July 24, 2024 • 28 mins
In this episode, Dr. David Hanscom continues his discussion with chaplain and pain coach Bonnie Lester. She explains the different techniques she uses to help herself and her clients. Examples of these approaches include getting better sleep, sensory stimulation, humor and play, planning to do things that will make you feel more comfortable during the day and social connection. All contribute to the healing process. In addition, she use cognitive behavioral therapy to learn to “be with the pain.” She emphasizes the transformative role of neuroplasticity in paving new pathways in the brain to alleviate chronic pain. Chaplain Bonnie Lester, MA, Certified in Advanced Pain Rehabilitation, is a pain coach who has personally overcome CRPS after a 30-year struggle with this challenging chronic pain syndrome. Drawing on her own recovery and evidence-based research, she now specializes in teaching neuroplasticity techniques and comprehensive lifestyle strategies to help others overcome chronic pain. Bonnie has helped hundreds of clients significantly reduce their pain levels and improve their quality of life. She is the author of the book Unwinding Pain: Affordable and Accessible Ways to Feel Better Now (available on Amazon for preorder now). For more information, visit https://www.bonnielester.com/ .
Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Back in Control Radio with Doctor
David Hanscombe.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Back in
Control Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe. I'm your host, Tom Masters,
and our guest today is chaplin Bonnie Lester, a pain
coach who has certified in Advanced Pain Rehabilitation. She has
personally overcome complex regional pain syndrome after a thirty year
(00:35):
struggle with this challenging chronic pain condition. Drawing on her
own recovery and evidence based research, she now specializes in
teaching neuroplasticity techniques and comprehensive lifestyle strategies to help others
overcome their chronic pain. She has helped hundreds of clients
(00:55):
significantly reduce their pain and improve their quality of life.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Welcome, Thank you, Tom. I like to welcome back Bonnie Lester.
She's a chaplain who lives close to me in Dublin, California.
I live in Oakland and she's a pain coach and
we just spent half an hour or her talking about
chronic pain. She was called chronic regional pain syndrome also
known as reflex of the dystrophe, which next to TMJ
(01:23):
is considered one of the worst pains that a person
can experience. Now, the first podcast she told us her
story in nineteen sixty had a car accent. She has
some procedures end up with total body pain for almost
thirty years and she's now doing fine. So she now
specializes in teaching her a plasticity techniques the confidential lifestyles.
She has a book coming out called Unwinding Pain, and
(01:45):
we'll talk about how to access her services at the
end of the program. But she since twenty ten has
been basically free of chronic regional pain syndrome, which in
the medical world is considered unheard of. So Bonnie, welcome back,
Thank you for having me here. Yeah, we're very excited
about hearing your story because when people coming with chronic
(02:05):
regional paint syndrome, they're just so discouraged. They've been bounce
around the medical system. We actually know from primate research
that when you keep dashing hopes, you actually induce depression,
and so so Harry Harlowe. Back in the seventies, Wood
was experiment with monkeys much that would not be past
Muster today. But he did all these things with monkeys,
(02:29):
but he could not induce depression until he inventor was
called a pit of despair, and his staff hated it.
But he had a cage where it was small at
the bottom, wider at the top, had an open cage
at the top. The monkeys would scrambled up the side
of the cage and then slide back down, jump up,
slide down. In about half day they would quit doing it,
(02:50):
and then they was sit in the middle of the
cage and just not move and so basically induced depression
by repeatedly dashing hopes. So you were in the medical
system thirty years. All sorts of strategies were taking place,
and you had sort of an interesting respective from your background.
But somehow you live with total body pain for almost
(03:11):
thirty years, which is remarkable. Well it's even more remarkable
since twenty ten you basically healed. So what I'm really
interested in, what my autist wants to hear, is that
what something happen around twenty ten that seemed to change
as some type of a shift to allow you to
go from you know, deal with the symptoms, actually going
to pain free. So I'm curious what happened around twenty
(03:33):
ten that seemed to help you move forward.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Well, I learned about neuroplasticity and that fact, no matter
what age you're at, you can retrain your brain.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
All the way up until twenty ten, people would say
that CRPS would be Oh, there's a flaw in your
nervous system, but you know it can't be debugged, which
is frustrating because my husband is a computer genius and
he was working throughout the night debugging all these computer programs,
and I used to fantasize, Oh, if you can only
debug my nervous system. Okay. Now, up until that point
(04:06):
in time, I was doing a lot of imagery.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
I did a lot of mindful work. The way I
survived with the.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Burning chronic pain is I wore a tens unit throughout,
you know, different parts of my body. I did a
lot of mindfulness activities in my life. I never gave
up hope. I know when I connect with a lot
of people, they don't have hope. They've been beaten down
by the medical system. They're frustrated, and they're looking for answers.
