Healing back pain using your emotions
The connection of the emotional body and the physical body
It was a workday almost ten years back. I was getting ready in the morning. Suddenly out of nowhere a sharp shooting pain went through my lower back, caused a strong spasm, and locked it. I was bent forward at an excruciating angle and wasn't able to move. My parents helped me to lie down to get some rest and figure what really took place. The 10–12 hours after that were in deep unrest and severe pain. We consulted our local physician and began muscle relaxant medicines. It took me 3 full days to just straighten my body. It became the biggest mystery of my life.
I was reminded of the advertisements for balms for lower back pain, showing red color pulsations and pain on the skeleton. The people in the ad seemed to recover quite quickly, but here I was struggling to get back to normalcy. Before this incident, I didn't have any back pain. What baffled me most was how unaware it caught me. There were no signs or symptoms of injury. Within a week when I was able to move a little bit we scheduled an MRI scan which revealed a slipped disc in the lumbar region. Naturally, as I nursed myself to health, I kept googling about it to make sure this never happened again. Little did I know this was just the beginning.
About four times since then in the last decade such spasms have taken place. Each time more intense and mysterious making me feel helpless. But, I learned something new. After the first time, my focus was more on the skeletal system and physiotherapy. The second time around I started to focus on de-stressing and make sure I don't burn out at work (the timing of the pain then). The third time I took up swimming. I was the only adult in the kid's summer camp and I loved it so much. It helped me a lot with flexibility and movement. It was comforting to the body. I also began yoga stretches. The fourth time I was lost. I just couldn’t understand why this kept recurring.
By the side, I was reading up on the mind-body connection. I used to believe that a body or a physical injury would be healed by physical methods only. I was so wrong! Then came the Divine Intervention with Louise Hay’s book — You can heal your life, which was gifted to me by my friend after the third spasm. I enjoyed what Louise said but it took me a while to understand her simple words. The cause of lower back pain is stress or financial worries as described in the book. The cause of a spasm is a lot of fear. Put together, it was extreme fear about money. I didn’t have financial worries, had a decent bank balance, have a family who supports me, and everything I could possibly ask for. Then how come this emotion is mentioned as the root cause? What about others who have financial issues but weren’t having spasms?
The investigation begins
Looking back I was unable to pinpoint if this was what caused the spasm, however, I decided going forward I would keep track of my emotions. Whenever I felt a slight painful twitch I would go on high-alert. I would start witnessing my emotions closely. It so happened one time, during the annual appraisal I was told I would not get an increment, third year in a row. Two days later, I started feeling small intermittent currents in my back. Consciously I had accepted this and knew my future options were to move to another company. But I was quite intrigued to note the events surrounding the time of the twitch, give or take one week. How interesting!
Another story goes like this. I had taken up contracting and it was up for renewal. Talks were going on and the company was ready to renew it for a lesser price. That day itself I experienced more muscle pulls in my back. I felt I deserved more and wasn’t ready to settle for security of another 6 months at a lesser price. Surprisingly all my further instances of twitches lined up with salary-related matters. Now a trend was shaping up. Such matters I was able to handle more easily and did not convert into full-blown body locks. But what about the more intense painful ones?
About three years ago, we were considering moving from the US to Australia. I loved the US and just couldn’t imagine leaving it. I was feeling ungrounded. This was the time due to all this self-observation that I was actually able to prevent another lock in the back. I felt the currents in the lower back getting stronger. I looked inwards and asked myself — what’s so bad about leaving it? Hasn’t life gotten better? Then what exactly am I clinging to? I was able to uncover sub-conscious feelings of security of a job and friends that I had in the US. Australia, with all its wonders, was a place far away from my dear friends. We weren't familiar with the job scenario either. These feelings kept bothering me. This was my first aha moment in all my months of observing my back pain. I was getting somewhere now.
Over time, through simple inner inquiry around the time of back pain, these turned out to be the major reasons why I felt currents in my back — salary, big expenses, the threat of losing a job, not having enough retirement savings, etc. Aren’t these pretty common to have? At some point in time, everyone is likely to worry about these. Then why did I have such intense pains while others sailed smoothly through the storms? That’s where Louise’s affirmations about abundance came in, by which a big part of the mystery came to light.
