Pain relief sound may sound like what we need but wouldn’t healing be better? Valerie Minard’s September 27 article in EmpowHer gives hope for healing to those struggling with chronic pain. Hope based on experience.
Start this inspiring article below then please follow the link at the end to read it in full.
This past Olympics, you might have noticed something different about gold-medal swimming champion, Michael Phelps. He, and some other athletes, had a series of red circles on their bodies. They weren’t tattoos but a by-product of a muscle relaxation technique called “cupping” —an ancient Chinese alternative medical treatment used to eliminate pain.
Dorothy Chae, a certified staff acupuncturist at Holy Name Hospital and Medical Center in Teaneck, NJ, has been cupping her clients for many years. She places warmed glass suction cups on her patient’s bodies. She believes it is an effective pain reliever for people who have arthritis or back pain.
But a review of 135 studies on cupping found that the studies were not accurate and that cupping “had no benefit for sore muscles.” There are also side effects such as bruising, burns, and possible infection. In spite of that, some experts believe it may work the same as a placebo and improve performance.
While cupping and other alternative forms of medicine may seem a better choice than addictive pain killers, if they are placebos, doesn’t this point to the mental nature of health? That’s the conclusion health researcher and Christian theologian Mary Baker Eddy came to. She writes in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The effect of mortal mind on health and happiness is seen in this: If one turns away from the body with such absorbed interest as to forget it, the body experiences no pain.”
She follows this with the story of a lame, elderly actor who “hobbled every day to the theatre and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken,” but once on stage was “as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled chloroform” and moved about as freely as a young man.
But Eddy took this observation a step further. She found that since our thinking affects our body, aligning our thinking spiritually with divine Truth and Love can bring healing and complete freedom from pain.
That’s what Jenna Mehlenbacher experienced when she was swimming competitively as a college sophomore. She had no problem swimming most strokes. But when it came to swimming the butterfly for more than 50 yards, she experienced back pain. Her high school coach had let her swim shorter distances. But Jenna didn’t want to accept this disability as true about herself and she wanted to be healed of this limitation.