Back Pain: Does it Start in Your Mind or in Your Back?

I have done some reading lately on the topic of how a great deal of our physical pains can be attributed to something inherent in our emotions and in our thoughts. Scientists as well as spiritualists will attest in some way, shape, or form that our mind, our thoughts, and our beliefs can have a huge impact on our overall health and well-being. The mind truly works in wondrous and mysterious ways when it comes to affecting one’s body.

Author John Sarno, who penned The Mindbody Prescription, is a professor of clinical rehabilitation medicine at the NY University School of Medicine in New York City. He believes that your body actually protects you from acting on the emotion of rage by transferring that energy, if you will, subconsciously to your lower back. After all, lower back pain is more socially acceptable than acting out on built-up rage.

So what does Sarno prescribe for this malady? In short, it is awareness. If you can accept that your brain is protecting you from the rage, your pain will go away. That qualifies as instant relief!

Sarno has coined the term “TMS – Tension Myositis Syndrome” to describe this condition. When we are suppressing our anger, the brain will mildly deprive the back muscles and certain tendons and nerves of oxygen to keep us from acting out on that anger. This can be a hard sell for many people, but only those who truly try it accept it and find the cure in it for themselves.

Sarno notes that people with certain personality traits tend to be at a greater risk for back pain, such as those who are specifically intelligent, talented, or compulsive perfectionists. Even those who constantly put the needs of others first can fall victim to lower back pain.

Spiritualist Louise Hay in her best-selling book, You Can Heal Your Life, notes that our inherent belief systems can affect areas of our bodies. She believes that how we think can affect how we physically feel, and subsequently heal. In her book, she itemizes a host of physical ailments and problems and corresponds those with certain emotional traits. For chronic back problems, she has learned through her research that fear of money or the feeling of lack of money can cause pain in the lower back. When one experiences pain in the middle back, it is associated with the feeling of guilt and how one feels powerless to move on in life. When one experiences upper back pain, Hay’s research has suggested that is due to a lack of emotional support and feeling unloved.

What Hay suggests in these certain areas is to break free of the lifelong thoughts that keep you stuck and to develop new ones instead. Trust the process of life, Release the drama of your past and allow yourself to move forward. Above all, approve of yourself unconditionally.

I have to admit. I have tried some of these approaches, and I do firmly believe that my emotions, especially the heavy, burdensome ones, do create certain physical ailments, and once I begin to recognize those, I begin to shift my thinking in a different way. They say laughter is the best medicine. I say, throw in a smile and a hug, too!