My adventures with chronic pain began when I was injured in an auto accident. As time passed, my treatment from the traditional medical community settled into one dull, grinding message: learn to live with it.

That was a message I simple could not accept.

I believed then, as I believe now, that life is infinitely flexible and plastic. That any of us can change—mentally, physically, spiritually—in an instant. That miracles can and do happen. And I therefore believed that I could do something more than just “learn to live with it.”

I threw myself into reading and trying and doing almost anything I read that promised relief from chronic pain. I learned that there are resources available to us that go far beyond prescription medications and surgery. And I learned that the most important of those resources are inside of us.

Recently I had a conversation with a man who’s traveled the globe studying energy healing. I asked him what, in all his years of study, was the most important thing he had learned. He said, “I’ve learned that the most important thing, and also the hardest thing, is just to get out of our own way and allow our body to heal itself.”

“Allowing, “he said, “not willing, not commanding, not magnetically attracting, but simply allowing is the key to unlocking miracles.”

His words made me remember a story I’d heard from Tanna Boran about her recovery from rheumatoid arthritis. I asked her to write about it for you. Her personal miracle happened when she was 15. It’s my opinion that because she was so young, her mind was not set into fixed patterns of belief, and so she allowed a miracle to happen. Here it is in her own words:

Curious Repercussions of Spontaneous Healing

by Tanna Boran

At the tender age of 15, while watching the Grammy Awards on television one February night, my hands felt stiff. Looking down at them, I saw that my knuckles were swollen and smooth looking, like those of my grandmother who had rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Over the next three months, this stiffness rapidly progressed to full blown physical agony. I had fevers and always felt sick. I couldn’t curl my fingers around my books to carry them between high school classes. I was so stiff after a night’s sleep that I required my mother’s help getting out of bed and starting the hot shower that would provide too little relief.

I told my parents, family doctor, and others involved that I had was arthritis. I didn’t know at that time there were two kinds, but I’d heard my grandmother bemoan her arthritis pain over the years. It seemed pretty obvious to me.

It was not so obvious to my family doctor, however, and he admitted me to the hospital for tests. This turned into a surreal weeklong stay, ending with a doctor I’d never met bestowing the RA diagnosis on me as if I'd inherited a sizeable estate. (I suppose for him it was a successful completion to his work.) He essentially told me RA is forever and get used to it.

I was a bit pissed off, to put it mildly. It took only days after the diagnosis for some people to start treating me like an invalid. As if having a serious disease wasn’t bad enough, people acted like I was contagious as well. Another significant person in my life all but accused me of faking the whole thing. I caught on quickly that even if compassion was warranted, I wasn’t necessarily going to get it.

Rage at this treatment and the unfairness of it all welled up in me until one day it broke loose; an impassioned exchange with my Maker ensued. Well, more like a loud dressing down. I informed Him I was too f****** young for this s***. I had a few more choice words for Him, but you get the gist of it. Floors were beaten with fists. Household items were thrown.

After that, I suffered through a truly grueling week of nausea and vomiting. Any movement whatsoever stirred up vertigo-like nausea through my whole body. I spent hours at a time draped over an open toilet. I vomited constantly, even though nothing but bile came up.

And then the RA was gone.

I didn’t think too much about what had happened. Raised in the Catholic tradition, the concept of miracles was nothing new to me, but I didn’t think of my emancipation from RA as a miracle. After all, I’d spent most of my life without RA, so returning to that RA-free life was something I didn’t question. It seemed like a natural course of events. Over the following months and years, though, I was informed otherwise.

For some strange reason, some people were not thrilled that I might not be crippled with pain for the rest of my life. The most common reactions were an incredulous, “But there’s no cure for rheumatoid arthritis!” and a resolute, “Well, you must have been misdiagnosed.”

No offense, but I spent a week in the hospital and surrendered half of my blood supply to establish that diagnosis. Dozens of medical professionals took part in it. If it’s easier to think that a half-dozen doctors and dozens of support staff all conclusively erred rather than a spontaneous healing could occur, you’ve probably seen far too few miracles in your life.

I used to tell my new doctors about the now-gone RA when they took my medical history. I’ve since stopped because none of them were interested or even found it worthy of being noted in my chart.  It’s as if they conclude I must have been misdiagnosed, because if I had it then, I’d have it now. So I stopped mentioning it. No one’s worse for not knowing.

I believe that my natural indignation — which has served me well in my ensuing years — at having at age 15 what I thought of as an old lady’s disease led to a spontaneous healing.  But I also found out some interesting things down the line.

For weeks after the vomiting, all I ate were ice pops and pumpkin seeds.  Years later I read the book, “Eat Right 4 Your Type,” by Peter J. D’Adamo, a book that asserted that certain foods have a medicinal effect for people of particular blood types. And, you guessed it; pumpkin seeds have a medicinal/healing effect for those with my O blood type.

I’d like to think that my intuition led me to the food that would be my medicine. Supposedly O blood types are the ones who get RA and other autoimmune diseases as well.

I never discovered what the ice pops were about, but I still like them today. And I know that spontaneous healing is possible, because I experienced it. Even if others don’t believe.

