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Comment by nileshk | Hacker News Reader

Reading Dr Sarno’s book “The Mindbody Prescription” was what cured me. There was no physical cause. I haven’t had issues since 2001, and I don’t do anything specific to address the physical, the solution is purely psychological (though the symptoms were physical).

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Chiming in because this book saved me too. Step one (as prescribed in the book) is to get thoroughly medically checked out. If a physical cause cannot be found, try this. Doing the free course on the TMS wiki sorted out my problem within a few weeks.

I had disabling back problems. I even had a setup where I could lay on my back and type with a monitor above me(!). I read the "The Mindbody Prescription" and it went away pretty quickly. It comes back briefly once or twice a year, but it's very minor and I have confidence it will pass. According to this book, it's not "all in your head". These are real, physical symptoms. But healing can be done mentally.

Ditto. I suffered for a year until a nerve conductivity test revealed nothing abnormal. That made the Sarno diagnosis (TMS) easy to accept, and within a week of reading his book my pain was 90% gone, and within a month it was no longer noticeable. Now and then I'll get pins and needles, but in general I can type in any position I want for hours.

Recently I have been struggled with other health issues, and it took me a long time to realize that they may be psychosomatic as well. Once I started applying the same techniques, I saw real, permanent improvement in my symptoms for the first time. It's not an overnight cure, but if you stick with it, the results are just astonishing. Has anyone else in this thread cured non-RSI issues using the Sarno method?

I'm probably about to try this out. In my initial perusing it seems similar to a past insight I had.

Long ago, I was in a slightly altered state and it occurred to me that I was semi-consciously clenching muscles in my upper back and shoulders in a weird stress response... to the point where I couldn't unclench them easily. I found that trying to 'loosen up' and distract myself eventually gave me more control back, and relieved some of the discomfort.

I find it completely plausible that many of us may be channeling difficult emotions into maladaptive movements without realizing it. Restless leg comes to mind, also.

Did you really just read the book or did it also tell you to also do something about the "psychological", which you then did?

As strange as it sounds. I think people really improve just by reading the book.

Imagine one day you find an itch on your little pinky on your left foot. You never notice it before. Now spend all day thinking about it. Every day. It will be magnified, it will become unbearable. I think the book teaches you to shift your attention.

It's bizarre. I tossed the book away in disgust because it's crazy pseudoscience....and it still worked.

Sometimes just reading the book causes things to change — in my case, symptoms shifted to a different area (a-ha!). Think of it as "telling" your mind that the game is up: you know what it's up to.

I had very painful RSI for 4 years which was hampering my career and preventing me from playing any video games for more than 15 minutes at a time. It went away within a week of reading "The Mindbody Prescription."

... not that playing video games has been good for my career...

I also dealt with RSI problems that haven't occurred since I read The Mindbody Prescription.

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