How To Heal

A Journey With Chronic Pain

Figure 1: Symptoms and stories living inside my body.

By the age of 26 I had broken ten bones and accumulated around 50 stitches (figure 1). I was constantly and deliberately jumping down concrete staircases and falling out of trees. I face the fact now, years later: I was hard on my body because I didn’t know what my body was. It was just this strange thing, a sponge-tool for experiences, sensations, fun, and trying to have sex. As a privileged white male growing up with a conventional-western-education, I was left to my own devices, and those of my bored and internet-addicted peers.

I was numb.

I was dumb.

I was reckless.

Broken beginnings

When I began breaking bones on an almost yearly basis via skateboarding, snowboarding, and other high speed antics, it was cool — totally cool, and romanticized. I got to wear a cast — a display of my risk-taking-bravery, and it was a good conversation-starter. I craved attention, and I got it.

Until I was 26, my pains were acute. Sometimes severely acute, but temporary. Then something strange happened. A lump formed in the middle of my thoracic spine. “It’s just a lipoma — a benign fat deposit,” the doctors told me, “don’t worry.”

I wasn’t worried, at all. “My body can handle anything; you control your own reality.” This was my life-philosophy. My white, entitled, access-to-free-health-care, belief system. Looking back, I’m happy about what happened. Otherwise I might still be back there.

Western ways

With the fat lump, came a nagging shoulder pain. It was a creeping, elusive nip at my soul, and reduced my emotional well-being slowly by surely. The two symptoms, my lipoma on the spine and my shoulder pain, in the eyes of western medicine, were separate. I was diagnosed with “shoulder impingement” and “scapula dysfunction.” And the lipoma, was no concern for any doctor. For three years I used stretch bands, tennis balls (for massage), and was egged-on by optimistic physiotherapists. “Just five more sessions.”

Physiotherapists aren’t evil, many are amazing — especially at treating specific symptoms. They also do better than most doctors, who prescribed me anti-inflammatories and steroid creams. But In my experience, western medicine misses the big-panda.

Pain

Before going deeper into my story, and my search for the “golden-pill,” which took me halfway across the world, we should do a quick mic-drop regarding pain. Pain is an evolutionary mechanism to show the body when it is out of balance. It is a teacher.

Acute pain shows us when something is in immediate danger — when to protect a certain area of the body. It usually reduces measurably over time.

Chronic pain lets us know when there is a systemic imbalance in the body. It doesn’t reduce measurably over time, and requires a systemic change to heal. Chronic pain can lead to a feedback cycle of compensations, misalignment, and more pain. It effects our mental health.

My process

Once the shoulder pain appeared, I started moving my upper body A-symmetrically (only using my right arm for tasks). This changed my hip alignment, which led to an increase of pressure in my left knee, where I eventually tore my meniscus. The knee injury put me in crutches and feedbacked into my already out-of-line hips and upper body. Eventually I was dealing with severe nerve pain and a dysfunctional (hypermobile) SI-joint. For the precious 5 months before the clinic, every time I put on my underwear, I winced as sciatic lightning shot down my bum; it affected everything — especially my emotions and relationships. With pain all day, I was usually drained by 1800, at which time I would retreat and lay down. I could barely take care of myself, let alone others.

The above paragraph was a five year process to understand, and the whole time I was looking for relief (figure 2). I tried Western experts in physio, Indian yoga gurus, and shiatsu masters. I tried Thai-massage, two years of Tibetan medicine, chi-gong, countless hours of Vipassana meditation, a 30-day water fast, Feldenkrais, intensive physical exercise, breathwork, ayahuasca, straight DMT, magic mushrooms, Ayurveda, more yoga, “healers” and hundreds of hours on DIY physio YouTube videos. It all helped in its own way, but the pain always returned.

Figure 2: I tried all sorts of alternative treatments including wet cupping for my torn meniscus, in Turkey. The skin is cut with fine razor blade, then the pressure cupped. Cool, invasive, and I’m not sure how much it helped. The idea is that it stimulates circulation, reduces swelling, and creates a micro stress to your body that encourages healing.

How do we heal? How do wounds seal; bones knit tight; and why do cancers retreat? How do our cells know what to do, and why, at times, do they not?

