I remember the moment I made the decision to stop struggling against my body.

Lying on my bedroom floor feeling frustrated, angry and alone, I realized that there was no way I was going to relieve pelvic pain until I made some kind of peace with where I was.

For far too long I had been frantically searching for solutions. Going from doctor to doctor. Worrying I was never going to enjoy sex again. Angry that no one knew what was going on, and feeling somehow damaged or defective.

I could feel how much stress, tension, and anxiety all of this was causing in my body and my life.

I was 100% focused on what I did not want.

So, I made a decision to do something radical.

I decided to stop.

Seriously.

I decided to make peace with my symptoms and the impact they were having on my life…

With the fact that sex hurt.

With the fact that I couldn’t wear the clothes I wanted to wear, or do the exercise I wanted to do.

With the fact that the intense burning pain almost never went away, and was seriously impacting my ability to enjoy everything in my life, including parenting my amazing daughter, and doing work that for the first time in my life I was excited about.

And something amazing happened. Though the pain didn’t magically go away, an emotional weight lifted off my heart.

I felt at home inside my own skin again, in a way I hadn’t in months.

And, more than that, I discovered that my body had a lot to say to me!

Looking back, I can see that this choice is what allowed my body to heal.

And after years of helping hundreds of women relieve every type of chronic pelvic and sexual pain, as well as other chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression and other symptoms, I have come to see that the single most important thing you can do to relieve pain, heal your body, or change anything in your life that isn’t the way you want it to be, is to drop your resistance to it.

Let go.

I promise you. It’s possible.

What you resist persists, and pain is no exception.

When you’re struggling against where you are. When you believe thoughts that your life is over or that you’ll never be able to enjoy your life again, not only do you miss the blessings, guidance, and opportunities where you are, you create a whole lot of stress, tension, and anxiety in your body…things that make it impossible for your body to heal.

Of course, accepting where you are isn’t necessarily easy. Especially when you’re in pain, feeling stuck, trapped, and hopeless – and your symptoms are limiting your life in ways that make you feel as though your life is basically over…like you’re missing out.

But it is possible, and it can be as simple as a decision to accept where you are, just for now, and see what happens.

“You are where you are and you can get to wherever you want to go from where you are.”  ~Abraham-Hicks

Dropping the struggle and relaxing into where you are relaxes your body and your nervous system, connects you to your inner wisdom, and allows you to find and tune into the guidance you need from your body to heal.

Not only that, it allows you to get your focus off your symptoms and onto other things…including things you actually still enjoy. Which further relaxes your nervous system, decreases tension and stress, and allows you to feel better emotionally even before the symptoms are gone.

It moves you out of a vicious negative downward spiral of pain, fear, stress, tension, pain, fear, stress, tension; and into an upward positive spiral of peace, relaxation, relief, joy, peace, relaxation, relief, joy.

In my case, dropping the struggle, allowed me to start finding new ways to be with my body and find what did feel good again.

For example, I discovered that I actually could enjoy sex and intimacy when I honored my body, communicated with my partner, and made space for creativity and play. As a result, sex got way better and so did my relationship…even before my pain went away.

And, slowing down and honoring my body, making fewer plans and taking time to go inside actually expanded my world rather than contracting it.

Your body is ALWAYS on your side.

Sometimes it’s not immediately apparent how.

It may be that it’s stopping you from doing things the usual way to nudge you onto a different path, to help you expand your possibilities and tap into your full potential.

When you are in “fix it” mode it’s impossible to be open to those nudges.

Here are some things making peace with my symptoms helped me to do…

• Understand my body.
• Speak up.
• Honor my truth.
• Put myself first.
• Say no.
• Create healthy boundaries.
• Learn new ways of experiencing pleasure.
• Improve communication with my partner, and other people in my life.
• And more…

Some of those things were hard for me to do.  I never would have done them if my body wasn’t literally demanding the change.  I see this over and over again with the women I work with.  When they truly drop the struggle, they are amazed at what they discover inside themselves.

