Mind and Body Connection:
Pain Management
is Step Eight in
TORQUE BACK
a System to Fight
Bipolar Disorder
by Ken Jensen

I am Ken Jensen, the designer of TORQUE BACK, the system to beat bipolar disorder, which I formed to save my own life. One of my greatest discoveries was the simple truth that the brain and the crate that holds it (you) are one thing. There are deep levels of discussion to this so let's stay at the surface for now.

Your mind and body are BOTH you! They're completely connected and attached and on any level of perspective you care to choose. The mind actually sits inside the body and is made of the same sub-components. That means anything that can harm your body can harm your mind on a "meat and blood" level.

Your mind RUNS your body. If it gets damaged, the body begins to fail.

What do you make of all this?
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The neural network that controls both runs through the spine. Your nervous system is just the tail to the brain. They're one piece too! Hurt the spine and the brain can malfunction. Or the body will malfunction and not always in ways that would seem obvious. A pinched nerve in your neck could present (just a conversational example) as a growth in your spleen.

Hurt the body to the point that you become inert and the mind will soon fail too. You may think that all your mind needs to do to be OK, is think. Wrong. It needs the carrying unit (your body) to be in good shape.

I'm trying to get you to see that the brain is not merely an item in a glovebox or separate compartment within the body, like a cubicle in an office suite. Your mind and body are one. This very simple fact is usually completely ignored in most doctor's offices, be it a psychiatrist or a medical doctor.

Even if they do consider it in a broader scope, they don't go broad enough. The seemingly very clear connections between event "A" and outcome "B", if not already predescribed in a medical journal somewhere, will usually be dismissed or overlooked, sometimes with disdain.

It's disgusting how they won't even consider the possibilities sometimes. Myself and others are walking, talking proof of this maddening reality. If I hadn't gone my way on all of this, if I'd stayed with the Western approach, I'd have been dead a long time ago from bipolar. My doctor acknowledged that much. (Sorry for the rant. Where were we?)

Western medicine seems to think individual parts of us can be considered and fixed with little to no regard for the rest of the body. Nope. This isn't a starter or shocks on your car. This is a complex, interwoven, and highly integrated assembly.

I've been referring to this as "mind and body" but some refer to it as one word, "mindbody" because that is truthfully what it is.

Read below to see why this is so crucial to your overcoming bipolar disorder, as I did.

Ken Jensen

Help for Bipolar Disorder

Wellness Guidebook
Second Edition

This guidebook contains many details concerning nutritious supplements and their effect on the mentally ill mind. Great care was taken to ensure the accuracy of the information in the text. This book is intended to provide general information only, and is not a substitute for medical or psychiatric evaluation or treatment.

The author and the publisher are not engaged in providing professional services or medical advice to the individual reader. Each individual's health is unique. All matters regarding health or a particular health situation regarding the mind and body should be supervised by a health care professional.

The author and the publisher shall not be held responsible or liable for any harm or loss allegedly arising, directly or indirectly, from any information in this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise without express written permission of the author. You may not forward, copy, or transfer this publication or any part thereof, whether in electronic or printed format, to another person or entity.

Copyright 2010

Ken Jensen

URL: http://www.bipolar-disorder-survivor.com

 Mind and Body

Just in case I didn't already make it absolutely clear:

Step Eight of TORQUE BACK (A):

Address physical ailments

Pain is one of the irritants that must go if it's an issue in your life. That sounds obvious and unnecessary to say but pain is a double-headed thorn in your side. There is the suffering directly caused by the pain, and there is the stress this suffering places on your already maxed out mental being. The mind and body both take a hit and then trade the signals back and forth between them. Sort of a misleading statement whe we consider the fact that the mind and body are the same thing, parts of the same whole.

Pain causes further depression and anxiety, and depression and anxiety increase the intensity of any pain you may have. It's a vicious case of the snake chasing its tail. The mind and body can equally drive each other crazy, ultimately punishing their own selves in the process. Complex, huh?

There are too many varieties of pain to attempt listing them all here with their possible treatment protocols, so I'm going to describe a few I am familiar with.

Lower back pain was my number one physical enemy most of my life. During my bipolar years, this pain was excruciating and constant. More pills were added to the massive cocktail I was on for my head and other malfunctioning systems. The new pills offset what all the other pills were doing inside me, essentially placing my mind and body under attack by the very things meant to help me.

