Phase V

“Blue Sky”

The Spiritual Journey

OVERVIEW OF PHASE V

This is the journey of endless wonder.  I was told ten years ago that there was a way of living my life that I could not comprehend because there is nothing in my existence that would allow me to understand it.  It does exist.  I now feel that way every day because there is no end to the journey.  As your regain your perspective and creativity returns to your life your pain pathways become much less interesting and you will thrive.

GOALS OF PHASE V

Education

• Review the whole journey
• Pursue any resource that will open your horizons

Sleep

• Restful full night’s sleep with minimal sleep aids

CNS

• Establishment of lifetime “maintenance” practices
• Embarking on your spiritual journey

Medications

• Off all pain, sleep, and anti-anxiety medications

Goal setting

• Reaching beyond yourself

Rehabilitation

• Aggressively pursuing all aspects of your health

FIVE STEPS:

Step 1—Understand the importance of “stepping into your new life”

When you are engaged with your true value system and pursuing your interests based on that connection, it is probably the most powerful way of creating new neurological pathways.  I will term this, “living an engaged life.”

When you are driving home from work, your brain will not remember every car, house, tree, and store that you will pass.  Your brain will screen most of it out.  Your nervous system is hierarchal.  In other words, it will just remember what is most prominent.  It is the reason that rehabilitation physicians emphasize function over pain relief in their treatment of chronic pain.  As you become more active and functional, your focus will be diverted onto your life.  The pain circuits will move down the chain. If your life revolves around first getting rid of your pain and then you feel that you will then be able to live your life “forget it.”  You are done. Your pain will progressively occupy more and more of your conscious thoughts.

If you are just engaging in activities to distract yourself from your pain you will have the same problem.  Your pain is still running the show.

When you no longer have anxiety and anger controlling your life, you can engage in your life with zeal. Maslow’s Miss is the ultimate paradox of the human existence.  It is not that you will get rid of anxiety and frustration.  It is that they no longer control you.  You will connect with yourself, family, friends, and the essence of your existence.  Adversity, including chronic pain, will also not control you.  New brain pathways will be created. It has been astounding how much of an effect this approach has had in decreasing my patients’ pain.  I would never have predicted this sequence ten years ago.

Step 2— Establish your lifetime practices—The power of commitment

Commit to scheduling time daily or weekly to keep yourself using the strategies and tools you found the most effective in bring you to this point.  With repetition these more functional ways of living your life will become your baseline.

I went skiing on Christmas day, 2008, with my son Nick and his best friend Holt.  Holt was the 2007 US mogul champion.  My son just won a national mogul event the two weeks earlier.  The three of us were standing on top of a cornice at Snowbird, Utah.  For you non-skiers, a cornice is a snow formation that occurs at the top of a mountain ridge.  As the wind blows the snow up the mountain a drop-off of 10-20 feet will be formed.  Most skiers make a diagonal trail down this drop-off, which is fairly simple and safe.  US ski team skiers often jump straight off of them.

Just below the cornice was a chute that was about 20 feet wide at the top but only about six feet wide about 2/3 of the way down.  About 100 feet down on the left there was an outcropping of rocks and it was about 200 feet before it opened up.

Holt looked at it. I said to him, “Holt, you are on the US ski team.  I don’t think your coaches are going to be thrilled with you skiing down this kind of terrain.”  He looked at me and then immediately jumped into the chute.  He skied about 75 feet straight down, made a gentle turn to the right, another gentle turn to the left and ended up in a large bowl.  Nick went to the right and jumped from a 15-foot cliff into the same chute and made the same turns into the bowl. They were traveling about 40-50 mph when they reached the open bowl. This was simply an undoable chute for most human beings.  It was clear that if they did not remain committed to their decision that they had a very high chance of a serious injury.

• Commit to yourself and your new reality.
• Schedule it into your day.

Life is short.

Step 3—Your journey inward

It has been pointed out for centuries that the only person that you can change in life is you.  This is a very challenging concept for me in that beginning from the time I decided to become a physician my energy was focused on fixing everyone around me.  I did not perceive that I needed any work. In retrospect I was focused on others both to divert attention from myself and also was trying to “save others to save myself.”  This has been the most humbling part of my journey.  Not only was I broken, I was really broken. It was under such severe stress that the façade finally broke down.

