ACCEPT Course
Get equipped with a newfound awareness and sensitivity to the mindbody reality. Launching Summer 2025.
Get equipped with a newfound awareness and sensitivity to the mindbody reality. Launching Summer 2025.
Christian Moran treats chronic pain through a comprehensive psycho-education, which includes Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET). These are techniques rooted in the revolutionary work of Dr. John Sarno. MD decades ago, now being validated with controlled trials by Drs. Howard Schubiner, Mark Lumley, and others more recently. The healing methods begin with the understanding that all pain is created in and produced by the brain, and that all pain is real.
Because the brain is neuroplastic with self-changing capacities, PRT techniques correct the brain’s neural pathways creating pain sensations. Using these techniques can eliminate or greatly reduce pain quickly. Other cases require EAET, which helps patients express long-standing and unconscious emotions that also have been shown to result in pain and other undesirable symptoms.
The treatment protocols include a thorough, evidence-based evaluation to rule out structural causes of the pain (with a confirmation by a medical doctor familiar with mindbody disorders as necessary), then follow-up sessions for PRT and EAET. The goal is to return the patient to full movement and functionality without pain, and equip the patient with a newfound awareness and sensitivity to the mindbody reality.
Challenge:
What is my level of awareness of the psychosomatic nature of the human person and how it relates to pain sensations? Am I open to learning about the evidence for it, and see if it might apply to myself?
Method:
Provide basic psychoeducation for the patient about the Mindbody Syndrome with slides/stories/readings/videos, using the latest research.
Objective:
Understand the power of the brain to generate and perpetuate pain
Challenge:
Is my pain due to a structural/physical defect or abnormality in my body? Or is it neuroplastic pain? Is it some of both?
Methods:
F.I.T. criteria (Functional, Inconsistent, Triggered) (Schubiner) and Physician-assisted confirmation as necessary. Provocative testing. Evidence sheet compilation
Objective:
Learn to distinguish a structural/physical abnormality or peripheral tissue damage from mindbody syndrome a/k/a neuroplastic pain.
Challenge:
Can I accept that perceived threats -unconscious or conscious - create or perpetuate the physical symptoms, and how can I minimize or eliminate them?
Methods:
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (Ashar. Lumley, Schubiner): Psychological treatment and cognitive exercises focused on changing beliefs about the causes and threat value of chronic pain
-Mindfulness/somatic tracking: link lightheartedness (not fear) with the sensations to change neural circuits
-Graded exposure: gradual return to triggering activities (first imagination, and then actual)
Objective:
Begin to deactivate the “danger alarm mechanism” in the brain, which creates pain in response to the fear associated with the threat of tissue damage. Begin to consider psychological threats related to adverse experiences or conflicts.
Challenge:
Can I appreciate the possibility that conscious as well as unconscious emotions are a powerful factor in my pain sensations?
Method:
Emotional Expression and Awareness Therapy (Lumley, Schubiner)
Objective:
To activate and release emotions surrounding particular past or present trauma/stressors (sometimes unconscious), and create new and healthier neural pathways for the brain to attach to such stressors.
Challenge:
How do I treat myself? Can I become aware of my own characteristics and patterns which can generate physical symptoms?
Method:
Guided journaling and self-reflections on one’s own particular personality traits, attitudes, characteristics, some of which may contribute to chronic pain, others of which may contribute to healing
Objective:
Become aware of my tendencies and characteristics which can soothe, or others which can hurt. Learn to practice a more authentic self-love.
Challenge:
Can I return to the full bodily motions which I have feared and return to a pain-free existence? Can I care for myself with renewed appreciation and sensitivity for my mindbody existence?
Method:
Patient is encouraged to gradually engage in previously avoided, restricted, or feared activities. And as necessary, begin to make any relevant changes in your life which might help to avoid future symptoms. Learn to diagnose one’s own mindbody symptoms should others arise in the future.
Objective:
Affirm and restore complete confidence in total health of mind and body, by living fully and joyfully without restricted movement.
christian@
christianwmoran.com
New York City
Washington DC
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