Check former parts for important info
Why have we been talking about stress?
Stress is an overlooked element in healing. It appears that most doctors do not consider it to be significant in the healing process. Atleast that is not important enough to send much if any time on. Let me be charitable; they maybe do, but in their treatment regimen they do not consider the ill effects of stress and the importance of stress reduction.
In most medical training there is an emphasis on the mechanical model of healing. This at times is very important, especially in emergency situations. However, there is a whole other element in healing. That is the spirit/mind element. This is one of the areas that the conventional practitioners can stand out amongst their peers and alternative workers can (among other things) do important work in support of the mechanical model or at times replacing it with the this missing element of healing.
Dr. Joseph Murphy relates a story of a man who had gone deaf. The doctors were stumped. It was discovered that the wife was a nagger. As a result the man finally did not want to hear it. Stress had caused the problem.
Once this cause was isolated and the wife stopped her nagging, the man was able to hear again. It was not a mechanical issue at all. The deafness was a stress issue.
Isolate any stress in the patient’s life; work to reduce that in whatever modality you are using, and you will be a positive factor in the healing process. As you have seen earlier, there is a need for stress reduction in speeding healing or in healing itself.
I had a massage therapist tell me of a school principal. This was many years ago, but that account makes for a good parable here. Every year when school was about to start, he had a terrible lower back problem.
A surgeon had suggested surgery for a “permanent fix”. That doctor had not considered stress as a factor. To him it was strictly a physical issue.
The problem had to be mechanical. Of course the first response was muscle relaxers. [Given the pain; that may have been a wise first aid.] However the answer in the main was not in adjusting the mechanical model. It was in reducing the stress factor.
The therapist had noted the non coincidental starting of school every year. And every year the problem left as the operation of the school year worked itself out. She pointed that out to him, and he agreed that there must be a connection. Just that put him in the area of dealing with stress as a treatment for his situational back problem.
She then suggested something for him to do to deal with the stress. While she may not have known about Emile Coue and Joseph Murphy, she was suggesting something that they would have recommended in that situation. She suggested that at bedtime he should do an affirmation while he was going to sleep.
“Every year the starting of school works itself out. There are just things to do to get things going right. I am at peace.”
He repeated this during his time of falling into sleep each night. In shorter than usual time, his back problem went away. The next year he started the same nightly ritual as the opening semester approached.
Surprise, surprise. He did not have a back problem that next year. This was the first time the problem had not shown up since he had become a principle.
In that situation, there was a mechanical issue created, but it was not a mechanical problem. It was a stress problem, something that few doctors would have thought about. Of course a surgeon thinks first about surgery.
