So I have done the eft thing a few times now and while i don’t know that it’s having any major effect I have to say I think I’m a bit more relaxed. In fact my wife was a bit frustrated last night after dinner as she thought that i was kind of tuning out- but in retrospect realized that i was just more relaxed.

This morning on the way to the pool I was in traffic on the BQE and I had a guy hit me from behind when i was nearly stopped. A couple of weeks ago we were hit by a guy who ran a stop sign. I was furious, and I jumped out of the car and started yelling at the guy. Even as I did it I knew it wasn’t the best way to handle the situation but wasn’t able to calm myself. It didn’t help my kids, and it didn’t help me. It was a week after this that my hip went out so badly and i know it was related.

Today I felt my body tense in that way it does when you’re hit from behind. I took a deep breath, got out of the car and took a look. There was clearly some damage. A screw was sticking out of the bumper. The bumper wasn’t in the best shape to begin with so I wasn’t that concerned cosmetically but thought something might have been thrown out of whack. The other driver approached and He didn’t speak English. I pointed to the screw. He went over and pulled it out. I looked like it might have come from his license plate.

I did a quick calculation in my head. It was raining and we were on the crowded highway. It just wasn’t worth any more discussion. I took his hand, looked him in the eye, and shook it gently. “OK”. I turned and got in my car and drove off. I still felt that whiplash tightness but it quickly dissipated as I drove away. I have to say i got a bit angry when we took the same exit and i saw him pull up next to me on the phone- but I let it go.

In the pool my hip hurt about the same as usual, but I was a little looser. i thought about how the idea of eft helped me deal with the same sarno issues by giving me a way to take a positive approach to the issues- rather than beat up that part of me that’s causing the pain it allowed me to be a bit more forgiving.

in any case, i’m feeling better so i’m gonna keep at it.

I mentioned my craniosacral massage to my friend Gus the other night and he told me that he had been regularly going to acupuncture. It got him interested in the mechanics of it all so he started researching on the internet and stumbled across EFT or emotion free therapy.

I’m not going to go into the details - but it involves tapping certain spots on the body to free up negative energy… or something like that. It’s interesting because it sounded like it dovetailed with the HANDLE process that we have been doing with our daughter F.

F was having very serious problems with defiance and anxiety last year. A friend had used handle with her son and it had done a great deal to help him with attention and learning issues. We had the handle person come by and evaluate our daughter and immediately it was apparent that there were several things out of whack that she thought some simple exercises would help. For example when she put on a pair of glasses that had one red lens and one blue lens she saw red on one side and blue on the other. If a person’s eyes are ganging properly then they see some form of purple because the colors get blended. If the eyes aren’t ganging it can be incredibly taxing to make sense of the world as ones eyes are competing. a simple exercise of drinking a cup of water through a straw with her eyes closed helped to strengthen the ganging ability.

There are many similarities between EFT and Handle and in a sense craniosacral massage. All of these methods bring me back to Sarno. Sarno is pretty adamant that his practice has nothing to do with any sort of “alternative” medicine. I agree. At the same time I see a very clear connection between the way in which he discusses the autonomic nervous system disrupting blood flow- and the idea that energy flow is disrupted as discussed in acupuncture or EFT.

In any case I downloaded the EFT manual free and read through it. Some of it reads a bit hucksterish. I tried it out though and while I’m not all better in my hip, I do feel a bit more positive - so i’mma gonna keep at it.

Even before I went in to see Dr. Sarno I knew that i wanted to make a film about his work. My partners* and I had just finished our first documentary, “Horns and Halos” and we were starting our next one when the pain started. We are all drawn to stories about individuals who stand up to problems that the they see within the status quo, so a film about the good doctor made perfect sense. I was tempted to bring a camera to my meeting with him, and I kind of wish I had, but frankly I was a total mess at the time and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

On the day that I went to Dr. Sarno’s office, I had great difficulty walking because my lower back and hip were all locked up in spasms. In addition, as I found out during my examination, I had no strength in my calf so my foot wasn’t helping me walk, giving me a pronounced limp. I was extremely nervous before meeting the doctor. On one level I was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to help me, and on another I think I was just nervous about seeing him. I have a hard time with doctors in general because I have a difficult time dealing with any level of authority. My mom will never let me forget that I got in trouble a lot during high school for not being respectful enough of my teachers. Before seeing a patient Dr. Sarno discusses their problem over the phone. If he thinks that their problem isn’t TMS related he is likely to steer them away. He also won’t see people who aren’t at all open to the idea that their pain issues might be TMS related. Since a good deal of his cure his knowledge based it doesn’t make sense for him to see patients who are unlikely to be helped by him.

