Inspired by binge watching A Discovery of Witches, I felt compelled to share the connections I see between mindbody work and spell casting + curse breaking. I'm not a witch. But I love TV and stories and see so many ways we can intentionally create our own process using these magical metaphors and in the public vocabulary of magic, witches and vampires. If you would like to book a free half hour curiosity call - https://calendly.com/paincoachdeb All MRI’s Are Abnormal video - https://youtu.be/czVW8wD-mHc?si=Tv4RZ_ZKPAUhnRfs
If you would like to book a free half hour curiosity call - https://calendly.com/paincoachdeb
All MRI’s Are Abnormal video - https://youtu.be/czVW8wD-mHc?si=Tv4RZ_ZKPAUhnRfs
[00:00:00] Welcome to Move with Deb. I'm Deb, your friendly neuroplastician, and this eis a podcast that explores the relationship between the body and the mind, the health at every size, judgment free perspective. I teach you how developing a new internal conversation based on curiosity. Self friendship and simple neuroplasticity techniques can rewire your body minds out of pain and emotional overwhelm to help you build the rich, full life that you want to live.
[00:00:45] Disclaimer, this is not a replacement for medical care.
[00:00:56] Hi, and welcome to Move With Deb, the podcast soon to be retitled The Curiosity Cure. And this is not what I was going to be doing this morning, but I feel compelled to create this podcast. And compelled is a really fun and interesting word that evokes this kind of sense of something not being completely in my control.
[00:01:21] but that I'm being drawn to it. And along with the word compelled is this, you know, this word compulsion, which sometimes in my mind relates to pain behaviors, but I'm feeling compelled to record this podcast about magic. I just finished binge watching Discovery of Witches and I also had an interesting conversation in one of my coaching communities about feeling cursed.
[00:01:48] Then all of a sudden this podcast just kind of erupted in my imagination. So I'm going to try to, uh, I'm going to give it a try because I see a lot of interesting correlations. So whether this is a metaphor for you or whether you are a witch and you do spellcasting, I'm not a witch. I have a shared community with people who are witches and I've certainly now binge watched a lot of television.
[00:02:15] So I must be an expert about witchcraft and magic and spellcasting. Um, we have a lot of mythologies woven through popular culture about witchcraft. And magic. So why not use this as a metaphor? So whether it's resonant inside of you or just a fun idea to tickle your imagination and get you thinking about things in a new way to help you move your pain recovery journey and your mind body journey forward towards what you want to be experiencing, let's try it on.
[00:02:53] So I watched Discovery of Witches and I kind of love hate watched it. I was definitely entranced and sometimes that's kind of how when you're watching a show and there's multiple episodes and then the TV just queues up the next one for you and it's kind of easier to be like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to watch the next episode.
[00:03:17] You end up watching multiple episodes in a row because it's. easier than like having to turn the button and turn the TV off. And so that's this quality of being entranced. Um, we do it all the time. We get entranced by our phone. We get entranced by some, you know, drama. We get entranced by, um, you know, a fixation that we have.
[00:03:47] And There's, you know, with television, there's this kind of enchanted feeling I can have watching television where I'm entering another world and things are happening and I'm just a passenger on this journey. And then I was thinking about the correlations that we can draw analogies to in the discovery of witches.
[00:04:10] You know, and maybe there'll be spoilers. I'm going to try to keep this spoiler free, but we're watching Diana basically learn how to be a witch and learn about spellcasting. And a spell is words, you know, they're words that are repeated. Over and often and over again with a certain set of rituals or behaviors.
[00:04:35] And in a lot of ways, that's kind of what we create around chronic pain. Words or beliefs are repeated over and over again. Paired with a certain set of behaviors. So if we believe that the chair is causing our pain, you know, we avoid the chair, we avoid certain types of movement. We start to build a whole belief system around the things that we're feeling.
[00:05:00] And maybe some of that is supported, you know, different sets of ideas about the. Origin of what it is that we're feeling. And so maybe there's the belief that we're too heavy and we're destroying our knees or that this back pain is coming from this disc bulge. We start to create these links, these neuro associations, and we're feeling pain.
[00:05:24] We go to the doctor and you know, if we're not seeing a doctor that has a.
