But this year was quite an exception. It started snowing sometime in the early morning of December 20th and snowed right on through Sunday, leaving us with over a foot of snow, ice and more snow. It was treacherous for driving and almost as bad for walking-still is as a matter of fact. But God, it's beautiful.  A real white Christmas wonderland. 

So, in the spirit of the day, here is a quote from a Christmas card that I received yesterday. It is too lovely not to share.

This Christmas......

Mend a quarrel.
Seek out a forgotten friend.
Write a love letter.
Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong.
Think first of someone else.
Be kind and gentle.
Laugh a little. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure
in the beauty and wonder of the Earth.
Speak your love. Speak it again.
Speak it still once again.
        Anonymous...

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY  NEW YEAR TO ALL

SEE YOU  NEXT YEAR!!!!

YOUR HEALER WITHIN TEAM.

 

 

 

However, before we pose the questions to you, we would like to introduce you to a new relaxation technique.
It is called "Softening the Belly"-because that is exactly what you do. It is a means of both allowing yourself to breathe more deeply, and a way of releasing the tightness we all experience in our body's core muscles when we feel pain, stress, anger, or fear. It is a more profound way of letting go than simple deep breathing, but just as easy to do.

The following is a description of "soft belly" practice as told to an interviewer by Stephen Levine. (If you would like to read the entire interview, click here. )
"You start soft belly by physically letting each inward breath that you breath push the belly out. No more holding the belly. You physically open, letting the muscles soften, letting the tissue soften. In the beginning, you may even push your belly out a little, just to let it know it can go out, that it doesn’t have to take half a breath. You start to breath in to your belly, which is quite a wonderful experience. One foot on the ground may be that we take our breath only into the top third of our body. Eventually, you’ll be able to breath out the bottom of your feet, so to speak, without even trying."

"......You practice softening and begin to notice that, although your intention is to soften, there is something hard there. Your heart decides it is time to face that which has caused you to turn away from life. You start allowing thoughts, and they can come and go. You make space around thoughts, moment to moment, every exhale letting go. In the course of this, you find out what letting go means. One of the extraordinary things about soft belly practice is that it is a physical trigger for the mental state of letting go. People lose their breath when they’re watching death or during a moment of anger. That’s the time to practice soft belly. ...In softening the belly, you let space be there and thoughts and feelings pass through like bubbles. You don’t stop anything. Let it all flow. The difference between my pain and the pain is the space it floats in. "

Pretty simple, No? Yet you will be quite surprised when you experience how much more deeply relaxed you feel after practicing this technique for a few minutes. In fact, why not try it before you move on to the questions below. When you feel deeply relaxed (not sleepy!) begin your journaling session by setting your intention; ask your subconscious a specific question which conveys the kind of help and guidance you would like in the journaling process. Ask your question 3 times, remembering to listen in between each one for any answers. Then, when you are ready, begin journaling.

Question 1. Have I been in situations in the past where I have felt victimized ? If your answer is  "yes"  how, by whom and under what circumstances? Describe the situation, but also try to capture the experience in terms of how it made you feel.

Question 2. What feelings do I still carry with me related to this experience?

Question 3. How do I believe this experience affected me and the decisions and choices I made about my life prior to today?

Question 4. What actions can I take to relieve my heart and soul of any feelings I still hold there about this experience?

When you are finished answering the questions,  put your journal away, or close your computer and relax for a while. These kinds of questions are difficult to answer; even if you have gone over this situation and these feelings in your mind hundreds of times, it is a very different experience to let them out where you can see them. Do not be surprised if you feel tired afterward. Allow yourself the space to feel your emotions, but try not dwell on them. Practice letting go.

Let some time (a day or so ) pass, and then go back to your journal and read your answers again to see if any new insights appear. Write these down in your journal with your original answers.

Remember, as we said on our web site, this is hard work; but it is worth every second you spend on it.

Thank you for trusting us to help you on this journey.

