Pain Free!

                There are days where I think “How did I ever end up here?”  When I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1988, not in my wildest dreams did I ever see myself as a wife, mother or even wilder- a reiki master. I was an officer and an engineer.  I love real, tangible things, yet here I am spending all of my time with the reality of the unseen.

                To help one of my most recent clients, I really had to dig through the dusty archives of my memory (and the even dustier basement) to unearth what I was looking for.  What I found was Pain Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain by Peter Egoscue. As I reread the book it was such a great trip down memory lane.  This was the beginning of my explorations into alternative medicine.

                On Martin Luther King Day in 1989, my husband and I had a head on collision with a bus that left both of us with long term aches and pains.  I had found temporary relief from many sources, but by 2001 I was spending as much time as possible on the couch.  There was nothing more to be done short of surgery.  I knew that this was note for me, but where was I to go.

                As always, my first stop was the library. I read through the pain management, anatomy, yoga moving on to psychology (just in case it was all in my head).  In this search I found Pain Free.  The idea that all I had to do to relieve the pain was 30 minutes of exercises per day was unbelievable.  I spent the summer on the deck (listening to a Harry Potter novel) putting my hips back in alignment.

                I am a big fan of western medicine for acute injuries, but before you have the hip replaced, the bones shaved or the next shot into the nerve, check out this book and try the exercises for a few weeks.  All it cost me was a bit of time, but it gave me my life back.