Comment by ghthor
6 hours ago
Chronic Back pain is correlated with emotional trauma. The physical body is a mere projection of the energetic and spiritual being. This is wahy meditative spiritual practices such as yoga and taiji are good for chronic pain, as the physical pain is a mere projection of a deeper trauma that needs released.
Relieved to learn that my small peen is merely a projection of my energetic spiritual being.
how does my spiritual wellness affect the mechanical structure of my lower back?
Ignoring the spiritual part, emotional state does have a well-known feedback loop with physical state. There’s a (largely incorrect) idea in pop psychology that just as happiness leads to smiling, smiling leads to happiness. It’s not nearly that simple, but there are some more straightforward examples: lots of tense emotional states (anger, anxiety) lead to tense muscles (jaw being the classic example). Relaxing your jaw can lead to a (temporary) relaxation of your emotional tenseness. I’ve never heard of a similar result for the lower back, but it’s not hard to imagine. If nothing else, they must be correlated through sedentary lifestyle.
> (largely incorrect) ... just as happiness leads to smiling, smiling leads to happiness.
I don't have a citation to hand and it's really old but there was academic research supporting that at some point. IIRC they used some clever request to get people to move their facial muscles in various ways without tipping them off about what was really going on and then asked them lots of questions that touch on emotional state.
Functional disorders are a thing, and placebo surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee works just as well as real surgery: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259
I have heard psychedelics be described as the most effective placebo of all placebos.
I mean tons of back pain is medically unexplained. It's not like physiology has a perfect record here that can be used to dismiss alternative theories.
Setting the woo aside, there is a lot of data on disorders like central sensitization syndrome that show our psychological state has a very strong modulating effect on our perception of pain.