When I talked to him on the phone I told him about my father, my brother, and my own experience with his book. In his office I reiterated these points and explained how my downward spiral had taken place. He listened intently without interjecting too often. Then he examined me. He checked for any abnormalities and then applied pressure in several different places. i had pain in many of them. He made it clear that a herniated disc pressing on my spine where the MRI said it was couldn’t have possibly been responsible for pain in all of these places. I was pretty upset that my calf wasn’t working. He assured me that my nerve would come back to life. For the most part it has, but 5 years later I still do have a good deal of numbness there and part of my calf is still extremely atrophied.

I was feeling pretty emotionally raw as our meeting wound down. I wasn’t exactly in touch with the stresses in my life that might be causing my pain, but I was thoroughly convinced that the pain was TMS based. That knowledge was both a relief and a millstone. I knew that even a small amount of doubt would give my subconscious all the room it needed- in fact had given my subconscious the room it needed- to bring on the pain, and I was overwhelmed by the effort that lay before me. Despite my understanding I had still been unable to stop the process so I had doubts about my ability to overcome it. Even in that state I found myself pitching the idea of working on a documentary with him. He didn’t say no, but he didn’t say yes. That afternoon I sent him a copy of “Horns and Halos”. The next day I went to a small group lecture where he made his case persuasively using data, graphs, and humor. A few days later he called me up excited about working together.

Now we had to figure out how to make the film. We were interested in Dr. Sarno as a character, as someone who started out as an insider in the medical profession and was marginalized over time as the field changed. At the same time we wanted the film to be a way to capture his ideas and present them to a much wider audience. His treatment method is all about information, and we wanted to make a film that was compelling enough to reach a wide audience so that it could help the most people. As such it had to get across his message without feeling preachy and it had to connect with people on an emotional level. It’s also important to us that the film be about the medical industry in general. Back pain is big business -26 billion dollars a year big, and according to Dr. Sarno it’s basically a criminal enterprise. For decades he argued that there was no evidence that back surgery was anything more than a powerful placebo. In the last few years several studies have confirmed this. He also argued that there was no scientific evidence that herniated discs have anything to do with pain. Once again the science has borne this out to be true.

Dr. Sarno was adamant about not introducing us to patients. He is understandably very protective of his patients privacy. He was however open to us bringing patients in to see him. We did a little bit of reaching out to people but nothing really panned out. At that point we did some filming with him and started to work with the footage. We did some outreach for grants but didn’t get any positive feedback and got busy with other projects. We’re deeply frustrated about not getting further with this- because frankly I think that Dr. Sarno’s work is vital to cutting costs in health care. His methodology is about looking at the whole patient rather than a scan or an MRI. His work needs to be documented because unfortunately there are only a handful of practitioners who understand his methodology. He is incredibly marginalized despite the fact that he has an impressive track record of long lasting success with his patients.

I had a bad relapse a couple of years ago that lasted almost a year. I was in a lot of pain but continued to do almost everything I normally did. Again, I don’t think its a coincidence that it happened when my second daughter was two. Last year I got over it. Acupuncture helped me to get past it. I think that Sarno would argue against acupuncture, but I found that it helped me to get over a hump, and I was able to get to a place without pain that i was able to sustain for a year. I got hit with the hip pain about 6 weeks ago and I’m almost over it, but it’s a bitch when it happens.

This posting is an attempt to get ourselves back in gear. If you have had an experience with dr. sarno that you want to share- or are interested in seeing him and are willing to allow us to film with you before during and after please let us know.

