In broad daylight, walking around town with a bottle in my hand.

Yes it has come to this. In broad daylight, walking around town with a bottle in my hand.

My friends must think: “But David, you never drink alcohol!”

Let me explain…

My previous text about chronic pain got a lot of responses. Especially on Facebook.

Several people told me they’re now reading “The Mindbody prescription”. 

Meanwhile I keep going for daily walks of at least 30 minutes, to rediscover what I learned from Dr. Sarno 13 years ago.

This was what finally healed my neck / arm / hand pain after a 2 year struggle:

1. Realize that unconscious emotions are the sole cause of the pain.
2. Focus away from the pain and what might be wrong with the body.

As soon as walking starts to hurt, I talk to my subconscious: “If you can hurt me, you can heal me. That’s your job now.”

Then I consciously think of all the things that annoy, frustrate or scare me, everything I’d rather be distracted from.

Cause that’s exactly what the “Mindbody syndrome” does. It’s a twisted defense mechanism.

The idea is: stop giving that drama queen any attention and look your shadow side straight into its festering face. This way the pain loses its distracting function and disappears.

The insights that meditation brought me, help a lot:

• Let it come, let it be, let it go.
• Don’t repress. Don’t wallow.
• Observe objectively.
• Be honest with yourself.
• Breathe, feel, expand, soften…

The difference with most meditations is the conscious conjuring of “unsafe” thoughts and feelings. This shows it’s not all that bad. It’s way better than continuing the struggle with physical pain.

What about the bottle then?

Well, that’s just sparkling apple juice. 😀 A gift I got at the checkout of an organic store. My small backpack was already stuffed with kombucha, so I had to carry that extra bottle by hand.

I sure got a lot of weird looks walking around like that. 😉