“Now is just the jumping off place for the beginning of your journey.” ~Abraham-Hicks

I invite you to consider the possibility of making peace with where you are.

It just may be your first step to lasting relief too.

Lorraine Faehndrich is a Women’s Mind Body Mentor and Pelvic Pain Relief Coach specializing in the relief of female pelvic and sexual pain.  Through her company Radiant Life Design, she empowers women with the skills, information, and support they need to understand the connection between their mind and body, allow their emotions, access their inner wisdom, and go on to live radiantly healthy joy-filled lives!

If you’d like to learn more about a mind body approach to relieving pelvic pain – visit www.radiantlifedesign.com or register for Lorraine’s upcoming popular free class, Say Goodbye to Pelvic Pain.

She wasn’t able to work much and was in constant pain. I learned her story from an email she sent me last year, and it was a very familiar story indeed. Like myself and all of my clients have experienced, she was at her wits end.

She’d tried affirmations, positive thinking, meditation, and many other techniques.

In fact, when she emailed me, she sent me a list of all the things she’d tried in order to heal herself. Nothing had worked.

She was interested in taking my Mind-Body Coach Training , because she hoped to learn something that would help. Yet, she was very skeptical. (And, who wouldn’t be? After trying everything, a person tends to get a little doubtful.)

She sent me her list of things she’d tried, and she said, “Is there anything in your training that I haven’t already done? Do you have anything that I haven’t tried that would actually help me heal?”

From her list, I could see that everything she’d tried was, indeed, useful and helpful.

But, after years and years of working with people in pain, I can spot the places where a person needs specific tools and knowledge to troubleshoot a mind-body healing journey.

So, I emailed Debby back. I told her that yes, I did see exactly why she hadn’t healed yet, and yes, she could absolutely heal. The mind-body tools I use would, indeed, be effective, and she could be on her way to health. I explained everything in detail so that she could see exactly where the gaps were in her mind-body healing process.

Debby decided to try the mind-body tools and see what the results would be.

I knew Debby was skeptical, and she even asked me to promise, during the first week of Mind-Body Coach Training, that she could be pain-free. I had to laugh, because she was so forthright in her skepticism. She was not a true believer, but she was so willing to give it a shot. I promised her that yes, if she applied what she was learning, she could be out of pain. Of course there’s never any guarantee, but I could see her determination. I could feel her strength. I believed in her.

She took the Mind-Body Coach Training because she wanted to learn every tool and trick I have up my sleeve. She dove right in and went for it. She gave it her all.

So what happened?

Here’s Debby’s story in her own words:

I’m healed!

I’m pain free after four-years of daily, debilitating pelvic and lower-back pain.

These mind-body tools and methodology work.

As an experienced master certified Martha Beck life coach, before signing up, I asked Abigail if she really had something different. I needed to hear it out loud. She said yes, clearly and confidently.

After all the doctors, specialist, chiropractic manipulations, physical therapies (external and internal), tailbone and sacroiliac joint injections, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, massage, tai chi, and yoga, this felt like my last hope.

I learned a lot, applied, and integrated. Made amazing new friends and am now coaching clients using these amazing tools and methodology.

This coach training was life changing. I have my life and mobility back.
It was worth every penny, moment of study, and application of each and every tool.

Thank you Abigail!
Debby

Though Debby wrote that testimonial to thank me, the reality is, she did it all herself. I supplied the tools, but she put them to practice in her life. She was willing to look past her own doubt and try it anyway. The Debby I know today is full of joy, passion, and excitement for helping others heal, too. I’m grateful that she joined the training simply because it was magical to watch her transform. I’m honored to have been a part of her journey and path.

I share her story because I want you to have lots of hope and inspiration for your healing journey. However you choose to learn mind-body healing, you, too, can create health. All you need is a little determination. (There are tons of great mind-body tools free here on the blog, by the way!)

