What You Know About Physical Pain Is Probably A Lie

I had shoulder pain, back pain, and knee pain at the same time. I was under ungodly stress, and my body decided it was better for me to deal with physical pain than emotional distress. 

If you’ve had chronic pain, I bet the same is true with you, too. 

If this sounds voodoo, read Steve Ozanich’s book The Great Pain Deception. The premise is that most chronic pain comes from repressed emotions - mainly rage and fear. It shows up often in us Type-A personalities, who fight, resist, and try to change reality. 

It doesn’t matter if you have the “proof” that your pain is real - an MRI showing a bulging disc - there is a high-degree chance it’s still being brought on due to an emotional issue. I had heard about this before but didn’t buy into it, so I didn’t seek to understand it better. 

But my pain was starting to dominate my day, so I booked a 2-hour call with Steve,

And it was bizarro world…

…in a good way. He was reading my mind. As we talked, my pain began to lessen, and as it was, he told me Your pain is already beginning to diminish. Okay, maybe he could see it through the Zoom call.

But then I noticed how the pain in my right shoulder lept to my left shoulder, and Steve said to me you might even have your pain begin to jump around. Yeah, how could he see that!?

There were a half dozen moments like this. The takeaway was I was preventing my body from doing its job - healing - because there were emotional issues that still needed dealing with. 

The next day I went to a 90-minute Bikram yoga class. The week before, I did that class, which was the most miserable yoga session ever. I was modifying every posture practically, and it still hurt. I didn’t feel any of the normal zen - just depression about how beat up my body had become. 

But after the call with Steve?

Giddy up. I determined I would do every posture precisely as intended, without tensing or bracing or worrying about the pain. If it came, it came. I would be in the now. I’d try to focus on something more significant than the pain - like thinking about my dog Bryce. 

The thing about Bikram yoga is it’s the same 26 postures every time. Some hate the rigidity of the practice, but I welcome it. Fifty minutes in, you go to the floor for the rest of your postures, and you do a Bikram sit-up between some postures.

I hurt my back over two years prior and hadn’t been able to do a Bikram sit-up since.

This would be a big challenge.

BOOM! I nailed the first one.

Felt good. I was in the flow. After the next one, the instructor stopped the class and said: “I’m going to have Jason demonstrate a proper Bikram set up to you.” We had a mix of beginners, and some folks were just being lax with their form.

I knocked that sit-up out like I’d been doing them my whole life.

The pain was there, but it was in the background. In one session, Steve did what over 40+ physical therapy sessions never could accomplish. Knowing that my pain was emotional made me have a different relationship with it. 

Also, it made me prioritize being “in the now” - I hadn’t realized it, but my brain had become too preoccupied with thinking - and overthinking stresses you out! 

It’s been about four weeks, and my pain is almost gone.

I also went to an expert on reseting the physical misalignments of the body - Glenn Dawson - to reset my physical body because I knew it would now respond to healing better, and once it was healed, it would stay healed.

Otherwise, if I didn’t deal with the underlying emotional issues, physically fixing the pain would be like just bailing water out of a boat and not plugging the hole.

I feel safe getting better. I don’t need the physical pain anymore. It served me, and I honor that. Without Glenn, I think it would’ve taken me the standard 6-15 months most people experience when they get that ah-ha moment! that folks like Steve Ozanich teach about pain.

I feel good as new in less than four weeks. Actually, better than ever because my foundation is being rebuilt to be stronger than ever - both the physical and the emotional.