I loved Oxycodone but became addicted almost immediately and went into withdrawal within hours of running out. My doc wouldn't give me any more and my back was killing me. Most other pain meds had no effect on me, for I was just as resistant to them as I was the head meds.

I was introduced to a strand of non-narcotic meds that actually worked well but I was eating about a dozen a day. I was getting very fed up with pills, especially since nothing seemed to be doing much good.

I normally received structural chiropractic care and over the years, this always brought me great relief. But something changed in my spine and the treatments became ungodly painful. My doc, one of the best, refused to do it to me any longer and suggested (for the hundredth time) that I try Network Spinal Analysis instead. Very tripped out form of chiropractic and one I will NEVER stop using for as long as I live!

As my back improved, which it began to do IMMEDIATELY, my mood improved. (Proving that mind and body are one.)

Being bipolar was bad enough, but when my physical health and ability to do much of anything physical (to include sex) was threatened, my mood tanked double-time. The thought of being insane AND crippled was too much to bear and my depressions got blacker. I developed great pain in my mind and body pain intensified as a result. Just prior to beginning Network Spinal Analysis, we had actually begun to discuss the need for possible surgery, a talk my chiropractor almost never has for any reason. He only brought it up because he didn’t think I'd be receptive to NSA.

As I realized that maybe my back was going to be OK, or at least acceptable, I was cheered. Keep in mind, your entire life flows through your back via your nervous system. Repair it, and your brain has to work better! 

Pain meds went the way of the Wooly Mammoth. I stopped using them years ago.

Tendonitis hit both my elbows, severely, just after I'd restarted lifting weights, which had just restarted after my back began looking like it could handle the work. My brand new high for life got its guts stomped out almost the moment it came into being.

I had felt the pain beginning, but rationalized what it meant, and kept training through it. I ended up maxing out my elbow joints as far as one can without actually tearing tendons and ligaments. Shaking someone's hand became excruciating, if my hand would even close. It felt like razor blades flying under the surface of my forearms. It was so bad; I thought I'd torn muscles free from their attachments.

My new doc for these things checked me out and said I was going to be OK but that it would take almost a year before the arms would work and if I trained smart from there, I'd get full use again. This was devastating news. But the hope that I'd be all right again, if I trained smart, pushed me forward. Just barely. This is a prime example of the mind and body connection. The thought of my body healing kept me mentally stable. The state of my head was directly influenced by the staus of my physical health.

The owner of my gym, a great human being, knew very well the connection between mind and body. He knew I was already deeply depressed about not training and this would compound inot even faster physical atrophy, and then even worse mood, if the cycle was allowed to progress. He knew a guy like me HAD to keep training to stay sane. He showed me machines I'd never considered using before because I was locked in my old school methods of training. These new exercises allowed me to train around my injuries, which allowed me to get fit, keep moving, and bolster my growing self-confidence. About 14 months later my arms got up to 95%. Now I stay very careful, very watchful to make sure I don't reinjure them but that's just smart lifting anyhow.

Side note from Ken Keeping an open mind is something I'll help you learn and watch what good comes into your life then. You'll see!

Regarding many other types of pain you will find that (drum roll, please) Holosync will unearth many stresses and traumas from their resting places within your body. It is these traumas that area big cause of much of your pain. Add the good treatment of your body via healthy eating, exercise, and all else I teach, and you'll find much, if not all of your pains simply evaporate. They were just stored stress.

Mind and body are one. Stress is a beast. This is how it works: An event happens in your life that is simply overwhelming. You cannot possibly deal with it in any complete way, right then and there. It's too shocking or too painful. Your mind then transmutes these <i>feelings</i> into <i>physical</i> stress! An emotion to a cramped muscle or pocket of poison in any other area of your body. you can one day become ill, all the way up to cancer or something similar and the true cause of it was a car wreck you witnessed as a boy. A beating yuo took as a little girl. Getting fired from your job as an adult. The mind and body are that tightly interwoven. Believe it.

Action Plan for Step 8:

Ø  If you've been nursing an injury, go to a physician and begin researching it. Get X-rays, blood work, see a specialist, whatever is necessary to get your base info about the pain. Mind and body are one. This makes it hard to see which side is more strongly influencing the other side within the context of an illness or injury. You need to know all you can about both systems to properly rehab the whole. I still go to a regular doc if I hurt badly enough. I don’t always do what they tell me from there, but I at least understand my situation better and can rule out possible causes now that I know more. You can do the same.