*my wife Suki Hawley and I made two narrative features films together before being joined by David Beilinson while working on Horns and Halos. Since 2000 we have worked together collectively on several feature documentaries, and many other projects. I end up shooting a lot of the material, Suki is the primary editor, and David edits and produces. We all work closely together on all aspects of our projects.

Pain

In addition to the donor doc and the battle of brooklyn (not to mention the broken angel doc) we have also been struggling to pull together a documentary about Dr. John Sarno. Dr. Sarno, who is 86, practices as the Rusk Center for Rehabilitative Medicine at NYU medical center. When he started practicing over 50 years ago he didn’t have any experiences treating people with chronic pain. At some point he started to see patients with problems like tennis elbow and lower back pain that wouldn’t go away. In examining the patients he noticed that they shared a lot of qualities. They were mostly in their 30’s and 40’s, they tended to be the type of people whom he termed “goodists” that took on a lot of responsibilities, and the often had a history of other ailments like allergic reactions and ulcers. in short order he realized that a lot of these pain syndromes were psychosomatic. This is not to say that the pain was not real, but that it was being initiated by a process in the brain. He wasn’t sure exactly how the syndrome was working, but he found that when he simply talked to his patients about it, pointed out that there was nothing physically wrong, and instructed them to continue physical exercise while thinking about the stress basis of the pain- that the vast majority of them improved drastically.

He continued to focus his treatment methods and published a book called, “Healing Back Pain”. That book, which was published in the 70’s, was given to my father in the early 80’s when he was battling very bad back pain. As a psychologist my father understood and believed in Sarno’s methods. At the same time he continued to battle pain until he died.

When I was in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade (i can’t remember exactly) my father nearly died from a bleeding ulcer. I remember waking up for school and seeing him looking pale, and in pain as he shuffled to the bathroom with (i apologize for these next few words but they are true) sagging bloody underwear. My mother did her best to hide her hysteria but it was in full bloom as she hustled us off to the school bus while calling an ambulance to come get him. My memories are very vague but I have a distinct recollection of the ambulance coming down our street very slowly as it searched for our house. One part of me remembers stopping him to point out our house, but in another version my twin brother and I step out of the road to let it go by, too numb and dis-empowered from the tension to get involved.

According to Dr. Sarno, the primary driver of the pain syndrome he describes (as well as ulcers) is repressed rage. The part of the goodist that wants to do the right thing at all costs, the part that has a need to be a caretaker, a good son/father/husband, forces all anger at the situation deep into the subconscious. This powerful force fights desperately to keep these emotions of anger or resentment locked up deep inside. When there is danger of these uncomfortable emotions escaping from their unconscious tomb, the brain kicks in, disrupting blood flow to a tendon or muscles, which causes a pain that diverts ones attention, leaving little room for these thoughts to exist.

My father was a powerful caretaker. He worked hard at his job, came home and cooked dinner each night, paid all the bills, took care of extended family members, etc. One one level his need to take care of others (his desire to be a good person) was being met, but his subsumed need to be taken care of was not. In talking with patients Dr. Sarno often found very obvious causes of the tension- an unwelcome mother in law living with a family, being passed over for a promotion, recently arrived children, etc. In many instances the patient didn’t need to kick his mother in law out, quit his job, or get rid of his child. Simply acknowledging that presence of the hidden rage over these circumstances, and recognizing the connection between the rage and the pain, helped the patient to overcome the situation. In other situations therapy might be required.

Shortly after my father recovered from his ulcer we had a small car accident which gave him a painful bout of whiplash. The accident was fairly minor, and no one else was hurt. However, I remember my father sitting in some sort of torture device that hung from a door and pulled his head from his body, in an attempt to relieve the pain in his back. It should come as no surprise that Dr. Sarno views whiplash as the subconscious’ opportunistic use of an accident to give a plausible reason for pain. It was at this point that my father read the book, saw himself in its pages and recovered significantly for a long time.