[00:05:32] Um, you know, they'll, they'll send you for an MRI or an x ray and those things are appropriate. What we're learning now about chronic pain is a lot of times the wrong conclusions are being drawn and, uh, as Dr. Schubiner teaches, he's got a great video, uh, called all MRIs are abnormal. And, uh, you know, what we've learned.
[00:05:59] And what we've a lot of degenerative changes that are noted in MRIs are normal, are normal findings that are not correlated with pain, that are a normal part of aging, what um, has been referred to as wrinkles on the inside. And so we want to begin to. We become adept at understanding this kind of spell that's gets woven, that starts to inform our beliefs about what's happening in our bodies.
[00:06:36] And one of the things that we do in pain reprocessing is teaching pain neuroscience education. And what we're trying to help is, is to weave A new spell, a new understanding, a new set of beliefs, uh, and kind of unwiring those old internal thoughts and feelings that arise when we feel something aversive.
[00:07:05] That's almost like a little ritual that happens inside of us and it's kind of invisible. Maybe it's somewhat of a curse. Depending on the thoughts, feelings, and actions that we take based on the belief that we have about what's happening in our bodies. So we need to break the pain spell. We break the pain spell by crafting a different spell by building new beliefs, new rituals.
[00:07:35] New habits. And I was thinking one of the things that Diana does is seek out a teacher. She literally travels through time to do that. And I was thinking how about books and how those are like traveling through time. So when we come in contact with Dr. Sarno's materials, he is not with us on this earthly plane anymore.
[00:08:00] But his books are still alive and they're still helping people. And I was thinking about that as time travel and even other mysterious things like watching a video or listening to a podcast and how those experiences create new neural connections, new understandings. New beliefs. And then when we're having an experience, we can weave, start to maybe weave in this magic framework, right?
[00:08:28] Because those new understandings, new neural connections and new beliefs create new experiences that we feel. And so if we're noticing our thoughts and feelings when we're having an art, having an experience, what, what if your first response is to slow down time? Like if you are a witch. Can you imagine casting a spell in that moment that slowed down time so that we could make the invisible visible, make those invisible spells, those experiences of being compelled to do things or to not do things, to lay down all the time or to stop walking or to not sit and In a particular chair.
[00:09:13] Those are kind of the invisible spells that have us bound in this pain spell. And so if we could cast a spell that slowed down time and we could make what is invisible to our conscious mind visible, we could slow down time and illuminate our pain behaviors. Maybe see them as threads and make this very visible to our non conscious mind.
[00:09:38] Uh, visible to our conscious mind. Then when we practice things like somatic skills, when we work with a coach, when we start to interrupt our pain behaviors, we can actually see more of what it is that we're doing. We can take these thoughts, beliefs, predictive coding, fears, all of the unseen and nonconscious ways that we act as if we are possessed or cursed.
[00:10:05] And to break that curse, we weave a new spell. And that involves believing things on purpose. And sometimes we can't believe things like I'm strong or there's nothing wrong with my leg or my back or my head right away, but we can start to believe things like, I believe it's possible that this work will help.
[00:10:28] I believe in other people's mind, body healing stories. I believe that it's possible. That it's possible for me. Sometimes for me, what I love is when I'm in, you know, both communities with my clients and the larger mind, body healing communities. I see people recover from all kinds of things. And I always want to hold the belief that I don't know what is possible for people.
[00:10:56] I don't know how well someone can feel. I never put limitations on anyone on any of my clients for how improved they can feel by this work. And with some of that, I'm always in awe and amazement of people's healing journeys and that feeling of awe and amazement. That's like one of those pieces that I use.
[00:11:21] To help me weave my spell, believing in the mind body connection, believing in the power of these skills and tools and new ways of thinking and understanding about pain and other chronic conditions, believing and understanding how the mind and body work together. All of this is neuroplasticity in and of itself.
[00:11:44] Itself is our ability to learn, and that is magic made real, creating something new, or even revivifying an old time before pain had captured all of our attention. So one of my questions to clients, and I've said it on this podcast is what is everything you're not noticing that is not that? Because what we do with our attention creates our reality.
[00:12:10] Creates our experience because we're literally teaching our brain what is important to notice because we filter out things all the time. And I have a really fun podcast in which I talk about literally filtering, filtering out stores in New York city from my mind. Oh, my unexisting them. And if I was a magician or a witch, and if that was me performing magic, I could maybe literally make those stores disappear.
