| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 09/21/2006 : 04:55:21
I know this is a very provocative thread title, but I must admit that I am thinking in this direction. I didn't get on the TMS bandwagon until I saw that in The Divided Mind, Sarno had included more illnesses (specifically fibro and CFS and migraines) which were "my conditions." I had a dramatic overnight cure. Since then I have been "working the program," and as someone said in a topic below, it is an ongoing process. But I am delighted.
At the end of TDM, but not written by Sarno himself, are appendices by other docs, making other illnesses into the TMS conversation (heart disease etc.). I think someone even mentions cancer. My immediate thought was "Aha! It's all TMS!"
Many years ago when I got involved with rebirthing (late 70s) the central idea of Rebirthers was that physical immortality is possible if you can change your thinking that death is inevitable. I was immediately attracted to this idea, not because I want to live forever but because I could see that it was a very healthy approach to life. The whole physical immortality thing didn't work very well - perhaps the pieces of information described on this site were missing - but I can't help wondering...
I actually believe life and death all happen when they are supposed to. But I also believe that to be true about everything, including my being ill and my discovering a way out of it. So I am supposed to be asking this question about physical immortality right now, and you are supposed to be formulating your responses. Can't wait to hear from you.
xx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| 8 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Scottydog |
Posted - 09/23/2006 : 21:51:39
Kylie Minogue and Sheryl Crow both developed breast cancer at a youngish age.
I wondered if the pressure of being a "sex kitten" type and/or having pushy parents (Kylie did - don't know about Sheryl) might have influenced their illness.
Anne |
| Penny |
Posted - 09/22/2006 : 20:31:38
quote:
Originally posted by Wavy Soul
On the way home in the plane I was feeling very good about myself. I remember thinking, I should scan to make sure that I haven't overridden what I really feel too much. I did a quick scan and I remember saying, "No, it feels pretty flat. I think I am complete with dad."
Hi Wavy ... that's amazing. Thanks fo much for sharing your story with us. I especially appreciated the bit above ... about scanning yourself for repressed emotion, and then the fact that you were intenseley wrong. This is a valuable lesson, one that I will remember. Even when your conscious may believe that you are over something, you may be repressing even deeper.
>|< Penny
Non illigitamus carborundum. |
| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 09/22/2006 : 11:59:23
Hi - thanks for your responses.
Yes, I also had the thought about Sheryl and Dana that they were somatizing.
No, don't and didn't have cancer - intense fibro with all its sidebars.
Absolutely I believe death ain't the end. My fave book of all time, I think, is Kenneth Ring's book on Near Death Experience research called "Lessons from the Light."
Actually, re Sheryl and Dana and MY OWN BROKEN HEART:
part of my healing started nearly 3 years ago when my beloved husband suddenly abandoned me unexpectedly. There was a lot of extreme betrayal involved, and I lost my marriage, home, work, business, and many friends. I was so intensely bereft that in a strange way it forced me INTO my abandonment feelings. What helped was my skill in conscious, connected breathing (will say more about rebirthing in a minute).
Now, I had experienced abandonment before. I've been a kind of alternate therapist for decades (ha ha, it's funny saying this and not caring, after what someone said about us "types"), so I knew that abandonment was my big issue. My father abandoned me, and I seem to have relived this so many times in my life. I have felt my way into it again and again. I thought I was done with it 3 years ago before my marriage ended. But I was still ill. And I was praying for relief from the intense and constant pain and other symptoms of fibromyalgia - including debilitating exhaustion.
This last abandonment was so extreme, and left me so without anywhere to stand that somehow I had no way of distracting myself. The symptoms just weren't working to distract me (I didn't even know they were a distraction back then). And I was committed to not going into other distractions like another relationship until I was through this. Drugs, alcohol, eating? Not my bag. So I was forced through a doorway of continually feeling my deep, deep sadness. It was like having chemo every day for more than a year. I cannot really describe how much terror, rage, grief, but mostly terror I went through as my world and heart shattered.
Also, I would wake up feeling so TERRIBLE every morning that I would rush to the pool in my apartment complex, and go on the treadmill, just to try to calm my mind.
Somehow this combo of more exercise, more feeling and no distraction started to make me healthier. In spite of this horrible situation, the one thing that I had thought was NOT working in my previous life that I had now lost was now working: health.
After some months I began to figure it out. I was feeling stuff directly, so my body didn't have to have the job of keeping me honest and not bypassing what I am feeling - that was how I framed it. I even taught a seminar about this, and many of the participants got healthier, including me. This was pre-Sarno.
Then my dad started dying of cancer. I traveled to the UK to say goodbye to him, and, since he was 89 and dying, I wanted to help him make his transition. I sat with him and told him all the great things he had done for me, as a father. Obviously (in view of above-mentioned abandonment and more) this was a heavily-edited version. But it was what I wanted to do. I don't believe in dumping or passing on one's stuff in most cases.
On the way home in the plane I was feeling very good about myself. I remember thinking, I should scan to make sure that I haven't overridden what I really feel too much. I did a quick scan and I remember saying, "No, it feels pretty flat. I think I am complete with dad."
Well - ahem - within a week I had pneumonia. Then my fibro returned with a vengeful VENGEANCE. This got worse for several months. I bought Sarno's TDM book. I had read (and angrily tossed out) one of his back books about 10 years earlier. The Divided Mind sat on my couch side-table for a few weeks. Then one day I read it, cover to cover. Went to bed.
That night I woke up at my usual 3 am Ouch-Hour with intense pain. I was getting up and starting to do my usual stuff (take a hot shower, take some liver cleansing tea, etc.). Then I remembered the book. I lay down and started gently breathing into what I was really feeling, ignoring the symptoms. I immediately realized that my override with my dad had caused my symptoms to return. I was very sad, then very angry with him. Eureka!