The realization
Abundance is having large quantities of something. Usually described in material terms, it also includes intangible feelings. An abundance of joy or an abundance of peace. Having a genuine sense of abundance and knowing that everything will be alright is an altogether different kind of peace. The intermittent setbacks don’t rob us of the riches of peace that surrounds us. If I were to even look back in my life, I have bounced back from such setbacks. Everyone has this resilience. We just need to remember this during hardship and not let outer circumstances affect our emotions. They do, but not to the extent I learned, that it stops one in their tracks and shuts down the body. There needs to be a balance.
Some of the minor details about such episodes can also be understood by how we feel about them. When my body got locked in pain, what I felt was that I couldn’t move forward. Or that I was stuck. I wasn’t able to put one foot in front of the other. Why? Because that’s how I had felt about the situation and my body mimicked that. Our bodies are our most honest and dear friends. They only show us what our minds are doing. The same can be applied to a sore throat. Say my throat feels raw, with spike-like sharp sensations, what could be that is pricking my ability to speak? Is something stuck that I wish to say, or rather not say because it is so hurtful? Did someone else say something to me that I couldn't swallow and get stuck this way? I started to feel like a medical detective all thanks to Louise Hay.
Yoga describes this in more detail. In the pancha-kosha (5 layers) model, the inner three layers are that of manomaya kosha (mind layer), then pranamaya kosha (life force layer), and then annamaya kosha (physical layer). The mind controls the life force which in turn controls the body. Eastern traditions are based on the concept of the flow of life force. Depending on where it is stuck, the manifestation of conditions takes place accordingly. There is no exception to this Law. Meditation is incredibly powerful because it makes us sit in one place and examine our thoughts. That's where the key lies.
A different outlook
Despite debilitating pain, I am able to now heal myself without pharmaceutical medicine. Now it's about energy medicine. Other body conditions that are with me even today, I am working through them. Some are straight forward, others are deep and unconscious. I will say this though, one needn’t diagnose all conditions. Simply practicing positive thoughts and watching the emotions helps restoration take place. The question then remains — how often do I think negatively? Being upset with someone for too long harms my body, not theirs. My cells experience tremendous distress. Their power is robbed even though it feels someone else took away my happiness and I am blaming them for it. This results in major power play in families, work, and society at large.
Self-love
These experiences taught me self-love. What am I willing to experience within my body at the expense of pleasing others while silently I suffer inside? What am I willing to experience within my body at the expense of outer circumstance over which I have no control, but I can control my response to them. This exchange takes place daily. Investing in self-love and getting rid of chronic people-pleasing (most will say they don't do this, but take another look) quickly heals the body. I am working on this everyday and learning more about true joy than temporary happiness. I can say this with much confidence that I finally understand what Gautam Buddha said —
“Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional”
The remedy
There are many ways to tackle this. But I’ll share a trick with you that works immediately and dissolves the strain in the body. When something goes against our wishes, at the exact same moment, we also have awareness of what it is that we do want! Due to duality, both are simultaneous events. If someone cuts me in the lane and overtakes, I experience anger, then at the same time, what I am actually wishing for is driving discipline. Isn't it? But if I linger too long and take it personally, that the world is against me (yes with such small incidents too), then my energy is now flowing towards that person. That's called energy leakage. Instead, if I want to retain it for myself, and not give my power away, then I focus on pleasant thoughts of well-behaved drivers. When your boss writes an email you don't like, and your field is disturbed, at the same time, you are also aware of what you wish he/she did instead. Dwell on that, even if it feels imaginary. Keep dreaming about the opposite. Soon, it will become a habit.
Does that work? Yes, it does.
Our cells thrive in positive imagination more than in distressful reality. The thalamus in the brain can't tell the difference between the imagination or reality because we process life through a series of images in our heads and through our eyes, tied with thoughts. This is why even with eyes closed, dreams during dreaming seem so real. Scientists have even begun to say in quantum reality we are a holographic projection of a mental world. Due to this, imagination is equally as powerful as the current hard reality. When you feel scarcity imagine lots of money and wealth. If you are worried your friend is not picking up the call, start thinking of them calling you back instead of making a list of all that could go wrong. Slowly steadily you will be able to master your thoughts and lead a much more fulfilling life. I hope you will give this a try and see the results for yourself.