P.S. If you want every tool and trick for mind-body healing too, then this year’s Mind-Body Coach Training 2017 might be just the ticket! Click here for the details! (We’re running a $500 discount for the first 10 applicants at the moment!)

Besides, our culture does not honor or allow for emotional processes like grieving. It’s as though we can just skim over the top of life, showing up at barbecues and school functions, presenting ourselves as fine, and somehow life will be ok.

Except, of course, when it isn’t, and our bodies respond to all this ignoring of emotion by manifesting physical symptoms. If you are familiar with TMS or Mind-Body Syndrome, then you know exactly what I mean.

Denying emotion is a habit, learned in childhood, that we bring into our adult lives. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. One of the biggest emotions that gets shoved under the rug is grief.

If you’ve recently (or not so recently) developed a pain syndrome in the body, step one is to look for places in your life that are asking to be grieved. It’s so easy to just trudge forward through losses and not give them the acknowledgment they deserve.

Not every loss will seem “big enough” to grieve. And your mind will likely tell you that you should “be over it by now,” which is something the mind says whether you’ve cried once or one-hundred times about a loss. The truth is, if you still feel it, you’re not over it, and that’s ok.

Because culture does not allow for grief, you have to allow for it yourself. You have to set aside the time to acknowledge, feel, and allow your own grief. Nobody else is going to give you permission.

Advocate for your own grief. This doesn’t mean you have to shirk all your duties. It just means you have to take the time you need, in bits and pieces or larger chunks, wherever you can. Set aside time for you, and use it to grieve. Then, you will actually find healing and openness, love, and joy flowing in again.

No matter how small the loss, (because we do that; we judge the size of our losses), it still counts. Acknowledge the reality of what you feel. Let yourself have the emotions that are begging for your attention. Be the kind and nurturing person who gives you a break, lets you rest into what needs to be felt, and takes great care of you.

I thought I’d bring you all along on the journey this week, just for fun!

The breath is magical, because it’s always there, bringing oxygen to the body, no matter what we’re doing.

We don’t have to be aware of it for it to continually work its magic, because it’s meant to steadily and continually keep us alive. However, the breath becomes even more magical when we do actually pay attention to it.

Try the following exercise:

Take a moment to pay attention to your breath. Right now, what is your breath doing? Is it moving freely? Are you holding your breath? Is it moving in your chest? Or is your low belly relaxed and the breath flowing there? Are you breathing quickly or slowly? Just notice. Then, simply notice the breath come into your body as you inhale and leave as you exhale, without altering anything on purpose.

As you do this simple check-in, you build your ability to be present, right now, in your body. Checking in with yourself three times a day to simply become aware of the breath (without purposefully altering it) will significantly change your daily life experience. You’ll begin to notice the world seeming brighter, the joy of living filling your body and mind, and the sudden relaxation of time concerns. (Truly, I haven’t felt rushed at all since starting this practice.)

The first step to unwinding unhealthy breath patterns is to observe the breath. This deceptively simple practice will allow your body to begin the process of returning to natural, unhampered breathing (the kind we did as babies.) As you observe, you’ll find that the body and mind naturally shift a breath pattern that isn’t serving you. For example, if I notice I’m holding my breath during a check-in, my body automatically takes a nice, deep diaphragmatic breath.

You will also have easier access to your emotions, since the breath is a very exact indication of your emotional experience in the moment. Holding your breath is a signal that you are suppressing something in this very moment. Quick inhales via your mouth that puff up your chest let you know you’re highly stressed or anxious about something right now, and you’re trying to avoid feeling the emotions under the stress. If the breath is moving fluidly in your low belly and diaphragm, you’re relaxed and emotionally aware in this moment.

As you can see, this is a pretty fabulous practice for developing the kind of emotional awareness necessary to heal TMS (aka Mind-Body Syndrome). It’s also the secret weapon of every enlightened yogi, so there’s that. (This seems like a fairly compelling reason to practice breath awareness!)