The next day I got up pain-free and had an energetic normal day. Since then (about 4-5 months ago) I have been improving with setbacks.
ABOUT REBIRTHING AND PHYSICAL IMMORTALITY
Of course, it was a very fringey, marginal, pioneering, exploratory practice. But I am still very grateful for the eye-opening I got from those mad pioneers, with all their human frailties and survival stuff (just like I have). Over the 30 years since then I have continued to use conscious connected breathing in a gentle and slightly different way in my own work with people, and it works consistently well to open me and others up to the next layer down of what we are really feeling. In the early days it was very intense and cathartic, but the way I do it now, it isn't at all.
Of course, it's easy to lambast Leonard Orr and "those idiots" but we're all just on our path, exploring, and I am grateful to them. For me the very CONCEPT of the possibility of physical immortality released me from a kind of hopelessness. Again, I'm not pursuing living forever, but the realization that my body is to a great extent an expression of (as they used to say) my "thinking," and as I would say now, "my thinking AND my emotional awareness / denial," is freeing me enormously.
Today I am achy and tired. I just got the Selfridge and Brady book from Amazon on my doorstep and I am curling up for a good read.
xx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| art |
Posted - 09/22/2006 : 06:11:53
Don't feel too badly wrld. Our skepticism is hard won over the years. When we're in our 20's, it's hard to imagine that people who sound so convincing, so well-meaning and passionate, could be crooks, and yet the world is full of 'em.
Always notice the money. How much is involved and where is it going? I was quite sick, thus nearly by definition desperate enough to try almost anything I could find. The so-called alterntive practitioners are often much worse than conventional docs. Since insurance doesn't cover them, it's essentially a cash business they're running..And cash is the operative word, with some of these guys charging 300 or more for less than an hour. And how many get better?
How about, just about no one..? |
| wrldtrv |
Posted - 09/21/2006 : 23:32:34
Wavy,
I can comment on the "rebirthing" you mentioned from the 70's, and the physical immortality part too. Like "healing touch" and a few other alt things I have done, all I can say is, I'm embarrassed. Embarrassed to have been so naive (and ignorant).
I still remember lying on a floor in a Boulder, CO house in the late 70's hyperventilating--I mean, "rebirthing." As though the physical sensations one gets during this exercise is somehow getting one in touch with...what?
The physical immortality part of Leonard Orr's (the creator of rebirthing) beliefs are even more ridiculous. And no, as far as I could determine, he was deadly serious. He was not referring to some sort of survival of the consciousness after death that jonny g refers to, but to the real thing. That such a thing could even be desirable if it were possible defies logic. Whatever lives, dies.
Leonard Orr had his hand in lots of areas. Rebirthing, physical immortality, money seminars (get rich by adopting a "prosperity consciousness"), and more. One of his cohorts, a Fred Lerhman, managed to con many of the locals to cough up $50,000 (that's 1970's money) for a bogus tuna boat investment that was supposed to make us rich. Again, I admit to being embarrassed to admit I, along with the others, were taken in. My only excuse was that I was very young. |
| Penny |
Posted - 09/21/2006 : 23:02:26
quote:
Originally posted by Wavy Soul
I actually believe life and death all happen when they are supposed to. But I also believe that to be true about everything, including my being ill and my discovering a way out of it. So I am supposed to be asking this question about physical immortality right now, and you are supposed to be formulating your responses. Can't wait to hear from you.
Very interesting topic, Wavy. Do you--or did you--have cancer?
A wonderful author I discovered last year is Larry Dossey. He is an MD who is marrying mind, body, and medicine in a different--but equally powerful--way than Sarno. Awesome book is "Reinventing Medicine." Profoundly changed my belief about the power of disease and the power of the mind.
This is SO existential--but you asked--do you believe that life ends when our physical existence ends (dies)?
>|< Penny
Non illigitamus carborundum. |
| Wavy Soul |
Posted - 09/21/2006 : 17:31:04
Johnny, you said:
"cancer and other physical afflictions are merely affected by unconscious emotions and not caused by them. Sarno is careful to differentiate. However, I could be pursuaded that in many cases, cancer or other diseases could have been prevented if the person knew about TMS therapy."
Yes - thanks for this careful and inteligent response. I agree that there are multiple sources of causation that we don't know about, and I would never say to a person with cancer that their condition is caused by emotions. Yet I also wonder about the possibilities...
I know for myself that I was ill for about 30 years, and tried the mind-body-emotions approach for much of that time. Nada! I got so sick and tired of people trying to tell me my sickness and tiredness was in my mind or even in my emotions. Yet somehow about a year ago, I found a ripple of new understanding about all this that was a bit different. When I rode on this ripple, it turned, you might say, into a wave. Reading Sarno turned this into a tsunami, and now I feel I am surfing my way home to a kind of rejuvenation that is beyond mere good health. It's not completely symptom-free. But the "illness," as such, no longer exists.
I am writing a book and teaching a training about this (these are the things I do for a living).
thanks to all for being here so supportively and - again - so intelligently
xx
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
| johnnyg |
Posted - 09/21/2006 : 14:34:06
Well, I can't comment on physical immortality, other than to say that I believe that all people are physically immortal already because our consciousness is immortal and contains the physical in a more complete sense. After physical death, we will end up with a different "physical" body than the one we have here. In other words, physical immortality in the sense you mention is neither possible nor desireable.
As regards TMS, we can certainly prolong our healthy lives after realizing how many maladies are psychosomatic. Unfortunately everything isn't TMS. If you read carefully you'll notice that cancer and other physical afflictions are merely affected by unconscious emotions and not caused by them. Sarno is careful to differentiate. However, I could be pursuaded that in many cases, cancer or other diseases could have been prevented if the person knew about TMS therapy. |
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