[00:12:39] But they disappeared in my brain. They disappeared in my sight and in my mind and my body. They were not there for me to perceive any longer. I filtered them out because they had no value or interest to me. One of the things we do with our attention when we place it on, you know, what we're feeling and weaving our spell is we teach our brain that this is important to us.
[00:13:08] This is the only thing, you know, so part of our mind body work is playing with attention and maybe directing our attention elsewhere. What is everything that we're not noticing? That's not this. Sometimes in somatic tracking, we use our attention just to get to this neutral place of curiosity and wonder, getting to relate to your physical sensations in a new way.
[00:13:35] And sometimes in hypnosis, I actually go in a slightly different direction, try to affect change with our curiosity. But, you know, We're not just like curious and looking at it from a distance and trying not to change it. It's actually more leaning towards that magic framework. What happens if I do this?
[00:13:55] You know, what we, what color is it? What color would feel better if it were a shape? How would you get that shape to change? Um, I have a client who was telling me about, Kind of feeling a stone that had a lot of edges and then just imagining water or a stone smoother, smoothing out that stone, taking the edges off and the sensations changed.
[00:14:21] So we have a lot of power. Um, when we think about visualization, that's a form of magic. And There's scientific studies that show like people can increase their, um, both their dexterity, both their like a motor neuron connections using visualization and also increase their muscle mass using visualization.
[00:14:48] And in part of Dr. Schupiner's fit criteria, um, the diagnostic criteria is, uh, imagining doing an activity that's immersive to you. And if you. If, if pain arises when you're just imagining it, so say you, um, think about turning your neck to the right cause that's where you have pain. When you imagine turning head to the right, what are you noticing in your neck, right?
[00:15:15] So in the imagination, if you're, if pain is being lit up, that's a sign of neuroplastic pain. Right? So that's a form of magic. We're going to dismantle this pain spell, dismantle these neuro associations, this kind of curse, curse that we didn't even know we were under. We're, we're not cursed, but I see people talk about feeling cursed as if this pain is happening to them because of who they are.
[00:15:51] People say things like, why me? Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? Why am I suffering? And a hundred percent, I understand why those thoughts and feelings come up and they often lead us to a very dark and despairing place. And what's interesting is when we seek to remove that story, feeling of being cursed, so much of our suffering goes away.
[00:16:19] And then all we've got are the sensations. So we remove the, why is this happening to me? And all of the corresponding emotions and worries and beliefs about oneself. Once we dismantle that spell, that suffering vanishes, or at least it's made seen and we can work on it. We can start to become this spell caster, the weaver of our own experience.
[00:16:46] And I think. The most incredible magic of all is the magic of the human mind and body complete with self healing properties. And yet we don't have to know anything about having a human body, being human to make it work, to be alive, and we can do all kinds of things to our bodies that are not optimal or suboptimal.
[00:17:07] And yet we are alive and we remain alive sometimes despite our best efforts. So we are alive and we don't need to, uh, learn how to drive our body like we have to learn how to drive a car. Our body is self sustaining, self healing, and yes, there are things and ways that we can become better collaborators, but it's really incredible to see as we start to shift our understanding and belief of what it is to have a human body.
[00:17:38] We can start to imagine our body not as being fragile, but as being resilient. Being magical, being powerful beyond our conscious awareness. All of these non conscious systems that are operating in the background, keeping us alive, creating, balancing all of the things that are inside of us at every moment to keep us upright, to keep our heart pumping, to keep our oxygen levels going.
[00:18:03] That's incredible magic. And when we can tap into this awe, this sense of power that comes with that, there's the self sustaining, self creating, operating, operating system happening. And if we want to join with that, all we really need to do is to become aware of the unseen spells, the unseen thoughts, feelings, actions, pain behaviors.
[00:18:29] And not because if we do it right and we do it perfectly, we'll never feel pain again, that we're going to magically solve it once and never, ever, ever have to deal with anything ever again. Actually, I think about in the discovery of witches and at the end of the story, you know, things get tied up really nicely, but also their lives just continue and there'll be more drama in the future.
[00:18:54] There'll be more conflict. There'll be more issues. There will be more because that is just a part of being alive. And Oh my God, if you're a vampire, you just are alive for a really, really long time. And so we've created this sense of understanding and awareness of our power by being able to slow down time.