Some self-reminders from my journal:

1. Active treatments help more. The passive treatments, massages, and healings offered relief, but short-term.
2. I found the Eastern approach to be more holistic, careful, and kind. Perhaps slower, but directed at the roots, not the branches. Those treatments were also less stressful. MRI’s, sterile white rooms, and authoritative medical men have taken their toll on my mental health — my ability to trust.
3. Plant medicines and drugs might help with the mental side of things, and give you a broader perspective on reality. But they won’t realign your vertebrae. Or maybe they can. But not mine.
4. Feldenkrais and other somatic education lessons help build body sensitivity, and show you how to move from centre. This really helped with my numbness towards my body.
5. Vipassana is the ultimate healing tool. It works at the deepest level — treating the illnesses of delusion, distraction, fear, and craving. It is tool for experiencing equanimity in the face of impermanence. This is very profound. But it is hard to get to those deeper insights if you are always in chronic pain to begin with.
6. Don’t sit at a screen too much.
7. YouTube is a rabbit-hole. But it can help. Commit fully to your exercises, and keep track of your progress. Also good if your on a budget.
8. Yoga can really make your alignment worse. Be careful. Stretching a whole bunch feels good, but it must be done in proportion with strengthening. Most importantly, it must be done with proper alignment.
9. Pranayama and other breathwork is a good discipline for the mind and lungs.
10. Build your core and glutes and teach them to engage in sync with the rest of your body.
11. Eat healthy. Chew your food till it becomes liquid. Don’t combine too many different types of food at one time. Don’t overeat.
12. Fast regularly. This is a hard-wired healing mechanism. Maybe it won’t align vertebrae, but it might cure cancer.
13. Drink water slowly and often. Experiment with your body and take notes. Sleep peaceful.
14. Have a routine. Discipline requires discipline, and an alarm clock.
15. Do nice things for your community, and strangers. We are all here to learn how to heal. Be happy.
16. Everyone experiences pain.
17. Healing takes time and effort, and a proper diagnosis.

*These are lessons from myself for myself coming out of the journey I went on. They are not meant to be advice:)

Bone and Body:

As I write I am in South Goa. It’s warm, and swimming is easy. I have been undergoing treatment at the Bone and Body Clinic for the past 11 weeks. I feel reborn. For the first time in years, I am running again! More than anything I can feel my alignment changing and I am understanding how to move from centre — how to distribute pressure through all my joints evenly, and move as efficiently and safely as possible.

The Clinic is a happy place filled with people, and animals, on the mend (figure 3). There is rescued cats, dogs, cows, and an eagle all being nursed back to health. It helps having our evolutionary brothers and sisters there, it puts pain and healing in the bigger picture.

Figure 3: The Bone and Body Clinic administrative staff hard at work

The program at the clinic is a combination of chiropractic realignments (1–2 times a week) and dynamic stretching (2 hrs a day). Additionally, steam therapy, massages, and herbal treatments are administered depending on your condition. It’s the kind of place where people have walked out of wheelchairs, and often arrive because surgery is the only other option.

“Surgery won’t help in most cases,” Miranda, the co-owner and animal-lover tells me. She describes a scenario where someone has a knee issue but it’s because of a pelvic misalignment which has its roots in a spinal rotation. The example is similar to my own. The knee injury is just a symptom created by the poor alignment above. Miranda goes on, “the body is a system… and these surgeons treat them as parts. What happens after the surgery? They take out your meniscus? You still have the pelvic tilt, a spinal rotation, and bad movement habits. What’s next?”

If we are not treating the root of the issue, what are we treating? How many surgeries will it take? I have one friend who was in the military who had three ankle surgeries and is now filled with metal and pain. “I just accept and, when I can, avoid the pain,” he tells me. “They say I could have another surgery, but even the doctors are doubtful.” I nod my head, imagining experimental mice inside mazes of pain, given mysterious medicine without their mousey-consent.

Ringo:

At the clinic the doctor is from Northeast India’s Manipur state. He’s agile, quiet, and looks into your body with X-Ray vision. He is kind and when he smiles, he means it. His background is in the martial arts and his ancestors were also bone doctors. My consultation with him and Miranda was the first time I felt heard and seen.

Figure 4: The thoracic vertebrae (second from top in picture) is only off by millimetres, not a problem to the Western doctors, but the source of my misalignment feedback cycle

He points right to my lipoma, where it turns out there is a displaced vertebrae (figure 4), as the key issue. “Once this heals, the rest will follow,” Ringo explains. And that’s it. Now to work.

The first weeks were hard with lots of new pain — good pain. The clinic uses dynamic movements to go into the tight places that need circulation and opening-up, and to rewire the nervous system and body to move from centre. People are regularly screaming and gasping in class. Sometimes you have to go into the discomfort to relieve it. Pain can make you guard an area even after an injury is healed.

Many of the patients have severe disabilities at the clinic, but they are brave and believe in the body’s ability to heal. It helped, having others around to share the journey. I guess that’s my last take home message: Healing in community helps.

Worldview

All this suffering and human rawness has got me whimsically philosophical. Pain can be a mentor, friend, lover, mother, and enemy. But mostly it is a universal process — this phenomena the human body is capable of. Maybe that is what the body is for: experiencing pain, so we can learn how to heal, and at the least, accept. If I didn’t have this journey, who would I be? It’s almost like we need pain, to grow.

*I should note, I’m not out of the woods yet, and in a way, I will never be. I still feel some pain, but less, and I don’t feel helpless. I hope to integrate stretching and health practices into my everyday life and maintain my new found alignment. That’s a small and now public promise to myself.

Lots of love,

David