For me, this practice has deepened my emotional awareness, brought me even further into my daily practice of living in my body instead of my head, and opened up a deluge of creativity. I also feel more connected to my family members, because I am even more present now. I’m able to speak my truth more clearly and easily, because I know my truth more readily. Being present with my breath helps me know what I need in each moment.

I’ve expanded my practice from three times a day to as many times a day as I can remember to check in with my breath. It gets a little easier each day. I find myself paying attention to my breath while working, playing with my daughter, cooking, and conversing with friends. This is rapidly improving my ability to witness my own thinking, my emotions, my body, and my spirit from an observational place instead of a reactive place.

Imagine – all this, just from one simple breath practice. It’s the most basic practice, and it may be one you already know, or have heard of before and tried. However, it’s pretty easy to underestimate the power of this simple practice. I invite you to play along with me as I explore the depths of presence more and more each day. I’d love to hear what this simple practice does for you!

The idea that this was causing my body to react with tension and pain really blew my mind. And, it made so much sense. It was, truly, the only logical explanation for the sudden, out-of-nowhere chronic pelvic pain syndromes I’d developed; vulvodynia and interstitial cystitis. Every other explanation lacked the simplicity and clarity of that one, and so I decided to use a mind-body healing approach to my syndromes.

In doing so, not only did I eliminate the pain syndromes, but I changed every single aspect of my life for the better. Why? Because I changed the driving force behind all of my actions and decisions.

I used to act from fear. Fear of not being perfect or good enough. Fear of not succeeding. Fear of people not liking me. Fear of something failing or falling apart. Fear of messing up. Fear of losing something or someone.

When you look at it like that, it’s quite a lot of fear. Fear, unfelt and un-faced, remains within the body. This causes tension and stress…and pain.

To heal my body and mind, I had to find the antidote to a fear-based life.

What’s the antidote?

A love-based life.

I had to learn how to make all choices, actions, and decisions based on love.

In every moment, there’s a fear-based focus and a love-based focus. The fear-based focus says, “I have to do/should do x,y, or z because something bad might happen.” The love-based focus says, “I am choosing this because it feels right, and it feels like love.”

A love-based life means asking myself if what I’m thinking or doing is because I love me and want to care for me, or because I’m afraid of something.

I have to stop and pay attention. Am I tense? Holding my breath? If so, I’m trying not to feel fear. It’s time to connect to myself, be aware of the fear, and find my way back to love.

If I love me, I don’t have to be perfect, good-enough, or responsible for the whole world. I can just be.

If I love me, I can treat myself with kindness instead of criticism.

If I love me, I can choose actions because they feel joyful, loving, and fun.

Now, I listen deeply to the truth in my heart. From there, I choose to eat foods I love. I choose to enjoy activities I love. I choose to work in a career I love, in ways that I love.

Before anything can become a part of my life, it has to pass the love test. If it doesn’t feel absolutely right and loving for myself, then it doesn’t pass.

This love-based life has given me my health back. It’s given me my life back – only it’s a much better life! It’s given me the work I love, the child I love, and so much more.

Choosing to love me and to live a love-based life healed my body and united me with my spirit.

Exhausted.

Like part of your body is permanently molded into the bed.

When you start paying attention to your body and actually listening to its needs, one of the first things that happens is usually exhaustion. It’s like you pick up the rug and realize you’ve been sweeping stuff under it for years. Now, here you are, faced with reality: You. Are. Tired.

So very tired.

This is normal! In our culture, we often push ourselves crazy-hard. We ignore our bodies and blow past signals for rest and recuperation. We focus on doing, doing, doing. Our to-do lists become more important than our physical bodies.

I frequently fall into this habit, even after years of deep practice around listening to my body and respecting its messages.

Self-kindness is called for when you confront your tendencies to shove aside your body’s guidance and end up sick or in pain.

You didn’t do this on purpose.

You’re not bad or wrong for ignoring your body, or for being tired.

This is all just information, and you can simply be curious. Why did I think it was more important to clean my house, work late, and then paint the ceiling than to take a few moments to settle in for a little rest?