Ø  Go to a good chiropractor if your back is shot. It's such a common enough ailment that I bet you need one anyway. Give Spinal Network Analysis a try. It treats far more than your spine. It improves your entire experience of life. It addresses your deeper issues much like Holosync does but accomplishes it via the physical gateway instead of the mental. It's the mind and body connection reviewed from the body. You're welcome, in advance!
 

Ø  Follow my steps, the info laid out by Tom Venuto and Will Brinks, or get your own nutritionist. You'll find that improper eating habits may be at the root of MANY problems you'd never have associated with food intake. MANY!

Ø  Proper footwear. If your shoes are not supportive, your feet go bad or your posture is incorrect. Over years, just like braces on teeth, your spine will no longer sit right. This will begin gnawing away at your ankles, knees, pelvis, everything. Unhappy feet equal disastrous skeletal alignment and cause joints to wear out unevenly everywhere.

Ø  Stand up straight. Improper posture caused by slouching, will bring big pain into your life. Your back will hurt but the slouching will cause pressure on your internal organs. Your breath, blood flow, digestion, and thinking, all get affected for the worse. As an added benefit, standing up tall and proud makes you feel tall and proud, no matter what your actual height is. You project great health and confidence by having straight shoulders and a chest that is held high. You don't need to be Arnold for this effect to take place. You don't need to be a man, either, ladies. People pick up on your positive image with more than just their eyes.

Ø  Drink more water. Dehydration can hit you even if you are only sitting at home. This can cause depression and headaches, among other things, when nothing's really wrong with you. You're just thirsty. Dry out your mind and body faults soon follow. It can sometimes feel like hunger so you'll have a snack and a tasty drink, instead of the water you actually need. Now, you're still dehydrated but you also have material in your stomach that requires MORE water to move through you. Double whammy.

Ø  Visit a Pain Clinic if your pain is too severe for now. These folks specialize in getting you the best answer with the least amount of doping drugs. They teach you to live better with your pain. They are about much more, than just giving you something for the pain. They'll help you reshape your life to ease and tolerate the pain better. Add my system to that attack and your pain is going to lose some steam.

Ø  Get more sunlight in your day and full spectrum lighting in your home or office. Living in the dark, only seeing sun through windows, and fluorescent bulbs all cause depression. The sun causes your skin to build Vitamin D, which keeps you naturally happy. No Sun, no D, no Joy.

Ø  Guys: Move your wallet from your back pocket to your front. That little lift you get under one cheek, over the years, does what braces do to teeth. You become uneven in the spine. This becomes pain one day. The mind and body both crave an even ride. Literally.

 Some helpful links:

·         http://www.donaldepstein.com The official website of Dr. Donald Epstein, creator of Network Spinal Analysis. Teaching you how to access the mind and body connection is specifcally what his works covers. It's absolutely remarkable when you begin using it.

·         http://www.lightforhealth.com This is where you'll find sources of indoor natural light. Years ago, I personally spoke with Dr. Maryann Troiani, whose name you will see on the left under "Recommended By." She was very uplifting to me then as I was still trying to sort out the steps of my system.

·         http://www.naturalnews.com/024728.html See why Vitamin D is so important, which means getting some sun.  Being outside in the Sun is not as destructive as we have been led to believe. And depressed people need it even more than most.

·         http://www.naturalnews.com/003202.html A great article on the unknown benefits of staying hydrated. Water's not a cure all but it goes a long way to preventing you from needing such a thing, if you'd just drink enough of it in a day.

The mind and body are one. You can't treat one separate from the other. They work in tandem. They're symbiotic. They're synergistic. They're intertwined. They are one and the same.

In a certain respect, this can potentially set you up for what may seem like miracles. As your stress departs, its buddy, pain, goes with it to a large degree.

This step provided me with many surprises. I had to backtrack in order to teach it. A lot of the relief came without my awareness. What a day when I realized how much agony just wasn't happening to me anymore. It had been so gradual and subtle, and I was not in search of it as it happened, that it surprised me to realize it was gone!

Print this out. Bookmark it. Save it on a disk. Whatever works best for you. And please tell a friend or loved-one if they need to know.

Be well!

Ken

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