The behaviors that cause they syndrome to kick in tend to run in families. When my brother was in graduate school he began to have extreme pain while typing. Soon his fingers went numb, and he was unable to do much of anything. He was even incapable of driving so he gave me his car. He was by the pain he was even that the pain would get worse. He went from one specialist to another and no one was able to help him much. An extremely well regarded surgeon at a major hospital in NY instructed him that the only way he could relieve the pain was by having surgery to cut away some of his collar bone to relieve the pressure on his nerves. My father had suggested the Sarno book to him and I think he had read it but it hadn’t helped. Finally in desperation he arranged to visit Dr. Sarno. Three weeks later he called me to ask for his car back, as he had improved enough to begin driving again.

What did Dr. Sarno do to him? He examined him, pointed out to him how all of the previous diagnoses that he had received had no basis in science, and clearly and charismaticaly illustrated for him how the TMS (his diagnosis for the pain syndrome) process works. I want to emphasize the charismatic part here. My brother is a social scientist who has a powerful belief in data. He had read Dr. Sarno’s book, understood the methodology, and yet had been unable to overcome the pain. In all honesty, my brother recovered a great deal, but to this day he still suffers from many of the same issues. However, one of the key drivers of this syndrome is belief; belief that the pain is being caused by some very physical issue like a torn muscle or a herniated disc. Several recent major studies have show that there is no correlation between a herniated disc and pain. While they can be seen on MRI’s Dr. Sarno has argued for years that there is not reason to believe they cause pain. It took a few decades for the science to catch up. From his point of view it’s basically criminal to be doing back surgeries on people using methods that have no research to prove they work.

At this point I read his book and immediately recognized myself as a “goodist”. For the past 5 or so years I had had minor bouts of back pain. Lifting something heavy, my back would “go out” and I would be laid up for a few days. In every instance I would be up and around after a short time. However, after reading the book I didn’t throw my back out for nearly a decade. There were a few times that I felt like I might but I concentrated on what might be stressing me out and I was able to avoid problems….. until I had a two year old.

When my younger daughter was about 2 my wife and I got a deal on a vacation house that was way to good to be true. Financially it was an awesome deal, but it took an emotional toll on me. The house was a three bedroom Victorian foreclosure in upstate NY forclosure. The previous owner had stripped the inside of all its historic details and was about halfway through a renovation when he was arrested for fraud. It turned out that he had used a stolen identity to get a credit card to fund most of the work. While we didn’t love that all of the details were gone, we appreciated the fact that the house had all new plumbing, windows, roof, and electric hooked up. I’m not a skilled handyman by any means, but most of the work that needed to get done was cosmetic and a lot of it I figured that I could do myself so we took the plunge.

Unfortunately the added responsibilities of fixing up this place proved to be much more than I could handle. Actually the pain had started a couple of months earlier when I began to shoot our Atlantic Yards doc. For the first couple of weeks I shot for 5 to 10 hours a day, walking around in snowy and icy conditions, and I started to experience numbness and pain in my left leg and hip. I chalked it up to the extreme nature of my shooting schedule and assumed that it would get better when I slowed down. I thought about Dr. Sarno and concentrated on overcoming it but the pain persisted and steadily got worse. Finally, when the pain made it nearly impossible to shoot I went to see my doctor. I remember telling him about my belief in Dr. Sarno’s treatment methods, but he dismissed his ideas and told me that I really needed to see a physical therapist. I should have told him no, argued harder, but I didn’t and I started a long downward spiral. I should have gone to Dr. Sarno right then and there, but instead I went to the physical therapist and the pain bloomed. Once I went from considering the pain as a manifestation of my stress to thinking of it as rooted in a physical problem it increased dramatically. Soon I had difficulty standing, but I still had the same level of responsibility in terms of my child, my wife, and our new house.

I remember talking with a guy who was helping me on the house. Every few minutes I had to lay down on the ground to quell the spasms in my leg. The work on the house was manageable in an abstract way. “Manly work” has always been super hard on me- it really challenges my sense of self - and it’s often a trigger for the pain syndrome for me. In this case the stress of the decision making, juggling the needs of my wife and child, and the physical exertion built up until it exploded. My friend and I were working on the place while my wife and kid were back at home in the city. I woke up to go to the bathroom very early on a Sunday morning when the pain erupted. I screamed out in agony and I couldn’t make it stop. I was still laying down and I couldn’t find a position that would relieve it. Eventually my nerve went into shock and it went from a screaming pain to a dull ache. However if I tried to move at all it would come back with full force. My friend was able to get a prescription for a muscle relaxer and eventually he got me into the car and back to brooklyn.

