7 Days To Relief - A Mindbody Beginner's Guide

Day 1: Waking Up 

(7 Min Read)

Migraines.

Severe neck pain.

Back pain. 

Groin pain. 

Hip pain. 

Knee pain that could be severe at times. 

Jaw pain.

POTS.

And, of course, just your normal, everyday headaches.

This is a list of symptoms I experienced.

The migraines started when I was 12, but everything else hit hard after I had kids.

And yet — I was a mover. A healer. A nervous system and functional movement expert!

I was a practitioner in the elite, highly regarded Feldenkrais Method®.

I had trained in the coveted healing method of Zen Shiatsu bodywork.

I treated people for pain!

And now here I was, at 2:30am, on my floor— exhausted, sad, and gently moving my body, trying to soothe the gnawing soreness in my hip that had woken me up… again.

A few years before, my knee pain had gotten so severe that I could hardly walk down hills. No more hiking. I no longer could open my mouth to take a full bite because my jaw was so jacked. Then this hip pain started making sitting excruciating and now I couldn’t sleep through the night. 

Because of my profession, my pain felt like an embarrassment. I kept it a secret.

"What’s Causing It??"

As someone working in alternative health, I never dreamed of getting help through the regular medical route. I just kept working on myself with what I knew and managed it on my own.

Some of the pain I loosely connected to an event (walking down that hill without training) or a joint problem, but for others I had NO explanation.

The thought of cancer popped into my head often enough to keep me scared. 

I felt I should be able to resolve my physical issues with my expertise. I spent hours and hours on the floor, moving ever so slowly. Which would work — for some things, to an extent. But pain here or there would always come back. And some things I couldn’t touch at all.

Looking back, I can see that my thoughts about what was causing my symptoms were half-formed, unclear, and filled with vague ideas about parts of my body that didn’t really have any basis in fact or science. I didn’t even begin to imagine that any of these symptoms were related to another. 

I realize now I was mostly dumbfounded. I didn’t know there was an answer.

So my brain just stopped at certain conclusions — conclusions that were destined to keep me stuck, cycling back through pain, frustration, fear, and confusion.

Until one day, I came across a very strange but compelling piece of information. It struck me like a bolt of lightning, rocked me to my core, and completely confounded me. Something deep inside me knew it rang true, but my brain couldn’t grasp it. 

The Hardest Pill To Swallow…

In truth, it scared me. Because it felt like I had just opened the door to my potential healing — and simultaneously, the definitive end to my career. It seemed to threaten all those years of study, all the money I’d spent, and potentially everything I was banking my livelihood on.

So if this information is hard for you to wrap your head around at first, let’s just say, I get it!

The “door” I opened was discovering the work of Dr. John Sarno and the diagnosis of TMS (Tension Myositis Syndrome), or Mindbody Syndrome.

Mindbody Syndrome is a condition where physical pain or other symptoms are caused by the brain and nervous system in response to stress.

The stress becomes a physical, recurring symptom when it's unable to be "processed" or "moved" through your system. The main cause comes from unprocessed emotions, or unresolved experiences that remain as a sense of threat to the subconscious. 

You can think of the physical symptoms in 2 ways. Both are at play: 

1. It is the body’s way of protecting against emotional or psychological strain

2. It is the body expressing a need for deeper support. 

It's no secret the stress is a major cause of ill health! But what hasn't become clear to most people yet, is just exactly how MUCH unacknowledged stress we carry and how directly physical the effects of that stress can be. 

It took me several years to understand and fully accept this mindbody connection. 

Eventually, I experienced levels of relief, health and freedom that I literally couldn’t have imagined were possible. It turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle that I had been seeking for decades. 

Now, I no longer suffer from migraines or any other random pain. My POTS (the scariest heart palpitations ever!) has completely resolved. If pain does come on, I can be rid of it quickly without suffering. 

I’m now a practitioner in the work, with a Master's-level certification in Pain Reprocessing Therapy and I've seen it work "miracles" for people with MANY conditions.

Yes, it sounds like a miracle, and it can feel like a miracle, but it’s actually science. In what follows over the next 7 days, I’ll help you understand what’s going on in your body (and your mind) and help you begin to see how you can recover your health on your own terms from the inside out. 

I always say, don’t take me on faith! Trust the evidence, trust your own experience. I invite you to keep an open mind. My own mind had to crack wide open for this too! As you learn see how it strikes you and as you apply it, observe how it affects you. 

What do you have to lose?

(This is an excerpt from Day 1 of a 7-day course to find relief.)