You’ll probably find that your mind thinks you should work 24/7 to be a worthwhile person, you’re a little afraid of the emotions or insights that might pop up if you stop, and nobody ever says, “Wow! Amazing job resting today!”

All of these reasons make it more challenging to get off the treadmill and stop moving.

When you finally do, you’ll probably have some accumulated exhaustion in your body. That’s ok. No judgment necessary. Right now, just rest.

Then rest some more.

Then rest some more.

It’s your path to health. And joy. And creativity.

You are doing SUCH A GREAT JOB RESTING! You are AMAZING when you rest so much!

(Print those last two sentences out and post them somewhere handy.)

Keep up the good resting.

Whether you’re new to mind-body healing or a veteran of many years, there’s only way to stay sane: DON’T GOOGLE IT.

If you’re using a mind-body healing approach and you’ve realized you have TMS (also called Mind Body Syndrome), then Googling your symptoms is probably the worst thing you can do.  I can’t think of a faster way to create doubt and fear in your mind that what you’re dealing with isn’t just TMS, but something deadly and permanent.

If you want mind-body healing to work, you have to decide to go all in and let go of the conventional thoughts and ideas around your symptoms. You have to drop the medical lingo for your syndrome (I remember feeling so free when I stopped saying I had vulvodynia and switched to calling it TMS. It was pivotal in my healing process!). You have to leave the conditioned way of viewing the mind and body and open yourself to something much more powerful – seeing the mind and body as a team.

Stop researching your symptoms and start spending the time on yourself, instead. Use that time to feel emotions, journal about stresses in your life, and relax the body. You’ll find yourself improving much more quickly without research blocking your progress.

If you’re like most people I work with, you’ve already seen a plethora of doctors, researched deep into the night many times, and right now you’re just facing a momentary fear that’s driving you to Google. Recognize the fear for what it is; the siren song of TMS. It’s the way the syndrome works. Your own mind keeps you distracted with fear around symptoms when the real work (feeling emotions, seeing truths with yourself) awaits.

There’s nothing new for you to learn on Google about your symptoms.

There is, however, much more for you to learn about yourself, within you.

It’s time to research your innermost emotions, how you’re treating yourself, and where you might need to make changes in your external life. That is what will heal TMS and create the well-being you want.

1. Ask yourself what you are feeling emotionally throughout the day any time you feel afraid or upset by symptoms. Allow yourself a few minutes to feel any emotions related to the symptoms themselves, then focus on other stressors in your life. What ELSE is stressing you out, besides the symptoms? What was going on today before you started worrying about symptoms? The non-pain-related stressors are the real issues that need to be dealt with, faced, and felt. It’s the mind’s tendency to suppress emotion and avoid feeling around the “real stuff” that causes a mind-body syndrome to perpetuate.
2. Give yourself some space to journal about your life and whatever is stressful, besides the pain syndrome. Start your sentences with, “I feel _________ about….” Allow yourself that expressive space and you’ll find yourself healing very quickly!
3. Relax your nervous system whenever you can so that you’re not living in constant fight-or-flight mode. Using long, slow exhales, music, relaxation techniques, or guided meditations can be very helpful for this. Become aware of when you are in a fight-or-flight reaction so that you can learn how to shift your body out of that activated state and into a rest and digest response. The fight-or-flight response is very connected to the bladder and will cause you to have frequency and urgency around urination.

If you have these basic steps in place, you’ll be on the road to healing in no time. These are the steps I used to heal interstitial cystitis and have shared with so many clients. They are based around Dr. John Sarno’s work, which was a pivotal piece of my own healing. Dr. Sarno has taught hundreds of people how to heal by implementing emotional awareness and the understanding that the mind and body are intimately connected.

However, there is also one other very important connection to make if you suffer from frequent urination or urgency. You must look at your relationship with food and dieting. This is something that is often overlooked or simply unknown to many people who struggle with urinary symptoms or IC. (I prefer to call interstitial cystitis by it’s real name – Mind-Body Syndrome, or Tension Myositis Syndrome – but for the sake of clarity, I’m referring to it as IC here in this blog post.)

