I started reading the book one afternoon and put aside everything else immediately. I read the whole book in one sitting and heard the faint but distinct voice of my Inner Healer. The book spoke to a deeper part of me than my logical mind or my emotionally stressed heart. I took in everything Wise wrote and absorbed it thoroughly. I was interested in the physical therapy techniques for dealing with pelvic floor dysfunction. However, it was the other message in the book that drew my Inner Healer to it with a magnetic force.

To me, the core message of A Headache in the Pelvis is about relaxing both the body and the mind through relaxation techniques, breathing techniques, and cognitive therapy or learning to truly understand how thinking shapes our emotional lives. (This goes far beyond “just relax and you’ll feel better,” by the way. This is relaxation in a way most of us don’t truly utilize or even understand. It is powerful and extremely healing.) I knew without a doubt I needed to learn and apply everything about these mental techniques. I studied the book itself and then worked my way through the recommended reading, making trips to the library and bookstores regularly. I knew I was onto something right for me – my Inner Healer was dead certain.

I told this to Dr. Wise yesterday and the ensuing conversation included an important point that I felt was necessary to share with you, no matter where you are in your journey to health. As we talked about the mental/emotional concepts addressed in A Headache in the Pelvis, Wise told me many of the people who come to his clinic or read the book do not take those ideas to heart. He was excited to learn of the healing effect they had on me, and correlated the healing process for pelvic pain to the process of losing weight. Many people want the quick fix, the magic pill, or the instantaneous result. Lasting weight loss takes time and lifestyle changes. The body cannot be rushed. Likewise, healing must include digging to the root of the problem to eliminate it forever.

This has absolutely been my experience. Had I simply done physical therapy, I know I would not have healed. Five seconds after I left the physical therapists’ office, I was taking my freshly relaxed muscles straight back to square one with each passing minute. The constant process of storing stress and emotion in my pelvic muscles was just that – constant. To undue the tension during an appointment was just a miniscule moment in time compared to the ongoing tension that wasn’t being undone in those muscles. It wasn’t enough.

My Inner Healer was extremely wise, as usual. She knew I needed to undo the process of storing tension in those muscles and really learn new ways to approach every aspect of my life. Only then would I be getting to the root of the problem. I am always so impressed with my Inner Healer when I look back and see her genius in retrospect. She took me through the somewhat long (roughly six months) and not entirely easy process of changing myself, and how I deal with life on the very deepest level. I won’t say it was a simple or quick process. However, the payoff was far greater than I could ever have imagined. Not only did I heal completely but my entire life changed for the better. My depression lifted, my creativity skyrocketed, and I became a version of myself I had only dreamed of previously.

The quick fix may have the allure of instant gratification, but the deep fix has the allure of complete health. I am grateful to Dr. Wise and his incredibly valuable, enlightening, and calming writing for starting me on the journey to this place of absolute, whole, mind-body health.