The Power of Awareness
When we are dealing with chronic body pain, it is worth to explore the idea of repressed emotions. The power of the mind to create an illness or heal it, is undeniable. Emotional wounds we suffered in the past, stay repressed in our unconscious mind.
I know it can be difficult to embrace the idea that a pain may be first caused in the mind. However, an openness to believe this, is the first step in the healing process.
There is a wonderful book “The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain”, by Dr. John Ernst Sarno, a professor of Rehabilitation Medicine that studied chronic body pain for decades.
In his book, dr. Sarno tells us that negative feelings and emotions have been stored in our unconscious mind. Because it happened unconsciously, we are completely unaware of these feelings. In an attempt to protect us from looking at those feelings again, our mind creates symptoms to distract us.
Dr. Sarno outlines the following technique to deal with chronic body pain:
- Make yourself aware of rage you’ve been holding unto, unconsciously, through the years.
- Understand that your mind, in an attempt to distract you from looking at that rage, created the symptoms.
- Tell your mind you know what it’s doing, and it can stop doing it.
Health Is Inner Peace
Some spiritual teachings like, A Course In Miracles, teach that illnesses are a product of mind confusion. We have attributed the body, functions of the mind. We think the body is autonomous in creating the problem, but in truth the real cause is mind.
Ideally, we should treat the body mostly as a learning tool, as the vehicle for our experience in the physical world. The only one with creative capacity is the mind. Therefore, it is HERE, in the mind, where the healing has to happen.