The next day I tried to call Dr. Sarno’s office but got the machine and I didn’t get a call back. The message referred to the fact that out of state patients wouldn’t be accepted, and I had the sense that he had more patients than he could handle. I was upset that no one called back and couldn’t bring myself to call again. A few days later I got an MRI which revealed a herniated disc. At this point I was basically a cripple, barely able to get out of bed and incapable of doing anything beyond laying in bed- and even that hurt like hell. The doctor who read the MRI suggested that I try a cortisone shot before having surgery. I scheduled an appointment for the shot and then gave Dr. Sarno another call. This time he was there and we talked. For some reason I was extremely nervous and I stammered out details of my situation. He was calm and serious yet cracked a few jokes, and agreed to see me in a couple of days. My wife had to help me down the hall to his office. We talked for a bit and then he examined me and laughing at the MRI he explained that a herniated disc wouldn’t have anything to do with the problems that i was experiencing. At the same time, during the examination I discovered that my calf no longer had the strength to lift my weight from the floor. He assured me that the strength would come back. The nerve had gone into shock but it would come back in time. It helped immeasurably to have him confirm what I had originally believed. I remember being very emotional as we talked after he had examined me. The next day I went to his lecture. His treatment consists of 1) a phone consultation to make sure that the patient is right for him. 2) a physical exam to rule out anything like a tumor or some other problem that might be causing the pain. 3) a lecture that outlines a great deal of details about the syndrome. 4)small group follow up meetings to discuss progress and ask questions 5)success events where patients who have been successfully treated tell their stories. A great deal of his treatment method has to do with using knowledge to defeat the mind’s process of causing the pain.

The treatment worked for me for the most part. I have had a few relapses over the years but have been able to overcome my periodic bouts with debilitating pain. I don’t think it’s any coincidence at all that it happened again when my second daughter was 2 years old.

As a filmmaker I want to tell his story. I’ll write a second post about that process tomorrow.

This morning as i sat down to work on a different post I noticed that a blog about marriage issues linked to the donor 67 blog without comment. I took a quick look and noticed that the driving sentiment behind the site was the idea of protecting the sanctity of marriage.

While i have become increasing “conservative” as i have aged and sired… and I clearly have issues with the way in which the IVF industry operates, i also would love to see my gay neighbors protected by the same laws that i am protected by. Two of the best parents that I can think of are a lesbian couple that live around the corner from us. They have a child with some developmental issues. In order to best meet his needs, one of them went back to school to get a degree in dealing with special needs children. She advocates on his behalf tirelessly and works with him in a loving way. It’s kind of incredible to see how far he’s come with her love and care. The idea that her marriage and her parenting skills and devotion are somehow lesser because she is in a loving relationship with a woman rather than a man is hard to fathom. In addition, my discussion about anonymity isn’t about aimed at shutting down the Ivf industry but instead, increasing reasonable discussion about complex issues. What’s most frustrating to me is the idea that by discussing these issues I might be somehow perceived as attacking the rights of others.

In addition to working on this film about donor conception issues I am working on a film about a development project in Brooklyn (that involves and arena for a pro sports team, housing, and office towers) and the people who are trying to stop this project. One of the issues being fought over is the use of eminent domain. Eminent domain is a hot button issue with conservatives and libertarians. In this case the right to use it is clearly being abused. Many politicians and citizens are loathe to fight it on these grounds because they believe that the benefits of the project outweigh the consequences of allowing this abuse. Others feel that as a society we need to be able to wield the power of eminent domain with few strings attached in order to further the greater good. In the name of the larger population they feel that we should be able to sacrifice the rights of the few. One of the common refrains at a recent hearing on the project was that the “few’ were standing in the way of the needs of the many.