We do hope you were able to take advantage of this long break between posts to do some journaling about how the roles you play affect you, your life and possibly even your pain. If you did, were you able to develop any insights or see any patterns emerging? Do not be disappointed if you did not; it takes some time to be comfortable enough with the process of journaling to recognize these things even when they are glaringly obvious. If the insights are subtle-as is most often the case-you may not become aware of them until you go back and review your journal in the days and weeks to come.

Speaking of your journaling practice, this is also probably a good time to mention that it is a deliberate choice on our part to avoid giving you any input or direction on the journaling process at this juncture, other than to suggest general topics. We believe it is important to allow you to find your own rhythm and develop a personal approach to the process before intervening very much more. Too much direction up front tends to get in the way of that -which can have the very unfortunate result of making journal writing feel like drudgery...a boring task you must do instead of a creative process that is promoting your growth and healing.

However, if you have any questions at all about what you are being asked to do please e-mail us. You can reach our staff at at innerhealer@comcast.net, or if wish to contact Kathleen directly send her mail at kabc@painmanagementconsulting.com.

One thing that we hope you took away from last weeks discussion and perhaps your own journaling is a sense of how important the roles we choose in life can be in defining who we are, both in our own eyes and in the eyes of those around us. Many- if not most- people rely upon the roles they play in life to provide them with a sense of purpose and direction. They quite literally define who they are by what they do. Ask the average person "Who are you?" and they will recite a list of their roles and responsibilities: "I am a general manager of a software company." or "I am the mother of three children." or "I am a student of art history." Very few will even touch upon their life beyond these superficial roles, even to the extent of mentioning their hobbies, diversions, or personal likes and dislikes.. In our materialistic Western culture a person is largely defined by that part of himself that is visible-and valuable-to others. Furthermore, after being characterized in that way for some time, you may well begin to see yourselves in those terms as well, losing sight of the things that matter most as you do so.

Oddly, however, for those whose lives were fraught with the kind of difficulties that we mentioned earlier in this discussion, i.e. those that can easily lead one to develop chronic pain- the opposite is frequently true. . Children who were physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused in particular, but also those who experienced other kinds of trauma, very often suffer from misplaced guilt, repressed anger, and low self-esteem; without specific types of psychological intervention, they will frequently carry these traits with them into adulthood. Plagued by sadness, lack of social support and anxiety, these individuals will often feel helpless and out of control; for some, this eventually deteriorates into a deep self-loathing, which can and often will manifest in self-destructive behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse or high risk sexual behavior. They lack a sense of self worth-or even a sense of "Self"- which makes it very difficult for them to acknowledge their personal or professional accomplishments. Instead, they identify completely with their feelings about themselves and their damaged self-comcept. No matter how successful, productive or affluent they may seem to others, in their own eyes they remain helpless victims, doomed to failure.

In fact, some of these individuals actually are quite successful. They are prominent members of the community, professionals like doctors, lawyers, nurses or teachers, or extremely successful business men and women. Some of them are even the stay at home "Super-moms" we hear about in the media-those who go to every PTA meeting, make all of their children's clothes, have professionally hosted birthday parties for all of the kids in the neighborhood, and in every other sense make themselves stand out as the most successful parent in town. . Regardless of their circumstances, however, these unfortunate people have one thing in common-a facade of perfection and barely llimited success that provides them with solace and comfort and allows them to cope with their unconscious belief that their popularity and success-like their happiness- do not really exist at all.

_____________________________

Journaling question: Do you see yourself in the above descriptions? Do you feel as if your life is a facade, or that you are just playing a role to hide your vulnerability and fear of failure? Write about these feelings and any others that arise for you in your journal. Take a break for a day or two, and then go back and see if you can determine where in your past the feelings are coming from.

"Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it."

Rabindranath Tagore

Last week we left you with some thoughts about the roles we take on in life and how those roles are changed-sometimes irrevocably-by a diagnosis of chronic pain. Hopefully you have by now (especially since we missed last week due to the Thanksgiving holiday) had some time to think and even journal about these ideas and their meaning in your own life.

