yeah you know one of the doctors just so people have an idea i mean i was told um never to ski again told never to backpack don't do anything pounding when they gave me some injections that didn't work um he basically said he can fuse my spine i mean it almost felt like a threat and today and i'm not trying to brag but i am really active really active and um you know i just just listen to my body yeah and i do need to be a little bit more kind and you i remember you would mention that like maybe you're a little hard on yourself and and and you can be on hard on yourself physically but also be down on yourself and i never i never once i understood that concept and yeah so that's an important thing too is just take it easy on yourself yeah and it's amazing to me also how often i hear people as they get better start to recognize that you know and what i say to people all the time the pain is not the enemy the pain wasn't trying to make your life miserable the pain was giving you clues about things that you needed to do to live your life the way that you wanted to live it which you get to do now that's right yeah i mean what the pain has given me is i don't get angry anymore um and i i and i now know with absolute certainty every time i got mad at my wife it had nothing to do with her it it had to do something was coming up within me that scared me i didn't know what it was and the only way i knew to do was take control it and create an issue that had nothing to do with that so without the pain i wouldn't have that and i can't tell you i wouldn't trade trade that for a million dollars i just wouldn't yeah any last thoughts for people before we sign off this i would say we're kind of touching on it just um try meditation um and if you start thinking about things you're doing a perfect job because that's what meditation is it's just be there and watch them come and go and listen to the body and just listen to the subtleties and things throw you off you know it's like huh and we all have them i know we do um thank you so much for being here for being open for sharing your experience and for walking us through what you've done it's it's just remark it's a remarkable story i hope it wasn't too much i know i threw a lot out there no i look forward to reading about it um within the draft of your book and then when the book comes out and i know how much people appreciate um you and everybody else who comes on and uh and is open and vulnerable and and talks about how you've managed to heal so thank you right you're welcome thank you also to everybody who's been here and listening every time we record an episode i'm reminded of how blessed and touched i am to be part of this amazing community of people who are working on unhealing themselves in this brave and creative mind-body way i uh as i said earlier if you're interested in talking with us at our office about how we can help you we've been able to expand our telehealth options and and make that permanent at this point so if you're interested in talking with me or my assistant michelle grimm you can request information through our website at www.drstracks.com our staff will get back to you with all the instructions and information that you need if you enjoyed this episode you can find the recording and all of our previous episodes at curable and my hope for healing page which is curablehealth.com forward slash hope for healing you can also sign up for our office newsletter and get updates about next episodes and everything else that's going on in our practice i will be back with another episode in four weeks i hope you can join us then until then i hope everybody has a wonderful start to their summer and everybody stays safe and healthy and with that we will say good night

Channel: Curable Health

Views: 2,547

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Id: rOrcP0aYA5I

Length: 64min 37sec (3877 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021