_________

Tanna Boran is a life coach, writer and metaphysician, as well as an accidental advocate for caregivers. You can read her blog at http://www.AudaciousAbundance.com and learn about her practice at http://www.DivineRelationshipCoaching.com.  You can also follow her on Twitter at  http://www.twitter.com/CoachTanna

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.

This concept isn't always so easy for Westerners to accept. When I was first injured, I would have thought the idea ludicrous. The source of my pain was obvious-I'd been in a serious auto accident. Case closed.

But when traditional medicine failed to help me heal, I began exploring alternative medicine. The more I read, the more I learned about the number of ways that our beliefs and ideas impact our body. I began to understand that the rage I held inside–rage against the man that recklessly caused the accident, rage against the doctors that carelessly misdiagnosed me, rage against the insurance company that closed and left me stranded–all that boiling rage was standing in the way of my recovery.

It wasn't easy to let go of that rage. After all, it was completely justified. All those people had caused me to suffer, yet they had moved on with their lives without so much as a slap on the hand. I wanted justice, and knowing there would be none left me filled with fury.

But book after book, scientific study after scientific study, told me the same story. Our brains react instantly to our thoughts and emotions, releasing millions of combinations of chemicals in instant response to everything that passes through our mind.

I knew I had to find a way to release my rage, and with much work and over time, I did. Since then, I've continued to study brain function, hypnosis and what some call emotional or energy medicine. And a couple of years ago I came across a field of energy medicine called EFT, emotional freedom technique.

EFT is a way of tapping into and resolving painful emotions by tapping on your body. It's one of the first techniques I turn to when I need physical or emotional help. I consider it my first aid kit. But a few weeks ago, even though I needed help badly, I seemed helpless to help myself.

I was getting ready to go to a 4-day seminar on internet marketing when I slipped and twisted my knee. Nothing seemed broken or torn, so I wasn't overly concerned. And I knew, from years of physical therapy, how to care for it.

But after the first day of the seminar, I was a wreck. To walk, I was shifting all my weight to the right, to protect my left knee. Doing that put my spine out of whack, and I now had a nagging backache as well as a throbbing knee. I knew I'd better start using a cane to keep me standing straight while my knee healed. So that night, on the way home from the seminar, I stopped at a drug store and bought a spiffy blue cane with a comfortable handle.

I instantly felt more comfortable walking, but as I left the drug store, something came trailing behind me. It was a swarm of negative emotions and fears that followed me home, settling on me like little black flies, biting and pinching me. I tried to brush them away, but as I fell asleep, they invaded my dreams. I got little rest that night.

The next day, I walked into the seminar with my cane and was again overwhelmed with painful emotions. Everything I'd been though in the past came alive again. I vividly remembered using first a walker, and later a cane. I remembered people making unkind remarks and ridiculous assumptions when I was slow crossing a street or moving through the grocery store. And the more I remembered, the more my knee throbbed and the worse I felt.

I didn't make it through the last day of the seminar. And all the next week I was so worn out from pain I could barely get my work done. Mail and housework piled up, making me feel more stressed, more afraid, more angry at myself for not taking control of the situation and doing—- well, doing what? My knee needed time to heal. Wasn't I using a knee brace, a cane, exercise and infrared heat? 

Wasn't I doing everything I could? I was not. And I knew it. I purposely wasn't using EFT, the Emotional Freedom Technique, to resolve the leftover feelings that damn cane had awakened. Worse, I didn't know why I wasn't using EFT. Some part of me seemed stubbornly resolved to stay in turmoil.

I've seen this in other people, this digging in and accepting pain without doing everything we can to resolve it. I don't know where it comes from or why we do it. I just know it's common.

I knew I had to motivate myself to move forward. But it took me a few days to come up with enough motivation just to motivate myself! To do that, I used a technique I learned in NLP (nuerolinguistic programming). I made a list of things I badly wanted to do, things I would not be able to do if I didn't get out of the unresouceful state of mind I was in.

When the pain of potentially missing out on those events became greater than the pain of making myself take action….I took action. I started using EFT to tap into my emotions and resolve them.

I'd clearly been shown there was a lot of leftover fear and anger from that auto accident that needed to be put to rest. There were lots of new fears, too, fears about the economy, about growing older and declining, as well as lingering grief from the death of my dearest friend last November.

I'm still working my way through some of those issues. My knee is getting better. And I have a better understanding of how deeply our emotions stay buried, not just in our minds but in our bones and muscles and nerves.

There are many ways of resolving emotional pain. I have used EFT effectively, as well as hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming. There are also techniques like Reiki or Rolfing or massage therapy that release emotional pain though physical work. And when the right person is available, therapy with a psychologist or mental health counselor can be a blessing.

The challenge is not to find a method of healing emotions-there are many– but simply to motivate yourself to take a step emotional healing. Don't be afraid to try a technique, or as I did, many techniques. Unlike surgery or drugs, no harm can come from these gentle forms of therapy. When one is right for you, you will feel it. And feel, too, how much physical pain is lifted when emotional pain is released.

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide news, information and motivation to people living with pain.  You can stay in touch with her by adding your email address to the subscribe form located in the upper right corner. For an eye-opening look at EFT, read this very interesting article  at  Emofree about demonstrating EFT to a group of doctors, and how it was used on stage for pain from a broken wrist. or this one–Did Karen’s physical scars disappear as she did EFT on her emotional scars?

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