Tag Archives: Dr. Sarno

Dana’s Thank You

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Image of Dana

Dear Dr. Sarno,

I read your back pain book while recovering from my second c-section, and fighting off very unpleasant back pain. I was seeing a physical therapist at the time. As an older mother, I really thought my days as an active person were over. Reading your book restored my back completely, no more physical therapy needed. Also, it gave me profound insight into the power of emotions, primarily anger, to affect the body. Now, I am a boxing student and my back is great! Many thanks for the inspiration and exciting life!

Sheila’s Thank You

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Sheila hugging a treeIn 2006 I was injured at my job of 2 months at a school for the developmentally disabled. Ruptured L4/L5. The pain was so bad I could not sit even to use the bathroom. I was devastated as I had just moved into my 1st place, a 3rd floor apartment! In the few years before the injury I had left an abusive/alcoholic husband of 20 years then got involved with a man just like him and had finally left him, I’d quit my very stressful job at a dialysis clinic, went to college at 40, graduated with a 3.99 GPA, and got my dream job! After the injury the Dr. told me if I didn’t get a discectomy/laminectomy I would lose the use of my left leg. He asked me if I wanted to look like the lady in the waiting room with a brace on her leg and a cane! Of course I didn’t! I hiked and danced for fun! So I had the surgery and before long I had more pain, weakness, and numbness then before. I was told a fusion was the only option. Of course that made things worse.

I went to a thrift store one day and your book, “Mind Over Back Pain” was lying on the floor. I asked my Mom to pick it up and hand it to me as I was unable to bend. She did, I bought it and devoured it. At first I thought, “This guy is nuts! I know why I have back pain and it’s not because of me! How dare he!” But I read on and you got me! I was a believer! I read your other books and saw myself there too. I stopped going to Dr’s. Stopped taking pain meds and started doing the inner work that was needed. I read the TMS Wiki posts where I learned about Michael Brown’s “Presence Process”. I attempted it many times and finally completed it. I started hiking and dancing again and began volunteering for Hospice and then got a job caring for an elderly couple on a beautiful horse farm. On 11-11-11 I married a man I met 2 weeks after my injury. He’s taken care of me, taught me to do yoga, meditated with me, and most importantly showed me that I deserve LOVE.

This pic was taken when he and I took a trip to Washington and hiked at Mt. Rainier National Forest. I could never have done that if not for YOU! I don’t even want to imagine what my life would have been like if not for YOU! Thank YOU from the bottom of my integrated heart!

James’s Thank You

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Dr Sarno,

Can’t be thankful enough for coming across this work, it changed my life.

I though I was doomed! I was suffering from RSI for about 9 months very badly and was off of work. I tried many private and public treatments (chiro, physio, massage, osteopaths etc) spent a fortune and only got more convinced that I wasn’t going to get better.

I came across a TMS questionnaire on the internet and saw myself in it. I bought Mindbody Prescription from Amazon (which at the time cost me £6. I had already spent over £700 on private treatment and only had slight relief). It made perfect sense to me and I got better in 3 weeks since then I have been climbing and working outdoors laboring with no limitations. I’ve had minor relapses but always have attributed them to emotional incidents.
What an amazing discovery you have found! So human and powerful that for many of us we have been living upside down with too much focus on the material and not on the subjective/emotional.

I hope that your message will continue to reach others in the UK and around the world, what an absolute legend!

Thank You.

 

Sharon’s Thank You

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Sharon I read Healing Back Pain in the mid-1990′s, saw myself on every page, and it changed my life. I have never met you, but I owe you the a great debt for saving me from a life spent in pain in doctors offices. I had knee pain at that time that cortisone shots and physical therapy could not heal when a woman who had had severe back pain (including 2 operations) and was swimming 2 miles a day suggested I read Healing Back Pain even though my pain was in my knee. The next day I had a appointment with yet another doctor who told me I had fibromyalgia. I got off the exam table, thanked him, paid my bill, and never looked back.

Now when I have pain, I talk to/yell at my brain and reread your books as the basis to think about things that are bothering me. It has really helped to understand what is actually happening physically. For example, when I had recurring urinary tract infections, it helped to understand how the brain causes infections and allergies by suppressing or increasing the immune system. Once I understood this, it confirmed for me that this was a TMS equivalent, and I my last infection literally disappeared overnight.

