A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Chronic Symptom Recovery Based on the Science of How the Brain Creates Pain.
If you suffer from Chronic Symptoms without any injury, or your injury or illness is over 8 weeks old and still have pain, there is a good chance that you have a mind-body syndrome.
The Good News is that you are not damaged, broken, or sick and can fully recover!
Mind-Body Syndrome (MBS) or Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) is caused by your brain. Even in pain that is caused by an injury or serious illness, the brain is what turns on the pain message.
In Chronic Symptoms, the brain has not turned off the message because it believes there is still a danger somewhere. It’s job is to keep the body safe, and if it is perceiving danger somewhere, it will keep the pain/symptom message continuing.
In our recovery process, we learn to see how we have kept the danger message activated, and through our Awareness, we learn to influence the brain to perceive safety, so it can return to a state of homeostasis.
This allows not only the pain/symptom message to calm down, but also allows us to feel more peace, joy, and ease in our daily lives. Many people that have recovered, or are in the process of recovery report that having a mind-body symptom was the best thing that has ever happened to them, as it opened the door to another way of Being that they never knew was possible.
I know your pain is real because I have been there myself.
In the winter of 2021, I woke up in the middle of the night with intense, debilitating pain all down my right side. The pain was in my groin, buttocks, and hip. inner thigh, quadricep, outer thigh, calf, shin, and foot. I couldn’t walk, change my clothes or move without this pain escalating beyond belief.
I tried many things to get relief. Acupuncture, massage, Physical therapy, steroid injections. I went to the doctor’s and got MRIs in which they found ordinary wear and tear (FAI, Labral tear, Cysts, edema), but none of these were the cause of my pain. All treatments only worsened the pain, and I had to stop everything.
I got lucky though. I was told about the science of mind-body medicine, and once I did the research all the dots connected, and I knew I was a prime candidate. The problem was I had been medicalized and told I had a structural problem. And the pain felt structural, and it was so intense. How could something this painful be caused by my brain?
I did as much research as possible and worked with a coach. I had to borrow his conviction that I could get better. I had to keep returning to his belief that what I had wasn’t structural but was indeed my brain perceiving danger on some level.
I had to go deep into my own fears and see how I was giving the brain messages of danger. I had to change my internal state. And now, being pain-free, I can see that the pain was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.
You can have this experience too.
I am an Accredited Mind-Body Coach through the Freedom from Chronic Pain Program for Practitioners, designed by Dr. Howard Schubiner MD, and Hal Greenham BSc
The Science and Proof are in the success stories…
Many people are fully recovered and leading everyday symptom-free lives. Some of them have had their symptoms and/or pain for years, even decades. Many of them had multiple symptoms, and they all got better, even those that were bedridden and on pain medications.
These recovery stories were the inspiration that I needed to recover. I had to listen to these amazing people and hear in their voices the joy and freedom that they now experienced. They learned how to change the way their brains perceived things. They wanted to change to get better, and so they did.
The recovery process isn’t complicated, and it doesn’t require digging up the past and resolving history. But it does require consistency, and patience- with yourself and your brain. It requires self-compassion because your symptoms are not your fault.
When we find the places where we have been hard on ourselves, and we learn to soften inside, a whole new world opens up, one of safety and ease.
Unpredictable Grace
A NEW BOOK BY JOI SHARP
In December of 2021, I awoke in the middle of the night screaming with intense pain. The pain felt completely different, like nothing I had ever known. I couldn’t walk without assistance, and this became terrifying. I went to doctors, physical therapists, massage therapists, chiropractors, and acupuncturists, but the pain only worsened. I entered into a downward spiral of confusion and despair. I was dizzy, shaky, afraid of being seen, and highly hyper-vigilant. I lost all touch with my familiar sense of self within a short time.
None of my abiding spiritual awareness came close to calming this state down. Surrender only exacerbated the downward spiral.
And so I prayed for help, and when support came, it opened up a whole new world- Neuroscience. As I explored this new world, there came a new understanding of how powerful we are and how we can change, heal and evolve through our brain’s neuroplasticity.
As I dove into my brain’s learned neural circuits to heal my pain, I began recognizing the implications we all share as humans. I began to see that we all have the potential to go beyond our pain and suffering if we learn to harness the neuroplasticity of our brains.
Through this process that I share, the pain faded away, and a new self began to emerge; a self that was free of the learned programs of the past.