Many of my clients who have IC have a history of dieting, diet-mentality, or patterns of food-restriction and binge eating. Dieting is the quickest way to cause stress on the body, which then turns on its fight-or-flight response. Every time you go on a diet, you might as well be telling your body, “There’s a bear chasing you 24/7, AND it’s a famine on top of that!”

Diets are extremely hard on the metabolism, and a metabolism that isn’t working optimally will start to show signs of damage through symptoms like low body temperature, frequent urination, and fatigue. Trying to fit our bodies into the cultural media beauty standard creates a great deal of mental stress, but it also causes true metabolic stress on the body.

If you want to heal IC, it’s time to allow yourself to eat normally.

I happen to know what this looks like, as I’m married to a man who has never been on a diet in his life. He has no food hang-ups and simply eats like nature intended. What is this mysterious thing called normal eating? It looks like this: You eat when you’re hungry. You let your body know that food is abundant by feeding it regularly throughout the day. You look for food that would satisfy your body and soul, and know that pleasure is a valid part of the eating process. You enjoy every meal, and you also enjoy desserts. Sometimes, you eat too much, or for comfort, or out of sheer enjoyment. A lot of the time you just eat the amount your body is requesting. You allow all food to be equal, with no good/bad labels. You don’t make yourself wrong for eating too much, eating for an emotional reason or anything else. You don’t put any food rules on yourself.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned as a recovering dieter is that anytime I have a strange eating pattern showing up in my life, I have a secret food rule hidden somewhere in my head. Once I find it and drop it, then I’m able to approach food with normalcy and relaxation. This allows my body to enjoy my meals while in a rest and digest state. This means I’m able to let my metabolism regain its normal rhythms.

IC is actually asking you to heal something much deeper than a single symptom. It’s asking you to heal your relationship with your body, food, and culture. The number one thing you can do to get out of the dieting trap is to embrace your body’s natural shape, qualities, and size, right now. Embracing the diversity of the human body and its various lovely shapes and sizes is of utmost importance. 

Those of us who are on the Mind-Body Syndrome/TMS track are already bucking the cultural trends around health and well-being. We’re ignoring a large chunk of the cultural messages around our health and bodies in order to create health. Why not also ignore the cultural imperative to be stick-thin? Let’s go full-on contrarian!

Let your body be the size it wants to be when you eat regularly, enjoy your food, and have fun, rest and relaxation in your life. Watch your metabolism return to health and your bladder calm down as you do so. Pay attention to your emotions so that you can get out of the symptom-obsession trap. Any time your mind wants to think about symptoms or why you need to go on a diet, you know that something emotional wants to emerge from under those very compelling decoys. Look for what is really bothering you in your life, beyond your body size or symptom. That is the key to emotional, physical, and mental health.

1. Discover amazing resources like The Mindbody Prescription by John Sarno, M.D or When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate, M.D.
2. Feel hope for the first time in forever.
3. Dig in and try to apply mind-body healing to your situation.
4. Feel some skepticism, but do it anyway.
5. Start feeling emotions rise up into your awareness.
6. Feel a little nervous about this emotion stuff, and worry that the pain hasn’t gone away yet.
7. Start worrying that you’re doing it wrong, because now you feel emotions AND pain.
8. Have a wee freak-out.

When you start down the path of allowing and feeling emotions in order to let your body release tension and pain, you might feel very optimistic. You can see how this could work. You’re excited to try it. However, the mind always pictures the healing process as a linear, improve day-by-day experience. When the actual healing process sets in, the mind usually wigs out, not understanding or liking what’s happening.

The thing is, when you apply concepts from Sarno, Mate, or other well-known mind-body experts, you aren’t actually experiencing a true physical healing. Healing TMS, or Mind-Body Syndrome, is not the same as a cut on your skin that heals bit by bit each day.