As a filmmaker deeply involved with the story I have to say that I think that the abuse of this power is extremely troubling. One of the issues involved is the trojan horses of affordable housing and jobs. The project was sold to the public (and by sold i mean a multi million dollar pr campaign) with the slogan, “jobs, housing, hoops”. In reality, the public dollars being used to create the affordable housing could be put to much more effective use in other projects, and the job creation would be very limited.

During the 50’s and 60’s great swaths of urban America were bulldozed in the name of urban renewal. “Substandard, blighted areas” were knocked down to make way for new housing complexes in a great “liberal” experiment. Unfortunately, that experiment failed miserably. Vast communities were decimated, and according to the research of noted psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove, the urban epidemics of drug abuse, obesity, and diabetes were born. If anyone doubts her ideas, a quick read (that was a joke- it’s a 1000 plus page book) of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker” should shed lay a good foundation for understanding where she’s coming from.

I use the word liberal, liberally above. The people who supported this work were clearly well meaning but the methodology and results have left ravaged neighborhoods that are only just beginning to recover 50-60 years later. Given what we know now about all of these issues it’s really almost unfathomable that this type of planning would be still used with such abandon.

The irony here is that in general, the liberal/progressive establishment still stands behind many of these polices in the zero sum cold war game of liberal/conservative politics. This zero sum game makes it nearly impossible for people to take a hard look at awful situations.

In the fight that we are chronicling, the issue has created several odd alliances. The “progressive” denizens of the neighborhood, fighting to save their homes and what they like about their community are painted as obstructionists fighting jobs and progress and in general they fall on the side of the libertarians on this issue. These locals are then attacked by “progressives” not directly affected for being in league with their zero sum enemies. In addition all of the politicians who directly represent the districts affected on a local level are against it. However, those who are more intertwined with the levers of power, like the governor and the mayor, support the project. The “progressive” housing rights group ACORN is a major supporter (and majorly hated by conservatives). The “progressive” senator Charles Schumer is a supporter because he is excited about the jobs and the pride that a professional basketball team will bring. As such, the “liberal” reader of the news who skims the stories on the subject might be inclined to think that they too should support it. However, the truth is always much more complex than the headlines. This deeper truth behind the headlines is one thing that compels me to make documentaries.

As i have become older, with more responsibilities and ever more complex choices to make, I’m increasingly troubled at the realities that exist behind the various debates we engage in. As a human being that cares about my family and my community I often feel shackled by outdated ideas concerning the most advantageous way for us to move forward. Until we can truly access the best possible information and have the freedom to debate issues in an open way we will find it nearly impossible to move forward as a society that truly protects the rights of everyone.

Pussy Galore in all of their transgressive glory called a song “you look like a jew”. it was a great song actually- off of a great record. There’s this squirrely guitar line with “primative” (ie heavy simple and awesome) drumming with some mumbled lyrics that end with a shout of “you look like a jew”.

i was thinking about that song today- while pondering the whole nature of rock vs. art vs. commerce vs being truly “punk rock”/ anti materialist / anti-establishment. Frankly there’s nothing anti about selling a painting for 500,000 except anti-poverty. Pussy galore never sold a lot of records- but some of their records became kind of valuable for a time in that collectors mentality.

I was also thinking about that line because I am a jew. i’m a jew who grew up in the south with parents who came from the north. It was only after i came to ny to go to college that i understood what that meant. I had an a-ha moment out of the blue. After living in NY for about 3 months I was walking down the street and it struck me that my parents were so different from most of the people i knew growing up because they were from somewhere else- from a different culture really.

it occurred to me at that time that i too - looked like a jew- and acted like one- and sounded like one- and on one level i understood that and on another i hid it- so a part of me felt hidden. i don’t think that i ever experienced much outright racism due to my status as a jew. i say this without irony- but my friends made fun of me for being cheap- carrying coupons (i did carry coupons), and yes they called me a jew. I didn’t take it all that seriously- because it wasn’t said all that seriously. however, i knew that as someone who was “different” i had to simply take the ribbing because to take offense would be offensive.

When i came to NY though i felt out of place because i was southern. i nodded to people on the street and said thank you to people at the cafeteria. I was a soul lost at sea- neither fish nor fowl- and i am still lost.