James Allen - "The body is the servant of the mind."

Welcome to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ the Daily Quote⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. I'm your host, Andrew McGivern, and this episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Great News podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Support the show ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy me a coffee ⁠Today's quote is from James Allen. James Allen (1864–1912) was a British philosophical writer and a pioneer of the self-help movement. His best-known work, As a Man Thinketh (1903), argues that our thoughts shape our character and our lives .James Allen once said… "The body is the servant of the mind." (from As a Man Thinketh, Chapter 3: "Effect of Thought on Health and the Body")James Allen wrote that in the chapter called "Effect of Thought on Health and the Body," and it fits today's story perfectly because today's story is all about how tangled up the mind and the body can be.I picked this quote because I was inspired by something that happened at work and it really made me think.A customer got on the bus and told me about his back and neck. For sixteen years, he said, he'd lived with extreme neck and back pain. He couldn't renew his driver's license, because he couldn't shoulder-check as he couldn't turn his neck far enough. He couldn't do his old job anymore. He couldn't walk properly. And then, recently, he slipped in the shower. He caught himself before he fell and that sudden jarring, trying to stop himself caused something to happen. He heard the loudest pop he'd ever heard. It hurt so much that he had to grab the shower bar and just hold on, squeezing it, until the excruciating pain eased.And when it eased, he stepped out of the shower and the pain was gone. The neck pain, the back pain, gone. He could turn his neck again, full range of motion. He could walk with balance again. At least, that's how he told it to me, and I believed him, because I could see it in his face. Now, I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice. Please don't go trying to recreate a slip in the shower. I'm just telling you his story as he told it to me, because it reminded me of my own.I had lower back pain for eight years. And it didn't go away with a treatment or a procedure. And I tried everything. Chiropractors, Massage Therapy, Physio, X-Rays, CT Scans, Neurologists, and more. But… It went away when I read a book: Healing Back Pain, by Dr. John Sarno. I didn’t do anything else… I just read the book.Sarno's idea is sometimes pain isn't only about what's wrong in the body. Dr. Sarno called this Tensio Myoitis Sydrome. The idea is that you had back injury around the same time that you were experiencing some emotional trauma or stress. The back injury heals but your mind keeps the symptoms like the muscle spasms, pain, weakness, sciatica, etc. because it helped to distract you from the emotional trauma. And after you get over the emotional stress the mechanism holds in a permanent feedback loop. Until you acknowledge that the source could be that trauma and then the mechanism loses its power over you. I didn’t believe it applied to me because I couldn’t remember any emotional trauma. But then I remembered something that I was dealing with back then. I thought, I wonder if that could be it and I went to sleep. The next morning the pain was gone. The stiffness, the weakness, the pain. Gone. And it never came back. This was 27 years ago.Two very different stories. His: a slip, a pop, and suddenly he could move again. Mine: a book, an idea, and suddenly I could live without that pain too.So here's the question: What have you been carrying for a long time that you've started to believe is permanent? Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just waiting for the right moment, the right idea, or the right mind shift to let go.That's going to do it for today. I'm Andrew McGivern signing off for now, but I'll be back… tomorrow! Same pod time, same pod station with another Daily Quote.