Archives of Posts

Objectives Thoughts interpret our physiology and are driven by it. Stress physiology creates unpleasant thoughts. Modern self-help processess are ineffective because thoughts cannot be controlled or reasoned with. By calming down and nurturing safety physiology, your body heals on its ... Read More

This is a followup letter from a woman who emailed me about four years ago. I had never met her and she shared a this remarkable story of recovery. Stories like this have lead me to believe that essentially anyone ... Read More

I received this story in response to a request on my website to patients who had undergone failed spine surgery. When Surgery Makes Pain Worse My fusion surgery (L5/S1) was going to be scheduled in the fall of 2015 after ... Read More

I’m sharing a story submitted through my website about an unsuccessful spine surgery, which is, sadly, all too common. This issue even has a name: “failed back surgery syndrome” (FBSS). Most of these surgeries start with operating on normally aging ... Read More

I received this short email after I posted my blog on stories of surgical despair.  Hi David,  I’m grateful you’re collecting these stories. My dad passed away on January 27 due to his last cervical fusion. It’s tragic, and I’m ... Read More

The Federal government has spent billions of dollars on combating the opioid epidemic. In 2022, 1.5 billion dollars was allocated to enforcement and treatment. Yet the death toll climbed 85,000 deaths a year in 2022 to 110,000 in 2023. The ... Read More

Expression Pain has a way of becoming a quiet tenant—settling into the soft chambers of the mind, curling into the muscles of the body, threading itself through emotions that whisper long after the moment is gone. We ruminate, we replay, ... Read More

Objectives The root cause of suicide is feeling trapped and mental and physical pain are problematic.significant reasons to feel this way. Since mental and physical pain share similar brain circuits, they both create a lot of misery. Modern medicine largely ... Read More

Surgeries being performed for axial neck, thoracic, and low back pain on normally aging spines was a major reason I quit my spinal surgery practice in 2019. Not only was the success rate low, patients were often much worse after ... Read More

Do You Really Need Spine Surgery? Take Control with Advice from a Surgeon considers all factors affecting your perception of pain and organizes them into a treatment grid that allows you to make a good decision regarding having spine surgery ... Read More

My mission falls into two broad categories. Connect mainstream medicine with existing science – most symptoms, illness and disease  are created by the body’s physiology (how it functions), and not structures. Establish the necessity of a trusting dynamic relationship with ... Read More

Objectives Processing anger is more doable if it is broken down into its components. Anger is a powerful, necessary, and hard wired survival reflex. You cannot tame it with the conscious brain. It is an acquired skill that requires ongoing ... Read More

A new, data-based dynamic approach is needed for medicine to successfully deal with our epidemic of chronic disease. It must acknowledge the interaction between circumstances and your body’s capacity to process them, which determines the makeup of your body’s neurochemistry ... Read More

The COVID-19 virus is a member of the Corona virus family that usually just causes the common cold. The problem is that we now have a strain that is potentially fatal. However, there are some strong hints of how to ... Read More

The burden of chronic disease is crushing us while we have the answers right in front of us. A recent summary reported that the total cost of chronic disease in the US is 3.7 trillion dollars a year, which is ... Read More

The DOC (Direct your Own Care) Journey is a collection of resources that reflect the ones many people have used to escape from the grip of chronic mental and physical pain, It includes: A guided course of seven legs and ... Read More

Expression Pain has a way of becoming a quiet tenant—settling into the soft chambers of the mind, curling into the muscles of the body, threading itself through emotions that whisper long after the moment is gone. We ruminate, we replay, ... Read More

This powerful collage captures the complete arc of Rachel’s remarkable comeback story—from the hospital bed where her young daughter, Julia, kept vigil after the devastating fall, through her creative healing journey of painting horses while confined to a body brace, ... Read More

This is a river rock that I painted with the ocean scene to express “The healing journey is not linear!” There are highs and lows like the waves and the tides, progress and struggle but it’s all part of the ... Read More

Poem by Susan Angelis Photo by Susan Angelis October 29, 2023 The Walk Home The walk home from Sunday church. Walking the same path. Slightly different views each Sunday. Observing, appreciating the wondrous creations of nature. Looking beyond the iron ... Read More

This is a piece sent to me through the expressive arts gallery. My arms reach upward as the mind and hair are disintegrating, reaching through burning into the light. Grounded in the earth, I dance. My heart lifts up, surrendering ... Read More

Julie Graber, 2017: July 2016, a Mal de Debarquement. Rocking, Bobbing, Swaying … 24×7 … circling in a counter-clockwise direction. Painted in the middle of one night when something under my rib cage felt like it was trying to flip ... Read More

Julie Graber, 2016: a chronic neurological disorder after 8-day river cruise Prague to Budapest, Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS), for which “there is no cure”; rocking, bobbing, swaying like on a paddle board in the middle of Lake Michigan on ... Read More

A deep and overwhelming feeling of helplessness became anger (which usually comes out to somehow rescue me..)..So that’s what I tried to express in this painting. My commentary This is an interesting piece in that anger does rescue us from ... Read More

This is a followup letter from a woman who emailed me about four years ago. I had never met her and she shared a this remarkable story of recovery. Stories like this have lead me to believe that essentially anyone ... Read More

For many years, I thought that for many patients there was a point of no return because the sheer magnitude of both physical and emotional trauma. I particularly felt this way with people who had undergone many failed surgeries. I ... Read More

Pain, The Gift That Nobody Wants is a book written by an orthopedic hand surgeon, Paul Brand. Through his work in India with lepers he discovered that the reason why they had such severe hand, facial, and foot deformities was ... Read More

Rachel is a therapist, specializing in trauma. She reached out to me a couple of years ago to learn more about integrating healing concepts into her journey. She was developing her version, using her experience with horses as the foundation ... Read More

About three years ago, my staff noticed that our surgical patients who participated in The DOC Journey principles were doing much better. The outcomes were more consistent, and we were seeing fewer failures. The postoperative pain was more easily controlled ... Read More

I am sharing an email I recently received from someone I have gotten to know over about a year. I wasn’t aware of her whole story. She illustrates several aspects of self-induced deep healing. The healing process is self-directed. This ... Read More

I first met Mark at our 2017 three-day “Rewiring Your Brain” workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. He had flown in from the Netherlands. His main problem was chronic low back pain that he had experienced for over ... Read More

Dear Dr Hanscom, Having read (devoured actually) The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, I can now share with others the benefits I received through reading this book. The author demystified that very mysterious quality of world-class excellence. He teaches that ... Read More