I must also thank you for describing the subtle childhood emotional abuse of some TMS sufferers in the Divided Mind. I felt like you must have been sitting on the couch of my childhood home. I cried for an hour knowing I was not alone and did not imagine it. I have reread that section many times and it has been a great comfort.

Thank you, and I wish you peace and health in your life. I know you have brought a great deal of that to mine.

Avnita’s Thank You

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Dr Sarno

Thank you so much for eliminating my chronic back pain. I am deeply indebted to you. This doesn’t have to be posted; I can’t be bothered to add pictures, etc… but I just wanted to give you this message.

I often mention your technique to others, but it’s mostly fallen on deaf ears. I can’t understand why.

I went to other “specialists”, but nothing worked, until I did your program and I also used it for other pain.

Thank you so much.

Love Avnita x
(UK)

James’s Thank You

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Hello Dr. Sarno,

Before I found out about TMS, I believed that my body was “brittle”. I had pain in various areas over the years, along with a host of other TMS symptoms. When my older brother told me about your work in 2003, I went on-line and started researching. I felt a ray of hope just reading the description of the MindBody Prescription on Amazon.com! I always felt my symptoms were “strange” but I could not articulate just why, after reading your book, I knew exactly why.

I just have to say Thank You! Also, you should be proud of yourself for staying the course with your diagnosis of TMS disorders when the medical community was, and is, at odds with the TMS diagnosis. That must take incredible personal strength. I want to tell you this does not go unrecognized by me and many others.

Enjoy your retirement, and may God bless you and your family.

From Boston, Massachusetts,

Take care,

James

Katie Darling’s Thank You

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KatieDear Dr. Sarno,

Your incredibly courageous and dedicated life of service has made an incredible difference in my life. I could never have crossed the “belief barrier” between theory and practice of TMS understanding without everything you have done – your books, your DVDs, your consistency, the experience of talking with people who have worked with you.

I hope you know how much you mean to all of us. On our TMS Forum we express our gratitude to you and our respect for you all the time. I wish you a very happy and contented retirement. I hope you can have some fun, and relax knowing that you have done enough (unless you WANT to keep very busy, that is!).

I send you love and thanks,

Katie Darling

Howard Schubiner’s Thank You

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Tribute to Dr. Sarno:

Dr. Sarno, your work has changed my professional life in a profound
way. As a academic physician and researcher, my interest in TMS began
with a simple encounter: the chair of my Internal Medicine department
told me about his wife who had one of the famous “book cures” (of
severe hip and back pain) after reading The Mindbody Prescription.
Knowing my interests in the relationship between stress and illness
and mindfulness meditation, he suggested that I “look into this.” I
did and this act was a major turning point for my career.

You were gracious enough to allow me to visit you in 2003 to spend a
couple of days observing your work. What a gift to see this work
firsthand! I will always be grateful to you for that. You started me
on a path that has transformed my career and given me a powerful sense
of purpose and meaning. I have spent the last nine years working
ceaselessly to further the goal of making your work part of mainstream
medicine. I have developed a 4-week program based upon your concepts
(with specific writing and meditative exercises) and used it to
conduct a randomized, controlled trial for people with fibromyalgia.
This study was published last year and was the basis for a $3 million
grant from the National Institutes of Health to study emotion-based
therapy for fibromyalgia.

A group of physicians and mental health providers has formed a
professional organization with the goal of training more health care
providers to spread TMS throughout the world. We will not rest until
we have achieved the objectives that naturally follow from your
groundbreaking insight: that many physical symptoms have their genesis
in the mind and can be cured by educational, behavioral, and emotional
interventions.

I join with my fellow professionals and TMS-affected individuals in
thanking you for your tremendous contribution to medicine. I am
confident that your innovative work will be viewed as a landmark event
when the history of medicine is rewritten in the coming decade.

With gratitude and admiration,

Howard Schubiner, MD

Director, Mind Body Medicine Center, Providence Hospital, Southfield, MI
Clinical Professor, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI