Journaling and meditation are two proactive and simple tools that you can use to move forward in your process of healing. One prescription that Dr Sarno made for dealing with chronic pain was journaling daily. Nicole Sachs, a former patient and protege of Dr Sarno, focuses some of her work on helping others to journal....
We've been doing this work for over 25 years and have made all kinds of films from rock and roll narratives to crime films to political and personal documentaries. On the surface, most of the films don't seem connected, but certain themes run through them all, and they build on one another. These can be thought of as themes and...
In early December I posted a radiant image of my mother on the first night of Chanukah. She got a lot of positive feedback on that image; maybe too much. A week later on her birthday so many people wrote to her about the picture that it kind of overwhelmed her. Turning 84 was hard enough on her...
A few years ago I went to the dentist and wrote about meditation practice. The other morning I went again and found myself thinking about meditation in a slightly different manner. About a week ago I saw a post about Sam Harris' meditation app and downloaded it. Well over a decade ago my partners and I shot a series of...
Most stereotypes have some truth to them -but it’s how those shreds of truth are twisted that leads to the kind of dehumanization that is seen in this ad. My father, who was Jewish, didn't love money so much as he hated to spend it. We got our winter coats in May (when they were practically giving them away) and...
All the Rage - Trailer from rumur on Vimeo. Our film about Dr. Sarno is called “All The Rage” because, according the doctor, the repression of rage is a primary driver of many pain issues. From Dr. Sarno’s perspective, the pain acts as a distraction or defense against feeling or experiencing “unacceptable emotions.” Many people reject the idea that our...
PROLOGUE This is a post about ritual, health, belief, and systems in general. Often, those outside a system have the kind of perspective that allows them to spot the flaws or anomalies within a system, while those who exist within it are often "willfully blind" to these problems. The case of Enron is a good example. To anyone who looked under...
2017 was a very long year that went by at light speed. While 2016 challenged the basic idea of objective truth, 2017 took a hatchet to it in a way that highlighted how we all inhabit different worlds and different stories. For those who see Trump as a lying incompetent narcissist, it is almost unfathomable that others don’t see it...
The few times I've posted anything vaguely political on the All The Rage Facebook page, it has sparked outrage from Dr. Sarno fans who support Donald Trump. This includes simply posting articles about Trump's response to the opioid crisis with no comment whatsoever. While Dr. Sarno did not write about political issues in his books, when he appeared before the...
"I have to say it’s ludicrous to suggest Dr Sarno is responsible for pain being viewed as biopsychosocial these days. This truly misrepresents the facts and the decades of scientific research culminating in this conclusion. Where was Dr Sarno when Melzack and Wall developed the gate control theory in 1965? That is factually when the idea of bio psychosocial came...
This morning, Vox published an article about Dr Sarno that I was quoted in. I was so disturbed and frustrated by the title, "America’s most famous back pain doctor said pain is in your head. Thousands think he's right,." that I did not post the article to our Facebook page. Instead, I wrote to the author requesting that they re-visit...
Cathryn J Ramin's heavily researched look at the back pain industry, "Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting On the Road to Recovery", is painfully satisfying to read - especially for people who have struggled with back pain and the surgeons, pushers, and needle jockeys that profit from it. Ramin's book is framed by her personal journey to...