Going the Distance: On Pain, Patience, Practice and Process

I am incredibly blessed and grateful that two years ago I found my way to Dr. Ryan Means. Dr. Ryan is a chiropractor and a healer in every sense of the word. When he practiced in Cambridge, MA, he had Thomas Edison's quote on his website. Rather than focusing on fixing me, he partnered with me to help me unleash my body's natural capacity to heal. During his training, he heard Candace Pert, Ph.D. speak which led him to go "Down the Rabbit Hole" exploring the world of quantum healing. He told me I just HAD to read Dr. Joe Dispenza's book, "You Are the Placebo." While I was waiting for my copy to arrive, he sent me a photo from a page in Dr. Joe's book, "Changing the body by thought alone."

I was so excited to think and to believe that I could grow a new gastroc muscle, dissolve bone spurs, reverse osteoarthritis and heal the devastating effects of paralytic polio and trauma!

There are many people who email me or call me who see the results I am experiencing and much like that scene from "When Harry Met Sally" say, "I want what she's having."

They don't see the pain, the process, the patience or the effort of practicing new beliefs and new behaviors until the new habits become stronger than the old habits and beliefs.

In Candace Pert's book, "Everything you need to know to feel Go(o)d," another book recommendation by Dr. Ryan, she talks about how we interpret pain in our bodies. The way we perceive and interpret pain is the way that our bodies will respond to the pain. She talks about if a person is experiencing knee pain and they focus on the pain and believe that it's a recurrence of an injury, then the body responds as if in fact it is a recurrence of an injury. However, if the person believes that the injury is healing and the pain is a sign of healing then the body responds with doing what it needs to do in order to heal.

I refer to the pains I experience in my body as "phantom pains." I used to experience a lot of phantom pain - pain that wasn't happening in the here and now that needed medical attention but pain that had been hard wired into my body as a result of polio, trauma and numerous surgeries. Running has been a game changer for me in alleviating those pains in my legs.

There are times when we need to seek out assistance from physicians but we also need to be mindful of the miracle of our bodies. Divine Intelligence created us and resides within us; a most powerful Force that helps us to ride the waves of pain, be patient as our bodies do what they do naturally to heal, believe in the power of the Force and practice becoming someone new and different from the memorized self.



To your health and wellness!
~Mary