Video Transcription
Hi everybody. Dr. Brad Holden, HealthFirst Spine & Wellness. Where we teach you to take control of your health by optimizing the core four of spine, mind, food, and move. In today’s topic I’d like to cover with you how your mindset may be blocking your potential healing. This topic came up here a couple of weeks ago when I had a client come in who was a military veteran who had a traumatic accident during war. This accident and injury left him with chronic pain that failed to completely resolve when it should have. Every time this individual went to push his body, and really try to challenge himself like he likes to, this pain would flare up. Now this began wearing on this person’s psyche because he started losing the confidence in his body. He also has a goal to go back in the military at a very high level and join the special forces, yet he knew that this injury would be an impediment to him being able to reach his goals.
So we gave this individual his treatment on Friday, and we scheduled him for the following Tuesday because it was Labor Day weekend. We adjusted him on Friday, and we did some other therapies and treatments on him. He reported feeling better when he left. Yet when he came back on Tuesday, he was right back in the same pain he started with. I said to this individual, run me through what happened when you left on Friday. He said, I felt so good on Friday and Saturday, I went to the gym, and I did exercises that I haven’t been able to do in a long period of time. I felt great when I was doing them, and I felt great after doing them. But later in the afternoon I started thinking to myself, what if it doesn’t last? What if the pain comes back? What if I can’t join the special forces? What am I going to be like when I’m 50 years old?
I explained to him that those very thoughts may have played a very large factor in the pain returning. He didn’t really get what I was talking about, so I drew this out here for him. I told him that our thoughts on a regular daily basis are either coming from a perspective or platform of fear or faith. When we talk about faith in this context, we’re not necessarily talking about religious faith, we’re talking about faith in the body’s ability to heal itself. So if I dropped this pen, I know it’s going to go down. I have faith in this natural law that the pen is going to go down. Just like I’ve got faith that my body is always trying to heal itself, and my job is to remove the interference and allow it to heal itself. So if I cut my finger I’m not thinking, what do I have to do to heal that cut, I just have to make sure nothing is interfering with the healing of it.
One of the biggest things that gets involved, that interferes with one’s healing is their mindset. This individual didn’t realize that every thought you have has a physiological effect on your body. If you’re thinking fearful thoughts, worrisome thoughts, frustrating thoughts, that affects your nervous system in a way that impedes healing. Versus if you’re thinking of gratitude, thankfulness, etc., that has been shown to promote healing. Let me give you an example of this. The University of Cincinnati several years ago did a study on medical students. They took these students, and they divided them into two different groups, and they gave them all sugar pills. So they were all placebo pills with no physiological effect whatsoever. However, they told one group that the pills they were going to take had stimulant effects. That when they took these pills they should expect to have their blood pressure go up, their heart rate go up, anxiety go up, restlessness go up when they take these pills. In the other group they told them they’re going to have sedative effects. When you take these pills, expect to feel lethargic, dizzy, drowsy, sleepy, etc. In roughly both groups 30 percent of people had those exact physiological effects they told themselves they were going to have. One or two individuals had severe reactions by taking a pill that had no physiological effect.
So if you’re just not making the progress you want in one area of your life, I want you to think about where on this spectrum are your thoughts going. So one of the things we did with this individual to give him a breakthrough is I asked him the question, if you could see into the future two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, and you knew you were healed. The pain was gone, the injury was healed, you could do whatever you wanted to without having to worry about this pain flaring back up. How would you feel emotionally if that were the case, if that were to be true? He said, I’d feel amazing. I’d feel super happy, and I’d be excited. I said, great. Feel that way now. Feel that way, and celebrate the success now that your body is doing the healing, and it will step into that. I saw the individual today. He came in today, I asked him how he was doing. He’s doing amazing. He’s back to full activities, making rapid progress, on target to be able to join the special forces.
So I hope you found value in today’s video. If you did, and you want to continue getting this into your inbox on a weekly basis, go ahead and subscribe to our channel. If you liked this video, give us a thumbs up so we know we’re on the right track. If there’s any topics you would like us to cover, go ahead and post those in the comment box, and we’d be happy to cover those in the future. Thank you so much, and have an amazing day.
To learn more about our lower back pain relief & treatment in Austin, TX, request a free consultation today.