[00:19:16] Make invisible visible through self coaching, through mind body practices, through somatic tracking. And we can understand how we allow an emotion to pass through when historically we've always repressed them. That is a new kind of experience, one that has magical properties as well. So I think I'm.
[00:19:38] Might've worked this metaphor a lot, but that's my invitation to your imagination. If you could see the unhelpful thoughts and beliefs about your body as threads, how maybe you know this, the thought may be like, this is going to last forever. And then imagine snipping those thoughts so that they're no longer connected to anything.
[00:20:02] Like we can imagine anything. What would you like to believe instead, right? Imagine them in your mind, those neurons being connected. This new belief, these new ideas, how you want to think, feel, and act. You can start imagining them and using this framework to really start to practice on purpose what we want to think and believe about our bodies as we go on this journey of healing.
[00:20:32] And if you are a witch and you do practice magic, please fit this into the construct that you already know, that you already use and apply. I want you to think about where your power lies, like in a lot of ways, shifting us a little bit. Please. Shifting us from the place where we're feeling like things are happening to us, where we're a victim and we don't know how to respond to feeling like we have some power and agency.
[00:20:59] We are a creator. And from our brain's point of view, we are the creator of our understanding of things and our response to sensory input. And again, I want to steer you away from any kind of feelings like you're doing it wrong. This is your fault, steering you away from perfectionism. Because I think that there's a false belief in perfectionism, that if we were perfect, that this thing that is happening right now wouldn't be happening.
[00:21:26] And that is almost like an illusion or a mirage. There's not a lot of there there. There's nothing really workable there. And so what is that is happening right now? Can we slow down time? Can we invite in the curiosity, begin to notice things and see where we can become the weaver of the experience? That we would like to be having more of.
[00:21:54] So that's my podcast. And I hope it's been at least amusing, maybe delightful, maybe intriguing. If you do watch a discovery, which is whether you like it or not, well, if you don't like it, don't blame me. And, um, thanks for listening. It's so funny because sometimes when I make a pod, like when I think about making a podcast, it is so coherent and clear and all together in my head.
[00:22:19] And then that process of taking it out of my head and making it come out of my mouth, there's always this. Part that gets lost. And I think that that's just part of the process of learning to communicate things that make sense in one way. And then as we're talking about weaving spells, words are spells, ideas and beliefs are spells.
[00:22:41] And when we say them over and over and over again, like if we're shitting on ourselves and being mean to ourselves, even if those are not the voices we would have chosen for ourself. Um, even if we have, you know, taken somebody else's belief about us and repeating it over and over and over again, where we're reinforcing that spell and it may be in that way.
[00:23:07] Maybe that is a curse and we can be the curse breaker. So I'm just sitting with some amusement. Like I'm sitting here and going like, ah, that sounded so much better in my head. And this is a little bit of what the experience of practicing mind body skills are like. You can read it in a book. You can work with a coach, you can listen to a podcast, you're like, Oh, I get it.
[00:23:30] And then you go and do it and then it's a little awkward and that's perfect. That's exactly as it should be. There's going to be friction and confusion and not knowing. And all of that is fine. All of that is part of the journey. And if you've read Alan Gordon's book, The Way Out, you'll hear him say repeatedly, trust the process.
[00:23:54] And that's what this is. A process. It's a process of learning, believing, and understanding things in a new way. And it takes time, takes practice, it takes failing, takes a lot of different things, but it takes doing, stepping into it, trying. Being willing to fail, being curious enough to think, what else could this be beyond the way that I think about it in a fixed way?
[00:24:20] If I could imagine a way out beyond the way that I'm seeing and experiencing it in this moment, what else might it be? What else is possible? So that's my invitation to you to think beyond the ways you're thinking about what you're experiencing and invite in your imagination and curiosity and weave these new spells for your mind, body, wellness.
[00:24:43] For your life, the way that you would like to be experiencing it. And if you would like to work with a coach who understands this, who's been there, who's helping people all the time, slow down time, unweave spells, weave new spells, believe in new things, creating a new reality. If you want to do that, please book a curiosity call with me.
[00:25:04] I would love, love, love to connect with you. And my link to schedule a 30 minute curiosity call is on my website or it's in the show notes and I hope you have a fantastic day. Thank you.