At my size, it’s all about the speed and I love to outrun guys half my age!

Anyway, I’ve broken my collarbone playing football and injured my right ankle seriously playing hoops more times than I can count. I know what “injury pain” feels like, believe me. Can we do something about this and get the athlete back in competitive form faster using the powers of the mind? You bet.

Rod Carew, one of the best batters of all time in baseball, had a time where he was in a hitting slump. It seems that he had a nagging injury that was just annoying enough to make his hall-of-fame swing more like a minor leaguer’s for a time. Technically, it was supposed to be completed healed but it bothered him for quite awhile. Doubting himself and In desperation , he utilized the services of a hypnotist who helped him get over that last little hump of healing. The rest is history as he went on to win the batting crown at almost a .400 average and most valuable player award.

This is very common in athletes after getting injured. Once the body has completely healed itself, the pain can still be there. The pain experience can be wholly in memory and felt for a long time after. Phantom pain from amputees is an example of this. There could also be some secondary gain for the unconscious mind to hang onto the pain. Maybe it gives the athlete an “out” for why he/she didn’t win and thereby have an excuse for the pressure to perform.

There are many possibilities with regard to injury pain and we can deal with them at the level that is below awareness.

Using hypnosis to speed healing? Again, yes. Prevention magazine in the Sep 2000 issue reported on a study in an article entitled: “Hypnosis speeds fracture recovery” Here’s a piece of the article:

Of a dozen adults with broken ankles, half had hypnotherapy. Their bones healed quicker, they felt less pain, used fewer painkillers, and were able to walk farther and bear more weight on their injured legs than those who used casts, crutches, and painkillers alone (Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, Mar 1999). The hypnosis group also found it easier to walk down stairs at 6 weeks and had greater mobility at 9 weeks, says study author Carol Ginandes, PhD, a clinical psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School. “The x-rays support this,” she adds. “At 6 weeks, the fractures appeared to be almost 9 weeks healed.”

You need to get back on the court, field, track, tournament, competition or game faster don’t you?

Let me first tell you, if you haven’t already received the message from the rest of the site, I truly am committed to this mission of helping folks with their pain issues wherever my expertise can help. I know that I can’t help everyone and neither can any other health care practitioner. Medicine is as much an art form as dealing with the mind but I just know that there are millions of people out there that are suffering needlessly and I am pushed by a greater being to find them. I personally believe in one God and know that spirituality can play an important part in relieving pain. But I digress…

“It’s all in your head” has now become a sort of chastisement. When you have a worrying thought and express it, it seems there’s almost always a person around who will throw that statement at you with a negative tone attached. It’s like we should feel guilty for even expressing our concern or something. Years of hearing this or similar messages has conditioned many of us to believe that seeking help with a mental professional somehow makes us less of a human. The term “headshrinkers” or “shrink” comes to mind and they are definitely not positive Internal Representations (IRs).

Fast forwarding to your pain now. I know of some folks that actually feel better about having their pain when a doctor tells them that their pain is a “genetic” or “structural defect” in the body. You see, this gives them the permission to think or say “I’m glad it’s not in my head.”

That’s how powerful the chastisement has been working on us. In other words, it’s OK to be in pain from a medical condition, but it’s not ok to be in pain from a mental or emotional condition. Now, I’m here to tell you right now, that there is no separation. The mind and body are far too interlinked to be able to keep them separate in dealing with any problems we might have.

If you have those thoughts of fear of the unknown inside your mind, my first thought would be to ask: “So how is that working for you now?” to quote from Dr. Phil, a popular TV psychologist. I mean, c’mon, do you want to get rid of your pain or not? If the answer is yes and you’ve already been to the doctors and still have debilitating pains, then you owe it to yourself to clear your old belief system so that you can do something different; so that you can move beyond your fears and doubts and cultural programming. If you are firmly entrenched in this old way of thinking, let me give you a new paradigm for a belief system.

Open your mind to possibility. Let go of your fear of letting go of your pain. Call me and we’ll just talk for a bit.