One of the things that we hope you took away from our last discussion is the idea that somewhere in your pain and suffering.. your physical pain and its emotional cost...there is often a gift, albeit a gift that frequently arrives in a decidedly unappealing package. Sometimes, in fact, this gift is something that we desperately need and could not acquire in any other way. Like a fierce wind that carries us away from everything we know and love, it can bring great turmoil to our lives, yet it can also take us to a place that is inaccessible by any other means. 

For example, think for a few moments about the way in which we make the choices that dictate much of our adult lives; the choices that determine the roles we will "play" for many years to come. When we think about it logically,  the idea that we can make these choices at all, at any age, is rather irrational, if not completely insane. Yet life's journey dictates or at least expects  that we not only make them, but make them at an age when we are still enmeshed in the struggle between the excitement of independence and the safety of childhood, with only the briefest experience in making decisions with anything even approaching far reaching consequences. We are barely out of our teens when most of us make the choice of  a life partner (?), a profession or career path, where we will make our home, and when or if to start a family-far reaching decisions, certainly, that will determine not only the circumstances of our lives, but our degree of fulfillment, personal satisfaction and happiness for many years to come. 

Amazingly, however, when people make choices that are based on strong values and a childhood that contained stability, clear boundaries and plentiful, unconditional love, tempered with realistic expectations of respect for authority and oneself, it seems that these choices can and often do work. Not that anything lasts forever; things can-things must and always will change. But change does not necessarily mean chaos or despair. Change that happens for the right reasons, that takes one in the direction of purposeful growth and deeper understanding however, painful it is, does not destroy the spirit; it enriches it. It does not diminish a person or the choices she made before... it grants her a deeper appreciation of what once was her life and the lessons it taught her.  It is part of the human journey as it was meant to be.

Sadly, though, many people who live with chronic pain today came from a place very different from that which we just described . A very large percentage of chronic pain sufferers, in fact, came from homes where there was physical and/or emotional abuse, terror, neglect, insecurity, and chaos. Their lives contained little or none of the safety and stability that children require to grow into the happy adults they hope and deserve to become. For reasons that vary only slightly,** many- if not most- of them approached adulthood with a deep, abiding fear that one day the ground beneath them would simply give way and there would be nothing and no one to stop them from hurtling helplessly into the abyss. They grew up traumatized and deeply wounded, subconsciously believing that the only way to escape their pain was to find and attach themselves to people and situations that seemed to offer the comfort, stability, safety and unconditional acceptance that they were denied earlier in life. 

Unfortunately,  it is never possible to fulfill childhood needs in adult relationships and pursuits; trying to do so inevitably causes more pain and disappointment, as well as it prevents the person from recognizing and developing skills to fulfill her adult needs. The result is a person who is trapped in roles that were never appropriate, living in a state of learned helplessness and suffering deeply as a result. From there, the road to chronic pain, fatigue, anxiety, depression, and a host of other chronic conditions that deprive the person of any semblance of peace or happiness is not far away at all. 

But don't, whatever you do, despair. Things can and do change and in a few days we will continue this discussion, and begin to talk about how....

But for today, if you feel ready, why not start your journal by spending some time exploring the roles you play in your life today,. Are you a wife, husband, daughter, or son? A sister or brother? Mother or father?  Spend some time thinking about how these roles provide a framework for your behavior, ideas and ideals, and, too, how your ideas and ideals, have been shaped by the roles you have filled in your life.And what of your professional roles? Whether you continue in your profession at this time or have been forced to take time off due to your pain, how have these helped you to define your self-image and/or maintain your self worth until now? 

Tip: Remember to brainstorm first-getting your thoughts on paper quickly and without editing. Then review your ideas for insights and new levels of awareness. 

