We’ve been very busy the last few weeks - mostly focusing on Battle of Brooklyn - but also working on tv projects. It’s interesting becacuse tv and reality are so seperate. I have spent years working on the donor film off and on- a lot of it is mental. Reading, thinking, processing and trying to figure out how to put together a straightforward film from thousands of threads. Good TV, on the other hand, like good pop music, is all about keeping it simple.

Today the New York Times ran an article about two reality shows - including the new Find My Family one about adoptees finding birth parents. For it to be good TV (ie an audience grabber) it’s going to be exploitative. I use good TV loosely. I mean major network, prime time, ratings grabbing.   At the same time, it makes sense that it would be. It’s dramatic - it’s peak moment. On another level it certainly puts the debate out there about how to handle these difficult emotional situations. Similiar situations certainly extend to the donor realm. I would be very interested in working on something in this vein, but i also realize that it would be hard to keep it from being exploitative on some level.

A few weeks ago I filmed as my friend Yvette met a blood relative for the first time - her brother. It was emotional but not off the wall and both of them wanted to be filmed. They wanted to document the moment. Two days later when Yvette went to meet her birth father I filmed as she left. When she returned it felt too invasive to intrude on that meeting.

in a new report sperm and eggs grown from stem cells.

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.

Today I rode my bike uptown to cash in a gift certificate for a massage. I figured that a good deep massage on my hip would help loosen it up once and for all. I was a little late so I biked furiously through the crazy traffic. It was in the low 70’s and beautiful out. When i arrived on 72nd street I was sweaty and out of breath. After a couple of wrong turns in the building, and a missed phone call from an old college friend, I was guided into a small apartment with a massage table.

Gulping down water I explained everything to the massage therapist that I explained in the previous two posts. I also told him that I wanted him to concentrate on my hip and leg. He looked at me calmly and explained, “I could do a deep tissue massage and probably work it out a little and bring you some relief, but from what you have described this won’t solve your problem. I suggest that you let me do a craniosacral massage instead.”

He then explained briefly that it was a very gentle process. i agreed but asked that if it didn’t bring me much relief if he wouldn’t mind beating the hell out of my leg a little at the end.

Over the last few weeks I have been working really hard on doing long deep stretches. My flexibility has improved markedly, but my hip was still out of whack and my whole body was torqued a little bit. What I really wanted was to be put on a medieval style rack and get stretched out a little. I trusted this guy right away though and if said it was better for me i was inclined to believe him. It was a long intense experience and I’m going to try to write it all down/

I laid down on the massage table face up with my legs slightly propped up over a rolled up towel. The room light was dim and there was massage music playing (you know- birds, wind, flutey/piano melodies floating in and out) but the sound of traffic on 72nd was still pronounced. Every minute or so a bus would come blaring by and I pretended that it was the sound of crashing waves. It was difficult for me to fully relax at first. I found myself twitching and shifting to get comfortable. The therapist supported my ankles very gently and asked me to relax. After a few moments he asked if any images or colors were coming to me. I realized that this type of massage was going to be closer to guided meditation than a physical activity and I was okay with that. I can’t remember exactly what we talked about before the massage, or at the beginning, but I had a sense that I would be trying to access long lost trapped emotions. Before we started he had referred to the process of trying to massage a cramped up muscle, and described it as trying to hide or run away. I took that to be a direct reference to the connection between the tense muscles and the emotions and realized that craniosacral massage was more about inviting the emotions to come out into the light rather than chasing them away.

He guided me to be aware of my body and to feel it relax but i also made an effort to open myself to hidden emotions. One of the first things I thought of was that i had never had the opportunity to truly grieve for my father’s death. I thought about him a bit and tried to touch on all of the things that might be at the root of my pain. after some time he asked me if I was feeling any tingling. I was getting more relaxed and I could feel little bursts of energy in my feet. He then moved to my side and ever so gently slipped a hand underneath my middle back. I felt a bit out of balance but relaxed into it. i was concentrating on my breathing and found that I had relaxed significantly. I again worked to access feelings of grief about my father. I wasn’t talking much because the thoughts were coming strong and i didn’t want to disrupt the flow. Soon I saw a piece of paper gently floating the floor and I knew it was about my father. A year and a half after he passed away my whole family went to the beach to scatter his ashes. It was a pretty emotional event for all of us. I shot footage on my little photo camera which probably kept me from really going with the emotion. I know I cried but still didn’t feel that I had fully grieved. The following day as we packed the car to leave a piece of paper blew around the corner of the building we were staying at and landed near my wife Suki. She didn’t pay it much attention but after a while when it scooted closer to her she picked it up. It was my father’s cremation certificate. The way that it floated into my thoughts kind of paved the way for emotion to flow out of me. I grieved for a while, deep breaths and sobs. I fought that part of me which quickly wanted to close off the emotion. I knew that I need it to come out. as the sobs subsided I felt the oddest sensation. It was kind of like a slow wave rolled up my spine- like a fish swimming up stream. it was slow and mild- not like a muscle contraction at all. The therapist felt it too and said something about it. I steadied my breath as he moved to the other side. When he moved his hand it felt as if my whole side had dropped several feet- ie. the muscles had truly relaxed.

I was feeling pretty good about having been able to access those emotions and my thoughts drifted from my father to my mother. I know that I have some serious issues with her. Ever since my father died we’ve had our ups and downs but we have grown closer. It’s weird, but I had the sense that i needed to stay away from specific memories. I wasn’t trying to dredge up the past but trying to help feelings seep out of their hidden nooks. It was all happening in a strange time out of joint kind of way- I was having several thoughts at once- but it wasn’t frantic and I wasn’t trying to hold onto them just let them glide past. in retrospect I think that i was giving myself permission to forgive everything so that i could forgive myself. i guess that I had talked with the therapist about a broad slew of issues that might be part of the pain syndrome, and had touched on Sarno etc. So things like my relationship to my parents, siblings, and children were mixing together. I think that more than anything on this earth I want to be a great parent. I’m a good one- but i’m not great- I give a lot- but I can be short with my kids, i can get easily frustrated with them, etc etc etc. So as i thought about my mother i thought about her in a really abstract way- in a really sympathetic way- which i think gave me permission to think about myself this way as well. At one point I saw this grey floating image of a face and tried to hold on to it or clarify it but it floated past. I tried to give it meaning but it had none.

all of a sudden I thought of my friend Gene who had called as i came in the building and i laughed out loud. We were both half assed religious studies majors in college, and something about the mystical nature of the experience just felt hilarious. i wasn’t laughing at myself as much accessing a kind of mystical joy and then I laughed even louder because I thought of my friend Xan Price’s movie that i had seen the night before. It was completely psychedelic- liquid time and symbol based meaning, yet funny. In Xan’s films, people have relationships with odd objects- the characters are kind of southern gothic gone wild. These objects are often creatures- in any case there was such an odd direct relatinship between what i was feeling and what i had seen the night before that I really felt a belly laugh come through me,

The therapist reminded me to be very conscious of my body and to focus on my sacrum. I did and we both felt it go loose. His touch was so light that at times i couldn’t tell if he was touching me or my skin was simply tingling. As he wound down he did a little bit of harder massage to my neck which illuminated how loose i had become. I lay on the table for a bit after he was done and I felt wiped out. I ached all over, as if i had run 10 or 15 miles and when I got off the table i realized that my body was significantly straighter. I still had pain in my hip but it was reduced.

I took my time riding back to Brooklyn. tonight i swam- i was much looser- the pain is still there but i have a sense now that it’s on the way out.

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.