Dr. John Sarno’s top 10 healing discoveries (on back pain).

A summary of this book

Dr. John Sarno’s work on mindbody healing, while a professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at New York Medical Center, changed countless lives for the better with lasting effects. Over the past fifty years, he has helped at minimum tens of tousands of people to heal. Dr. Sarno’s discoveries into mindbody medicine are unparalleled as was his ability to succesfully diagnose and treat his patients with back pain.

More information
Dr. John Sarno’s Top 10 Healing Discoveries
Written by: Steve Ozanich
Click on: https://amzn.to/2TrpkjN

Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection
Written by: John sarno
Click on: https://amzn.to/31tjKjD 

The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
Written by: John Sarno
Click on: https://amzn.to/31uYxpr

The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders
Written by: John Sarno
Click on: https://amzn.to/2YFprhy

‘If they can’t see it under a microscope, (to them) it doesn’t exist’
– John Sarno, MD, ABC, 20/20, “Dr. Sarno’s cure”

‘I believe that all medical studies are flawed if they don’t consider the emotional factor’
– John Sarno – 

His discoveries:

1. Many surgeries for pain are placebo’s

2. Physicophobia: fear of movement keeps the pain reoccurring

3. Stop all forms of treatment

   ‘Another essential for full recovery is that all forms of physical treatment or therapy must be abandoned….patients are usually shocked when it suggested that they stop the exercises and stretching they have been taught to do.’
   – John Sarno in ‘Healing Back Pain, p 81 –
    
   

4. The brain will “sometimes use” the malformations (as a focus on body problems instead of feelings it doesn’t want you to feel anymore)

5. The rage/soothe factor

   The idea is that people will naturally have a certain level of stressors, frustrations, resentment, and disappointments, and therefore anger (rage) in their live.

   ‘Suppose, however, there is another element in the equation that is not simply the quantity of rage that brings on symptoms, but the precense or absence of counterbalancing soothing factors…..the occurence of symptoms reflects too much rage and not enough counterbalancing soothing factors in their lives.’
   – John Sarno, The Mindbody Prescription, p. 29 –

6. The emotional barometer

   ‘But the occurence of acute spasm means that there is something psychological going on.’
   – John Sarno, Healing Back Pain, p. 84 –

   However, this ‘something’ is outside of the conscious awareness. As Carl Gustav Jung said: ‘In each of us there is another whom we do not know.’ (source: David Eagleman’s book: Incognito”)

7. Knowledge therapy

   ‘The most important factor in recovery is that the person must be aware of what is going on; in other words that the information provided is the ‘penicillin’ for the disorder….I was mystified by the obvious importance of informing the patient of what is going on. This was knowledge therapy….’
   – John Sarno, Healing Back Pain, p.71 –

   This is the knowledge of TMS as an effect of what’s happing at the unconcious level and the insight that your brain doesn’t want you to feel certain feelings.

   Tension myositis syndrome (TMS), also known as tension myoneural syndrome or mindbody syndrome is a name given by John E. Sarno to a condition he described as characterized by psychogenic musculoskeletal and nerve symptoms, most notably back pain. Sarno has described TMS in four books, and has stated that the condition may be involved in other pain disorders as well. The treatment protocol for TMS includes education, writing about emotional issues, resumption of a normal lifestyle and, for some patients, support meetings and/or psychotherapy. In 2007, David Schechter (a medical doctor and former student and research assistant of Sarno’s) published a peer-reviewed study of TMS treatment showing a 54% success rate for chronic back pain. In terms of statistical significance and success rate, the study outperformed similar studies of other psychological interventions for chronic back pain.
   Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tension_myositis_syndrome

   The core knowledge is:
   * The fear and rage are present
   * The body is not broken, or failing
   * The ego is controlling awareness
   * The placebo fools, if the person is pleased
   * The pain has a purpose
   * There exist another self within
   * TMS is harmless Healing requires two elements concerning back pain.
   * The knowledge of how the anatomy, physiology and psychology work together to form TMS.
   * The sufferer must accept that he has TMS. Without acceptance, all the knowledge in the universe won’t help. 

8. Tension as the cause of backpain

   ‘The key word in tension production is personality.’
   – John Sarno, MD, Mind over Back Pain, p. 50 –

   ‘Pain is, has been, and always will be a symptom. If it becomes severe and chronic, it is because that which is causing it is severe and has gone unrecognized. Chronicity, in the case of these pain syndromes, is a function of faulty diagnosis.’
   – John Sarno, MD, Healing Back Pain, p. 130 –

   ‘The various health disciplines interested in the back have succeeded in creating an army of the partially disabled in this country (US) with their medieval concepts of structural damage and injury as the basis of back pain.’
   – John Sarno, MD, Healing Back Pain, p. 79 –
    
   

9. A favor by the brain: protective mechanism

   ‘It was a psychoanalyst colleague, Dr. Stanley Coen, who suggested in the course of our working together that the role of the pain syndrom was not to express the hidden emotions but to prevent them from becoming consious…..it is intended to focus one’s attention on the body instead of the mind….the mark of a good camouflage is that it will not be recognized for what it is, that no one will know that something is being hidden.’
   – John Sarno, Healing Back Pain, p. 48 –

   Most pain and illness exist to protect the sufferer, which is why they don’t want to believe in TMS. They reject it outright because it’s protecting them from what’s painfull beneath their awareness. The very reason somebody has TMS is also the reason h/she has his/her pain: refusing to see oneself as h/she really is.

10. The symptom imperative

    An imperative is something that demands attention. So here, a change in the physical body that demands attention. However, “the thing” demanding the attention is not the body, it’s the unmet needs.
    Keep in mind that your brain can and will be very creative:
    * The former neck-pain sufferer now develops food paranoia.
    * The former shoulder pain sufferer now becomes agoraphobic.
    * The former smoker now shifts to projection: judging others.
    * The former alcoholic now shifts to sugars and caffeine for stimulation.
    * The former knee-pain sufferer is now obsessed with exercise and training.

    So talk to your brain. Tell it that you know what it is doing, and use some of the techniques as describes above.

    Max Herold
    August, 2019