We realize that some of the people who read our journal also search the Internet for specific information about disease processes, medication, types of therapies and other content specific to chronic pain, which we consciously do not provide on our site. We also realize that the number of sites which promise the answers to these kinds of questions is quite large, and that many of them fall short of providing the answers most consumers of health care information seek. Some are too technical and geared towards professionals; some require very costly membership to obtain any information; some are geared more towards promoting a specific institution or care option than providing information and some are just not very well put together. And then there are those that are very, very good.

Obviously, few people wish to personally sort through all of these sites to find the right kind information for their particular needs. Quite honestly, neither do we. But just to be nice, we have decided to do it for you anyway. Because of the number of sites involved these reviews will be brief and contain far less detail that we normally provide. Nevertheless, we hope we will do a satisfactory job of sending you in the right direction for the information you need. Contact us, please, if we do not.

Now, without further ado, we will begin. The sites are presented in no particular order. We have included URL's and mission statements where available, and rated the sites based on our own totally subjective rating system of 1-5, with "5 being the very best.

American Academy of Pain Management:

url: http://aapainmanage.org/

Mission Statement: The American Academy of Pain Management is an inclusive, interdisciplinary organization serving clinicians who treat people with pain through education, setting standards of care, and advocacy.

Overview: This organization quickly identifies itself as one that is meant for the health care professional who practices-or has an interest in practicing- in the area of pain management. The Academy's membership is extremely limited; for example, in the states of California and New York respectively only one health care facility or practitioner is listed. This, however, could be more an issue of "politics" -which are as ubiquitous in the medical community as they are in any large corporation or industry, than a commentary on the site's value. Nevertheless, it did create a bit of reticence on our part to swiftly embrace their ideas or ideals. Membership is open to health care practitioners only and at $195.00 per person ( $50 for a full time student )is a bit too pricey for our taste.

One high note: The site publishes what appears (from a cursory review) to be a well written and not too technical quarterly magazine called "The Pain Practitioner" which is very inexpensive for a medical journal of any kind at $35.00/year. Even better, you may download copies of archived "cover to cover" content free of charge. If you have a big hard drive or a USB drive that's sitting around waiting for something to do, it is probably worth downloading one or two if you are oriented towards content that targets the medical community. Although I have not had time to read it as yet I just downloaded an issue from early 2008 entitled "Fibromyalgia" which we will review in a subsequent post. Also available is a free monthly newsletter with archives dating back to December 2006.

Impression: Not for anyone looking for a "down and dirty" answer to anything, but the site's publications seem interesting, and at a cost of $0.00 for downloadable content, may well be worth your while if you do not mind wading through a bit of medical jargon to find the information you really want.

Our rating ***

American Pain Foundation

url: http://www.painfoundation.org

Wow! This is a truly awesome website! Focused entirely on improving the lives and outcomes of therapy for people in pain, it contains an enormous amount of information, support resources and communication tools wrapped up in a simple to follow navigation structure and an attractively presented site. It is by far far the best resource for people living with chronic pain that I have encountered on the web-bar none.

The site contains a Pain Information Library with links to information on pain conditions, coping skills, travel tips and support resources-among others. They host an online community named "Pain-aid" which features both chat rooms and message boards, and an interesting adjunct to their main site entitled simply "Manage Your Pain". Created in conjunction with the "American Academy of Pain Management" and the "American Society for Pain Management Nursing", it features the "Let's Talk Pain Coalition", whose mission is "to unite the perspectives of patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals.... and encourage people to talk more about pain, listen actively and act in ways that improve care for the millions of people who live with pain." This interactive website provides visitors with comprehensive information and tools to enhance the dialogue between those affected by pain and healthcare professionals. Included in these interactive tools are a number of video clips featuring highly respected pain physicians, including Scott Fishman, Chair and President of the American Pain Foundation, and Chief of the Division of Pain Medicine and Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of California at Davis, giving advice and suggestions to physicians about talking to patients about pain, pain treatment and pain management. Another section of "Manage Your Pain" is called "Care Central" which offers caregivers and patients the opportunity to create their own website, blog, journal, or on line resource for family and friends free of charge. There is also a link to a downloadable generic "Pain Journal" that encourages people living with pain to keep an ongoing diary of their pain experience, pain intensity and pain triggers, as well as other behavioral indicators such as sleep, appetite, mood, and activity.

