Back problems are the leading cause of disability worldwide—and most of us will endure acute or chronic back pain at some time in our lives. The good news: there are excellent, highly effective alternatives to surgery and painkillers.
In this podcast, join Tami Simon in conversation with spine and neck expert Dr. Ken Hansraj for an amazing discussion of his new book, Watch Your Back: Nine Proven Strategies to Reduce Your Neck and Back Pain Without Surgery. They cover the Text Neck study; meditation and the “flash of awareness”; why proper posture is not stiff but gentle; the supination external rotation stretch; the power of movement; the “beautiful jewels” called facet joints; a guided belly breathing practice; the connection between sleep and spinal health; the impacts of stress, and how breath and motion provide an antidote; the metaphor of the “tensionometer”; how the spine connects us to divinity; and more.
Erica Ariel Fox is the author of the New York Times bestseller Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change. She is a negotiation lecturer at Harvard Law School and a senior advisor to Fortune 500 companies. Erica is a featured presenter in Sounds True’s Inner MBA program. In this podcast, she speaks with Tami Simon about her revolutionary approach to conflict resolution, how she defines “winning from within,” working with your “top team” of inner advisors, and much more.
How can we use whatever comes into our lives as a way of opening to love? Do you want to love and connect with others more deeply, but need a little help?
With The Freedom to Love, a six-part online video course, Pema Chödrön invites you to start wherever you are—with any challenges, frustrations, or fears you may be facing—and use them as the launching pad to awaken the natural and boundless capacity of your heart.
The Freedom to Love will engage you with written teachings, video and audio sessions, weekly self-reflection practices, deep meditation, plus two revealing sessions recorded with Pema Chödrön answering questions from a live audience.
If you’ve ever had the opportunity of attending a dharma talk with her, then you know that Pema’s Q&A discussions often reveal her most unexpected, entertaining, and memorable insights.
Here you are invited to come as you are—calm, confused, or just in need of a heartfulness tune-up—to begin unfolding your natural and joyful qualities of compassion, self-acceptance, connection, and unconditional love.
What do I do when a loved one is suffering? How do I have empathy if I’m getting a divorce or losing my job? If my family treats me unfairly? Or if I’m emotionally overwhelmed or in chronic pain?
If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, I’ve written The Genius of Empathy for you. It also includes a beautiful foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
In the book, I present empathy as a healing force that helps you overcome obstacles in your life with dignity, grace, and power. As a psychiatrist and empath, I draw from my insights and present techniques from my own life and from the healing journeys of my clients, students, and readers. As I say in the book, “Empathy softens the struggle, quiets the unkind voices, and lets you befriend yourself again.”
Empathy doesn’t mean being “on call” 24 hours a day for those in need. Empaths can often wear an invisible sign that says, “I can help you.” However, if you want to heal yourself, have better relationships, and contribute to healing our tumultuous world, you must learn how to set healthy boundaries and observe, not absorb, the energy of others.
To start taking a more proactive role in how much empathy you give others at any one time, I suggest that you keep in mind the following “rights.” They will help you maintain a healthy mindset and prevent or lessen any empathy overwhelm that might arise:
I have the right to say a loving, positive “no” or “no, thank-you.”
I have the right to set limits with how long I listen to people’s problems.
I have the right to rest and not be always available to everyone.
I have the right to quiet peacefulness in my home and in my heart.
Practice: Take a Sound Break to Repair Yourself
Plan periods of quiet to recover from our noisy, fast-paced world. This helps calm your nervous system and your mind, an act of self-empathy.
It’s rejuvenating to schedule at least five minutes of quiet or, even better, complete silence for an hour or more where no one can intrude. As I do, hang a Do Not Disturb sign on your office or bedroom door. During this reset period, you’ve officially escaped from the world. You’re free of demands and noxious sounds. You may also get noise canceling earbuds to block out noise.
If too much quiet is unsettling, go for a walk in a local park or a peaceful neighborhood to decompress from excessive sound stimulation. Simply focus on putting one foot in front of the other, which is called mindful walking. Nothing to do. Nothing to be. Move slowly and refrain from talking. If thoughts come, keep refocusing on your breath, each inhalation and exhalation. Just letting life settle will regenerate your body and empathic heart.
Embracing your empathy does require courage. It can feel scary. If you’re ready to discover its healing power, I would be honored to be your guide to helping you in overcoming your fears and obstacles, and enhancing this essential skill for long-term change.
Though many of us have never met, I feel connected to you. Connection is what fuels life. While empathy is what allows you to find peace. With both, we can make sense of this world together.