Instead, what you are experiencing is a healing within your mind-body system.

It’s a healing from the inside out, of the inner child, your connection to your soul, your relationship with your emotions, and so much more.  Because of this, the healing process is highly erratic. One day you may feel lots of pain or symptoms, and the next you might be pain-free. That might last for a week. Then, you might have a couple weeks of mild symptoms. After that it might be a couple days of lots of symptoms, then nothing again.

I like to think of it as a learning rather than a healing, because that’s more accurate. What you are doing is teaching your mind a new way of being, and that means fits and starts, back and forth, successes and failures – just like when you learn anything new.

When I was learning the violin, there were times when I’d play something amazingly well for a week and then for several weeks suddenly sound like I’d regressed two years. This is the pain of the learning process.

The key to surviving the agony of learning your way to health via mind-body tools is this: Count your successes! I’m going to tell you what they are right now, because you may be accidentally putting them in the failure column.

Three Signs You are Healing (Learning!) and on the Right Track! (In other words, pain relief is going to happen to you, inevitably!)

1. You feel a lot of emotions all of a sudden. You feel like you’re in emotional kindergarten, and a little off-center because these damn emotion things keep surfacing and messing with your usually daily flow. The pain/symptoms may still be very present, erratic, or even increase for a while. All of these are signs of success! You are learning, and it is working.
2. You have more pain than before, or even new pain/symptoms. This is very common, and it does not mean failure. It means success! You are learning to switch your attention to your emotions rather than obsessing about pain, and your mind is pulling you back to your old distraction, the pain, by amping it up. You shall prevail! Keep at it! Feel those emotions.
3. You’re learning all sorts of new things about yourself as you open up to your emotions. You think by now the pain/symptoms should be gone, but they’re not, and you feel really tired. This is normal! It just means that you’re in the midst of the learning and you are on track. Tell your mind that the biggest sign of success is the new self-awareness you are gaining as you use the tools. Keep your focus there and you will soon see pain relief.

I’m in the midst of training a group mind-body coaches right now, and we’re about two-thirds of the way through this 2015 Mind-Body Coach Training. I’ve watched the participants experience these very things, and I’ve told them these very words I’m telling you. They’ve been using the tools for several months now, and have learned so much. This week, I just started getting reports in from many of them celebrating the lessening or cessation of physical symptoms. Voila! Just like that, eventually your mind learns to let the pain go.

The hardest part of mind-body healing is this seemingly backward concept: The healing starts within and slowly works its way out to the body symptoms themselves.

Healing first takes place within your psyche and your relationship with your own mind, emotions, and soul.

Focus on the improvements you’re noticing in those realms, because you can trust that the freer you feel within yourself, the closer you are to a healthy, active body. You can do it.

I went on several different magical detox diets that were supposed to cure IC, but to no avail. Finally, I attempted a candida cleanse, as I was convinced I had systemic candida. The reason that sticks out in my memory is not the terribly restrictive and limited diet (I was used to that by then), but the incredibly disgusting digestive experiences I endured while on the “cleanse.” I am putting “cleanse” in quotation marks, because I am now highly suspicious and skeptical whenever I see that word. I did not feel any better after that dubious cleanse, and in fact ended up with vulvodynia, a whole new pain syndrome, while still on it.

Eventually, I wised up, having read about Tension Myositis Syndrome/Mind Body Syndrome in Dr. John Sarno’s The Mindbody Prescription. I realized that my symptoms had nothing to do with my diet, supposed “toxins” in my body, or any other such theory. After applying the mind-body tools from Sarno and other resources to my own life, I was able to free myself from symptoms and horrible detox diets. I could eat any food and felt fine. I learned to turn inward and ask myself what I was feeling emotionally, not suppress emotions, and to see obsession around symptoms or food as the mind’s way of avoiding emotions.

What was going on in my mind when I went on those diets was not rational, aware, or even sane. I was frozen with fear, caught in the trap made by my own mind. As soon as I read anywhere that a certain food caused symptoms, pain, or was “toxic,” my mind made that true. If I ate a certain food before or during pain, I assumed it was the cause and cut it out of my diet. I was terrified all the time, madly creating a smaller and smaller box in which I could live.

In truth, I wasn’t on the IC Diet, the Candida Diet, or the many other this-or-that diets. (You name it, I tried it.) I was on the Fear Diet. I was afraid, and hoping that food would be the magic bullet answer. Focusing on the food became an easy obsession, which took me even further away from any awareness of my internal world, my emotions, and my thoughts. Not only that, but the fear kept my nervous system on high-alert all the time. I lived in a perpetual fight-or-flight response, which had a much more damaging effect on the body than, say, eating one donut.

The brilliance of John Sarno’s work saved me from myself.

I was able to see that not only was my pain syndrome a giant distraction from my inner emotional world, but my food fear was as well.

I discovered that Hebb’s Law, which states that what fires together wires together in the brain, was the reason so many foods seemed to cause symptoms. In other words, if I ate a certain food and pain was present, my brain connected the two experiences as though one caused the other. Once I practiced eating foods while telling myself they did not cause symptoms, I was able to eat those foods and be symptom-free. This makes sense, as I had basically told myself they caused symptoms in the first place. The power of the mind is truly amazing.

I now believe that TMS or Mind Body Syndrome (the two descriptors are used interchangeably) can manifest not just as pain or symptoms in the body, but as detox diet obsession. Whether a person’s desire is weight loss or health, the siren song of the detox (or any other) diet is sung loudly across the internet and hard to ignore. The mind is almost always much more willing to believe in a magical diet that gets rid of pesky “toxins” or hidden allergies, no matter how hard to apply and follow, than an emotional awareness healing process.

If you’re in the midst of a Mind Body Syndrome, you don’t have to stop your detox diet cold turkey. You can, however, slowly return to a balanced way of eating and release symptoms as well.  Pick one food at a time to work with, and add it back into your diet. Before, during, and after eating it, remind yourself that it does not cause symptoms. No matter what happens with your symptoms, keep repeating that to yourself. Your mind simply has an association between that food and your symptom. Over time (usually not too long!) you will be free of that association and eating that food will no longer seem to cause symptoms to occur. Using this technique, along with allowing yourself to feel emotions instead of suppressing them, you’ll return to health and food freedom. When you make a food choice, let it be from inner wisdom and delight, not fear.

When I look back on those years of restrictive eating, I am amazed by the sheer number of different diet plans I tried. All of them were endorsed by well-meaning people who want to help others, but I find it extremely hard to believe that cutting out food groups is really healthy or “detoxifying.” I realize that what I’m saying flies in the face of much of what is currently trending in the nutrition world. I’m pretty delighted to be free from all of those trending beliefs and happily enjoy my well-being.

Nowadays, I enjoy regular old gluten bread, food with sugar in it, fruit of all kinds, grains of all kinds, legumes of all kinds, dairy, vegetables, and meats. I look for organic whenever I can, but that is the only thing I pay attention to regarding food labels. I eat a balanced mix of foods, and I don’t label any food as “good” or “bad.” Instead, I ask my body what it truly wants to eat. Sometimes, sneaky food rules will appear in my head, and I’ll have to spend time reminding myself that just because someone says one food is bad doesn’t mean it’s true.

The only source of food wisdom I really need is my own body.

I feel healthy, am physically active, and don’t have pain or symptoms. After being on all those crazy diets and seeing no improvements, I’m sold on the mind-body healing process. Food freedom and health make a pretty amazing combination. I’ll take it!
Abigail

P.S. If you want more help learning how Hebb’s Law works and how you can be free of so-called pain or symptom triggers, join me for this month’s Kindness Community class! As a Kindness Community member, you’ll get to join the live class around dealing with pain/symptoms (it’s today!) and have access to the class recording if you can’t make the class live.