And this is just one part of one section of the site!

We highly recommend that anyone who is living with chronic pain or knows someone who is visit this web site more than once and peruse their offerings. You will not be disappointed.

Impression:   Need we say it again? This site is a real treat. The only negative worth mentioning is the rather sparse collection of literature in their "Pain Information Library" which I suspect they have simply not had the time or human resources to fill, given the enormity of the undertaking they have already completed. Hopefully they will continue to be able to meet their own standard of excellence.

Our rating: *****

And that is all for now, folks. Join us next Friday for a few more-just as informal-site reviews.

And thanks, once again, for visitng Your Healer Within. If you like what you have seen so far, join our site- It's free and it entitles you to some really great discounts for as long as you remain a member

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious
triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to rank with
those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory
nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919, Twenty-sixth President of the USA

We have all heard at one time or another that setting goals and working systematically towards achieving them is the only certain way to have the success in life that we desire. Yet few of us actually do it.

For one thing, most of us never received any formal education or training on how to set goals. Certainly it is not taught in our middle or high schools, at least it was not when I was a student. Nor do I think that the students of today fare any better than did those of my generation in learning this essential life skill. Perhaps some hi-school seniors are fortunate enough to have a counselor who provides them with a smattering of information right before they set out to join the workforce or earn a college degree, but that is about it.

Of course, many people think that they have goals, and name things like "Get a law degree", "Open a day care center" or "See the world." when enumerating them. But when asked to state the specifics of their goal planning process, or their action plan...the distinct, time-sensitive and measurable steps they plan to implement in order to achieve their (usually rather nebulous) goals, most of these individuals falter. They have a vague idea of what needs to happen; to get a degree in jurisprudence, for example, one must first graduate from high school, gain admittance to a "good" college" and a "good" law school; study hard and then graduate. Yet each of these intermediate steps can be broken down into hundreds of distinct action items, each of which must be prioritized and completed before it is possible to reach the desired long term goal. Ignoring those steps is the number one reason why so many people fail to get what they want out of life.

But everyone knows that, right? Not one of us actually believes that it is possible to achieve major life goals by completing a few well-timed maneuvers. On some deeply rational level we know that life just does not work that way.

So, why is it, then, that most of us behave as if it did? Why do so many of us go through life with the absurd belief that we can have the things we want without taking the requisite steps to achieve or acquire them? Even more to the point, why do we behave as if we believe that those steps do not even exist? So many of us look at someone like Donald Trump, and assume that his real estate empire just "happened." We see the unparalleled popularity of President Elect Barak Obama and assume that he managed a political miracle by virtue of his extraordinary charisma and oratorical style, thinking not at all about his years of planning and hard work, or the fact that each step of his seemingly meteoric rise to the presidency was planned and executed with the tactical skill of a four-star general.

Why we think and behave this way is a complex issue. One one hand, we do not plan out our goals because we never learned how to do so. On the other, many of us never learned that it was important to do so. Life in the "Information Age" has ingrained in many of us a desire for and a staunch belief in the plausibility of immediate gratification. Thoughtful contemplation has been all but erased from our repertoire of responses, replaced by a "run with it" mentality that demands instant answers and immediate decisions. There is no room in this mentality for planning; it is extraneous to the process. All a person needs to succeed is the right information, the right connections, and the right resources- all of which are accessible to anyone with a laptop, a Blackberry and limitless bravado.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing today in the financial services sector and in the many off-shoots of that collapsing industry in the United States and abroad is in large part an example of how things turn out when planning and goal setting are abandoned for the promise of immediate results.. What you can and will see in your own life when you do not take the time to plan and strategize....to map out goals that are based on your values and put together a reasonable series of prioritized action steps which have as their explicit focus the attainment of those goals....is a mini-implosion that mirrors the collapse of the American economy today.
Meaningful goals are based on values, the framework upon which we create our future. Goals, in turn, give substance to our values; they clarify and delimit our purpose in life and clearly define the path we must take to become the person we were meant to be. Setting goals is not just an exercise that one does to please a mentor, a parent or a teacher. It is an integral part of a well-lived life.

To laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people, and the affection of children....
to leave the world a bit better...
to know that even one life had breathed easier
because you had lived,
that is to have succeeded.
Adapted from an original verse by Bessie Anderson Stanley

NEXT: MORE ON GOAL SETTING

"Dancing Woman by Herman Fink

For many years researchers have searched for an explanation for chronic pain, especially the chronic pain syndromes like fibromyalgia that generally are not preceded by an injury, trauma or disease. Along the way, they have learned much about what goes on in the brains and nervous systems of chronic pain sufferers; they have identified key substances in the body-such as the neurotransmitter "Substance P" that play a large part in the transmission and/or regulation of pain signals and have even proven-using scientific experiments comparing "normal" individuals responses to measured pain stimuli to those who suffer with chronic pain- that some key differences exist in how the two groups respond to pain. None of these studies, however, have given us more than a hint of an explanation as to why some people develop these seemingly random diseases and some do not, or why women are so disproportionately represented in the patient mix. Although some physicians have postulated that menopause, "empty nest syndrome" and/or a decreased ability to deal with stress brought on by both of these "conditions" may be a factor, these suppositions have never been proved.

Thanks to some recent research by doctors at the University of Iowa,however, the answers to some of these questions are becoming quite a bit clearer. The study, led by a neuroscientist Kathleen Sluka. and published in the September issue of "American Journal of Physiology" looked at the protein ASIC3, which is involved in both fatigue and muscle pain.

From an evolutionary standpoint, pain and fatigue are positive adaptations to extreme exertion; they signal the brain that it is time to slow down and rest before permanent tissue damage can occur. ASIC3, however, allows the body to keep going even in the presence of excess amounts of acid caused by exertion. As it turns out, men-who-again, from an evolutionary standpoint-were the "hunters and gatherers" who often were forced to travel long distances without rest in search of food for the tribe, have more ASIC3 than women.

In this study, researchers tweaked a few male mice, depriving them of the ASIC3 protein, and sent them on a long run, (most likely on a little mouse treadmill.) They tired more easily than expected., at about the same rate as normal female mice. Then they gave testosterone to some female mice who had a normal amount of the ASIC3 protein; when placed on the treadmill they demonstrated the same resistance to fatigue as normal male mice. Finally, they gave testosterone to female mice who were robbed of the ASIC3 protein and-any guesses? They, like the male mice who were deprived of the ASIC3 protein, performed on the treadmill at the level of a normal female mouse.

What does this mean? For one thing, it explains why otherwise normal, healthy women represent 85-90% of all people with chronic pain; it is not menopause or "empty nest syndrome" or our inability to deal with the stress of both, it is the simple fact that women have no testosterone. More importantly, the research demonstrates a direct correlation between fatigue and pain and explains why almost all patients with chronic fatigue syndrome experience pain, and almost all with chronic pain experience fatigue. Finally, it begs the question, "could women with severe chronic pain and fatigue benefit from treatment with testosterone? Or-given the decidedly unfeminine side effects of testosterone, is there some other mechanism by which ASIC3-with its ability to decrease pain and fatigue could be increased without the addition of testosterone?

Dr. Sluka's research is currently taking the latter approach, examining ways in which ASIC3 behaves in human subjects.

For now, though, we must take small solace in the fact that the next time we encounter a male physician who espouses the "psychosomatic" theory of chronic pain in women, we can assure him that he has no idea what he's talking about.....It's our hormones! Then laugh like Hell as he walks away, scratching his head in befuddlement.