Digital Audio
Ignite empathy as a superpower for personal healing, deeper relationships, and more potent work in the world. New York Times bestselling author Dr. Judith Orloff draws on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and energy medicine to show us how to access our sensitivities, soothe our nervous systems, and embody our most fierce and authentic selves.
Ashley River Brant is a multidimensional artist and healer whose focus is on awakening the creative and intuitive power within us all. She is the creator of Soul Tattoo®, a ceremonial intuitive tattooing modality, and the host of a podcast called Weaving Your Web. She also brings forth her medicine as a filmmaker, photographer, illustrator, and writer. With Sounds True, Ashley is releasing her first book, Tending to the Sacred: Rituals to Connect with Earth, Spirit, and Self. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon talks with Ashley about how creativity and ritual have given her a “bridge home” to a sense of purpose and belonging from the traumas of her childhood. Ashley describes how she moves through life with a “divine team of support” composed of both earthly and cosmic beings, and she offers us a ritual for connecting with our own spirit guides. They also discuss tapping into past-life memory as a process for healing present wounds, creating space to practice “sacred listening” to nature and our ancestors, and the four pillars of ritual Ashley uses to create a life of intention.
There is a kind of pain that is born from the anticipation of something that we know will happen but has not yet happened. We suffer a lot for things that have not yet happened. We anticipate, in excruciating detail, the pain of a visit to the dentist or a planned surgery. We spend several months suffering the pain of giving birth. We suffer for the death of a loved one months before cancer takes their life. We suffer for things that do not yet hurt, in such a way that when real pain does arrive, our body and mind are already exhausted.
Our bodies are wise; this we have said already. Our bodies and our minds feel the impulse to repair the damage detected. When we feel pain, we activate a repair system with the objective of recovering the balance lost. But we must take care not to end up like Peter in the tale of “Peter and the Wolf”: he warned so many times about the wolf coming, without it being true, that when it did truly arrive, nobody believed him. If we activate the alert mechanism in the face of pain ahead of the time, then, when we need them the most, we won’t have any resources left to cope with it.
The source of emotional pain is often caused by:
Adversity
Frustration
Disappointment
Unexpected change
Judgments and thoughts
Reality
Imagination
Fear
Anticipation
Suffering and adversity are just part and parcel of life. Any day we might experience the greatest and most unexpected of tragedies. But what really matters is not what could or might happen to us—which can be just about anything—but what is actually happening to us. When we speak about misfortune and adversity, we must speak about probabilities, not possibilities, namely the likelihood that any of the adversities we are exposed to might occur. Is there a chance that a piece of space debris might fall from outer space and split my head open? I don’t have the evidence to deny it. However, if I am going to be afraid of anything, in my case it would be the cows I meet in the mountains when I’m out for a run because it’s far more likely that I will be trampled by a cow than get hit by a piece of space debris.
So, if you ever ask yourself, “Why me?” remember that we are fragile; that we live in a hostile environment; and that sometimes, with the behaviors and the decisions that we make—or don’t make—we are taking risks that can lead us to adversity. However, at other times, the cruelest fate hits us with adversity.
Building a Wall Is Not the Solution
Some people think that the solution to live more at ease is to build a wall to defend themselves. Do not make that mistake; the wall will defend you from exterior aggressions, but it will also prevent you from enjoying the wonderful things around you. If you build a wall, you will prevent disappointment, but you will feel bitterly lonely. A wall can protect you from fear of change but will create an inability to adapt to different situations. The wall will provide you with safety, but it will also make you a person who is dependent on its protection; it will make you insecure and fearful of what will happen when that wall disappears. I encourage you to build, instead of a wall, a library full of resources to help you maintain the level of emotional strength that you need.
What’s more, when we attempt to protect ourselves by adopting strategies that are damaging, and when we wear armor, we disconnect emotionally from the people around us and from reality. Building a wall is never the solution because it will not protect us from that pesky space debris looming above our heads. Don’t forget: prudence is good, fear is not.
Reflection Exercise
I encourage you to do an exercise. Analyze the pain you are experiencing and try to identify its source. Don’t leave it for tomorrow. Don’t click to the next site just yet. Just pick up a notebook and a pencil, find a quiet place right now, and reflect. Take action, because it’s up to you to do something about this. Nobody will do it for you.
Tomás Navarro is a psychologist who loves people and what they feel, think, and do. He is the founder of a consultancy practice and center for emotional well-being. He currently splits his time between technical writing, training, consultancy, conferences and advisory processes, and personal and professional coaching. He lives in Gerona and Barcelona, Spain.