The key to any success that I have experienced in helping others with their problems has been from me being able to be more connected to myself and therefore be able to simply talk to others from a human to human perspective.  My patients figure out to heal themselves on their own.  In fact when they re-connect with who they are and where they want to go there is no stopping them.  It is similar to opening the door to a caged wild animal.  I have learned to just give advice when asked and stay out of the way otherwise.

There is a strong natural tendency as patients begin to experience success with these tools to try to engage their family members in the process.  Although I do insist that both halves of a couple engage they have to do it completely separately and both have to do it on their own free will.  Any energy focused on the other’s progress is counter-productive.

This step has an infinite number of possibilities.  I have just a few overall guidelines:

• Become aware of your energy spent on “fixing” those around you.
• Develop an awareness of your own flaws and then learn to completely embrace and accept them as they are.  It is the first step in moving forward.
• Read an excerpt daily from “The Art of Living” by Epictetus (modern translation by Sharon Lebell).  His focus is almost completely on the journey inward.
• Deliberately research and choose tools that will allow you progress down this road inward.
• If you are pursuing this journey still holding onto the idea it will change those around you—forget it.  It is one of the paradoxes of life.  Until you truly detach from the outcome it is counterproductive.  Conversely once you truly commit to your own growth, life around you will change dramatically.

Step 4—Your spiritual journey

My definition of a spiritual journey is quite broad.  I define it simply as looking and experiencing life outside of you.  It means that you need to regain a perspective of life bigger than you.  You will begin to lose your sense of self-importance and increase your awareness of the needs of those around you. I think that this step requires a conscious effort to pursue it.  It can take an infinite number of forms:

• Quality time with family and friends
• Spiritual organizations
• Good food, wine
• Energizing experiences
• Creative hobbies
• The arts

Any experience that involves active engagement and involves experiencing a perspective bigger than you works.  Passive experiences such as watching TV are fine but will not aid you in achieving spiritual growth.

• Consciously choose what form this journey might take and write it down.  You should review it on a bi-annual or annual basis.
• Read “Journey into Love” by Kani Comstock

Step 5—Giving Back

The final step of these 25 steps is giving back.  Empathy is an inherent part of the human experience.  From an evolutionary perspective it was the group of humans who learned to cooperate that had the highest likelihood of survival. The reason that many people seem so self-centered and self-serving is that they have been disconnected from themselves by anxiety and anger.  It is not possible to reach out to others if you are emotionally trying to just survive.  J.K. Rowling: “The Fringe Benefits of Failure”

Once you have implemented the tools that will re-connect you to your “authentic self” (Hoffman) you will have the desire, energy, and ability to reach out to others.  I have universally observed this happening in my patients and it has also been my personal experience.

Compassion is the ability to see a situation through the other person’s eyes with an understanding of what it might be like to be in a similar circumstance.  It is accompanied by a desire to help out.   Nurturing compassion has two parts: 1) engaging in practices that engender empathy 2) removal of the interferences connecting you with your own compassion.

Patients freed of pain want to give back—and in a big way.  I have a patient who is paraplegic from an unfortunate series of events surrounding her spine surgery.  Using the book, “Forgive for Good” made a tremendous impact on her outlook, mood, and pain. After she embraced true forgiveness her overwhelming urge was to help others in wheelchairs whom were suffering from chronic pain. She is now happier in a wheelchair than she was walking, anxious, and angry.

I have a few suggestions to consider that might help you formulate your own ideas of how to give back.

• Stay committed to your own journey.
• Stay aware that next to yourself your highest priority is your immediate family.
• Read Karen Armstrong’s book, “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life.” She is an international religious leader who outlines the history of compassion and highlights the importance of nurturing and practicing it.
• Make a random list of ideas that are interesting to you—write them down
  • Pick the top five
  • Prioritize them
  • Develop a specific plan of how you are going to make it happen.
  • Do it!!

RESOURCES:

• “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life” by Karen Armstrong
• “The Art of Living” by Sharon LeBell (Epictetus)
• “Journey into Love” by Kani Comstock
• Utilize outside help such as organizations, healers, psychologist, psychiatrists, seminars, church, etc.

Living in PHASE V:

We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.

… Aristotle

Enjoy your new life!!

NH