Overcoming back pain

Today's topic is slightly off the point of martial-arts training for seniors, but it's something worth examining.  Let's face it: one of the main reasons older athletes give up a sport is "back problems."  So if we can overcome the back issues, perhaps we can all get off the couch and back into training.
   Here in America we've been taught in countless ways -- often through TV commercials or by doctors who don't look deeply enough into our symptoms -- to believe that we're suffering an epidemic of fragile, out-of-kilter backs that are ready to "go out" if we even think about sports after a certain age.  While it's certainly true that millions of Americans suffer from debilitating back pain [and for a long time I was one of them], it's absolutely not true that all back pain should be a reason to give up sports.
   The book that changed my thinking -- and my life, to be more precise -- is Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by John E. Sarno, M.D.  A friend of mine recommended the book nearly 20 years ago, when I had such extreme lower back pain that I could hardly walk across the street.  He told me that the book had worked a small miracle in his life and that maybe I'd find it useful.
   Here's a true story: a got on a plane in Hartford, CT, barely able to walk.  While flying to Florida I read Dr. Sarno's book from cover to cover; it's a slender, very readable paperback first published in 1991.  By the time I got off the plane in Florida, I was walking normally and was able to return to my normal exercise routines.  No drugs.  No surgery.  No physical therapy.  And no special exercises.
    Early in the book Dr. Sarno makes it clear that if an MRI or X-rays have shown that you are suffering from a true physical problem, his book may not be the right answer.  But for the rest of us -- and perhaps most of us -- the problem is not actually physical but mental.  Okay, the pain is physical.  Lower-back pain is sometimes excruciating.  But the fundamental cause, Sarno says, is mental.  To make a long story short, he indicates that the subconscious mind creates the pain in order to keep us from examining conflicts in our lives.  We're not talking about the simple stress of daily living.  We're talking about inner conflicts that we need to recognize and resolve; once we do that, we defeat the subconscious mind's ability to create lower-back pain.
    Yes, this sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?  Get rid of back pain just by changing the way you think!  But I now keep two copies of Healing Back Pain on my bookshelf: one for me to reread every now and then, and one to lend to family and friends who are experiencing either back pain or other painful symptoms that in Sarno's view are triggered by the same basic mind/body phenomenon.  The phrase "Read the book" comes up quite often in my family.  Whenever someone talks about back pain, shoulder pain, or even migraines and heart palpitations, I say, "Read the book."  And everyone knows which book I'm talking about.
    Most of us don't need to fear lifting, twisting, punching, or kicking.  For most of us back pain isn't a physical ailment.  It's an unpleasant trick that the subconscious mind plays on us.  To learn why and how the mind does this and why we are able to eliminate the problem from our lives, read the book.
    Healing Back Pain may be your way back into training.  If you do read the book and find that it works a small miracle in your life, please let us know so that we can share your story.