Paula Newman's RSI

[jst2185]

Hey all,

I thought you might find it interesting that I had the exact same computer-using-induced pain condition she had, repetitive stress injury. It was sharp, horrible pain in my hands that started during the spring of my freshman year at college, and I thought it was caused by typing. It got worse over the next two years, and I increasingly sought relief by seeing doctors, phsyical therapists, and trying various hand-stretching, hand-exercising, and ergonomic solutions. None of 'em worked.

Then my mom's friend passed on a book called "The Mindbody Prescription" by John E. Sarno, an N.Y.U. back doctor and medical school professor who's probably about 90 by now, and who became something of a rogue doctor starting in the '70s or so when he started to theorize that the conventional explanations for chronic back pain were far more baseless than anyone was willing to recognize, and that the real root beneath a massive portion of chronic back pain was stress. Specifically, emotions from our past that we had repressed.

He noticed that the two types of people most likely to end up with these chronic pain conditions were perfectionists, and "goodists" (people who try to be perfect in a "good person" kind of way). I was, and still am, both, to pretty unhealthy degrees. I read his book, it resonated enormously, and I put the book down and immediately decided to take a year off from college. I've never had any pain in my hands again. It had been so bad at one point that I had an ergonomic keyboard in which each finger had to move about a milimeter to hit every key on the keyboard, I was still having pain, and it would hurt to put on a t-shirt in the morning. Are you surprised that I was anxious as anything, depressed, and miserable about myself and my life at the same time?

I stayed on campus, got an apartment, waited tables at two restaurants, did some pro-bono teaching, and chilled the fuck out, as best I could. And I began a process of trying to unearth my own repressed emotions, and in the process get more in touch with my real self, that continues apace today, with passion. Your podcast is just another tool in that whole process of self-discovery and life improvement for myself.

That was 6 years ago. Ever since, I've typed away at any speed I want, in any posture, for as long as I want, without ever doing exercises or stretches or worrying a lick about ergonomics (my experience, at least, revealed so much of ergonomics to be bullshit), without an ounce of pain. It came back actually a year and a half later, 6 months after I'd picked up my degree where I'd left off, and I emailed one of Sarno's major disciples. He emailed me back something basically along the lines of: "typing shouldn't cause pain!!!!! Given your history, this is almost certainly a re-flare-up of the old emotional demons that were causing your pain in the first place." Sure enough, I faced my hand pain again as a cover for the deeper emotional pain, and it faded away again basically within a day or two, for good.

I must add though: I have a condition now where my immune system is failing to kill a bacteria on my scalp that is killing my follicles, and some warts, that I suspect are as mindbody-induced as my hand pain was, and those are not going away so easily.

In case you're interested, I set up a mini blog where I describe my RSI story in a bit more depth, and did a post about the connection between cancer and emotions.

my experience with Sarno & RSI:
http://themindbodyspot.wordpress.com/my ... -with-rsi/

cancer's link to emotions:
http://themindbodyspot.wordpress.com/latest-posts/