Archives of Posts

Objectives: Although there is no question about the dedication of physicians to providing excellent care, the rigors of training, the demands of practice, and the business of medicine have made it increasingly difficult to treat you – a person. A ... Read More

Facing Anger is the tipping point in healing You can’t move forward while you are holding onto the past. You must learn to feel safe despite ongoing adversity. Don’t let your mind or your life bully you. During my 13-year ... Read More

Patients and physicians are frequently making illogical decisions regarding spine surgery. I have watched this phenomenon steadily worsen for over 30 years. One of the core problems is that there is little accountability. You would expect your surgeon to do ... Read More

Overview Healing happens as you learn skills to feel safe – regardless of circumstances. Navigating challenges is basic to staying alive. Why get upset when they arise? The bigger the stress, the greater the opportunity to practice your skills. Deal ... Read More

Overview Thoughts and viruses are inert and only active when they connect to live entities. Unwanted thoughts link up physiologically because we fight them. They become our identity (cognitive fusion), and we can’t differentiate unwanted thoughts from physical threats. Skills ... Read More

Objectives All of our actions this minute are determined by all of your past experiences up to this very second. Each of us has a unique perspective on life. Awareness involves seeing past your own personal biases and seeing the ... Read More

Overview Professionals in any arena focus on learning and repetition to attain the highest skill level. Why not focus this level of energy for developing life skills – processing stress and nurturing joy? Efficienting overcoming challenges is critical to for ... Read More

Rachel contacted me a couple of years ago through social media . She had been experiencing severe pain after a serious horse-riding accident. She studied many resources, including the strategies presented in Back in Control. She developed her own version of ... Read More

Facing Anger is the tipping point in healing You can’t move forward while you are holding onto the past. You must learn to feel safe despite ongoing adversity. Don’t let your mind or your life bully you. During my 13-year ... 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

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

Rachel contacted me a couple of years ago through social media . She had been experiencing severe pain after a serious horse-riding accident. She studied many resources, including the strategies presented in Back in Control. She developed her own version of ... 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