Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by John E Sarno, M.D

Quote by John E Sarno, M.D

“This is an important strategy, but one must be careful that it does not become a ritual. Patients are given a list of twelve key thoughts, and it is suggested that at least once a day they set aside fifteen minutes or so when they can relax and quietly review them. They are called daily reminders. * The pain is due to TMS, not to a structural abnormality. * The direct reason for the pain is mild oxygen deprivation. * TMS is a harmless condition, caused by my repressed emotions. *The principal emotion is my repressed anger. * TMS exists only to distract my attention from the emotions. * Since my back is basically normal, there is nothing to fear. * Therefore, physical activity is not dangerous. And I must resume all normal physical activity. * I will not be concerned or intimidated by the pain. * I will shift my attention from the pain to emotional issues. * I intend to be in control-not my subconscious mind. * I must think psychological at all times, not physical. (page 97)”

Quote by John E Sarno, M.D

Book:Healing Back Pain
Create image

Work

Healing Back Pain

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

John E Sarno, M.D

Browse famous quotes and profile details for John E Sarno, M.D. more

You May Also Like

“In the past few years he had become conscious of the burden of his own body. He recognized the symptoms. He had read about them in textbooks, he had seen them confirmed in real life, in older patients with no history of serious ailments who suddenly began to describe perfect syndromes that seemed to come straight from medical texts and yet turned out to be imaginary. His professor of children’s clinical medicine at La Salpêtrière had recommended pediatrics as the most honest specialization, because children become sick only when in fact they are sick, and they cannot communicate with the physician using conventional words but only with concrete symptoms of real diseases.”

ChildrenHealthDiseaseMedicineSymptomsPediatrics
Book:Love in the Time of Cholera
Create image

“Patriarchy believes emotion is weak and has no place in business or governance. It means leaving pieces of you behind when you sit at the table. It means that if you want to be part of the winning side, you have to comply and be ready to be part of the team without holding them back. Matriarchal and egalitarian systems promote love-based decision-making and space for people to share their emotions.”

HealingHealthEquityIndigenousIndigenous WisdomMatriarchyEgalitarianMatriarchal
Book:Calling My Spirit Back
Create image

“In my experience, structural abnormalities of the spine rarely cause back pain. That ought not surprise us, for this epidemic of back pain is very new. Somehow the human race managed to get through the first million years or so of its evolution without a problem, but if the structural diagnoses are correct, something happened to the spine during the last evolutionary eyeblink, and it has begun to fall apart. This idea is untenable. One suspects that these spine abnormalities have always been there but were never blamed for pain, because there was no pain to blame them for. Fifty years ago, back pain was not very common, but, more importantly, nobody took it seriously. The epidemic of back pain is due to the enormous increase in the incidence of TMS during the past thirty years, and, ironically, the failure of medicine recognize and diagnose it has been a major factor in that increase. Instead of TMS, the pain has been attributed primarily to a variety of structural defects of the spine. It's essential to know that almost all of the structural abnormalities of the spine are harmless. (page 117)”

PsychologyHealthBack Pain
Book:Healing Back Pain
Create image

“Though the back sufferer isn't aware of it, it is generally known by students of the spine that the last intervertebral disc, between the fifth lumbar vertebra and the sacrum, is more or less degenerated in most people by the age of twenty. Discs are structures located between the bodies of spinal bones to take up the shock. They are firmly attached to the vertebral bodies above and below, and in no way can they "slip." Enclosed by a tough, fibrous outer shell, there is a thick fluid inside, which is what absorbs the shock. The discs at the lower end and in the neck, because of all the activity in those locations, begin to wear out at an early age, some by the age of twenty, as stated. (page 118)”

PsychologyHealthBack Pain
Book:Healing Back Pain
Create image

“For example, the diagnostic study (CT scan or MRI) might show a herniated disc at the interspace L4-L5, one of the possible consequences of which might be weakness in the muscles that elevate the foot and the toes. The examination, however, revealed that not only those muscles were weak but so were the ones in the back of the leg, muscles that are not energized by the spinal nerve passing by interspace L4-L5. Then when I found on examination that the buttock muscles in the vicinity of the sciatic nerve were painful to pressure, it was apparent that the nerve disturbance was not coming from the region of the herniated disc but from the sciatic nerve that serves both sets of muscles. (page 120)”

PsychologyHealthBack Pain
Book:Healing Back Pain
Create image