And what I do is I plantacy to hope and
(04:35):
I water it and help them find a resilience within
themselves to you know, feel better. And the one thing
I always do is I banish the word pain. I
always talk about okay, so you had more discomfort that day,
you know. I call myself the pain police. You stop
thinking of yourself as that I'm a pain patient. I'm
in chronic pain. You're always giving yourself the label, and
(04:55):
your brain is hearing that like, oh pain. That means
I have to warn her that something's going on and
be a alert. And then the other situations that you
get into have more pain you bump your elbow than oh,
we better say that's really painful, you know, And so
I re engaging the body to learn not that they're
in a pain state. The sympathetic nervous system is in
(05:16):
an excitable state, the fight or flight thing, so it's
down regulating. Turning the volume down is what I in retrospect,
That's what I was working on. Now I know the language,
but I listen to my body and that's what I
was doing.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well. I think there's two parts of healing. One it's
turning down the volume. No word is regulating and physiology,
and the other one is in neuroplasticity and creating joy. Right,
there are two separate skill sets. If you're trying to
do the hedonistic lifestyle to outrun your pain. Why the
data shows is actually inflammatory. So what you're doing you
(05:52):
learn to separate your identity from this. Stress physiology is
a gift, by the ways, what keeps us alive, So
you learn to regulate that, and then simultaneously you're intimately
nurturing joy and your brands can develop wherever replace its attention.
So I have a little saying that to have a
good life, you have to live a good life. It
takes practice. So I'm gonna put one concept out there.
(06:16):
I really want to hear what you have to say,
cause I get to hear myself talk all the time.
I mean, one day one of my fellows and clinic
asked me says, don't you tired of talking? I go, no,
not really, So I will stop talking here in a second.
But the bottom line is is that if you take
your stress physology personally and fight it, you've now established
(06:37):
stronger connections. You can separate from it and then move
a different direction. You create a whole different set of circuits.
So the healing actually occurs in ner plasticity, recreating these
new circuits that you're not fighting in the all circuits.
So I roll at a website post called quit fighting darkness,
just turn on the lights. So it's not positive thinking,
which is a way suppressing negative thinking, but you mean
(07:00):
the word hope and moving forward that you never gave
up on, so that positive vision and making positive choices
start to really change your brain. But nonetheless you've done.
You did a lot of work, so I guess say
one more thing. Sorry. So the term has come up
in my mind the last couple of months, just relatively recently,
(07:21):
is deep healing versus self help. And with deep with
self help, we do all these things to help ourself
have less pain. Little pain still running the show. So
I'm gonna do with all these techniques to have less pain.
I don't want to suffer. And that doesn't work because
you're still trying to fight the pain. So deep healing
occurs when you train yourself to be with the pain,
(07:44):
not to fight it, to be with it, which is
a learned skill and mind over matter doesn't work because
the pain you had, particularly is a really bad pain.
But as you start training yourself in little bits at
a time to learn to be with the pain, at
the same time nurturing joy. We call that deep healing
and deep yon occurags we spend more time in safety
physiology as opposed to threat physiology, and in fire fighter
(08:06):
threat physiology your consuming resources. Your body's on fire, it
keeps building on itself, and safety physiology your body heals,
so deep yon occurs as your body actually is in
city physiology is some tipping point. The body really does
regenerate and heal. Because the body didn't heal, we won't
be alive here today. So what you have done in
(08:27):
my terminology is induced deep healing. But again twenty ten,
as you came out of this chronic regional paint syndrome
that's been fourteen years ago. That's unbelievable. But if you
understand the body, it's not right.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
That's right, and I have to speak on to your
deep healing. That includes I use cognitive behavioral therapy. It
has to do how I think and engage in the world.
Instead of saying, oh, my neck's on fire, I'd say,
oh it's tight, let me rub you. You know, I
engaged in it in a different way. I didn't fight
the pain, but I found out how to soothe it
and feel comfortable with it.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
So I wasn't in a panic, right.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Right, So we have a model called dynamic healing where
connubial therapy changes the input every nurses and that process
of your stresses, and then the other physiology or the output.
So there's different ways in each portal actually lower your
threat physiology. But what I'm really curious, I think, what
we really want to hear from you is that can
you define from your perspective what neuroplasticity means, because as
(09:24):
you build this different set of circuits, you don't have
to fight the pain service anymore. Is they become somewhat
irrelevant in a way.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Well, the way I have to explain it's different ages.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I say, think of your brain as having a highway
and you keep going down the same highway all the time. Well, neuroplasticity,
if you stimulate your brain in other ways, you're paving
new highways, you know, stretches in the highway, and you
do it enough times that the old highway that was pain, paint, pain, agony,
agony becomes a detour that you never go to anymore.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
It's unused. So you're paving yourself, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
And that's the best visual I could give, And people
seem to respond to that. There's a lot of other
metaphors to use, but I go for the simplest, shortest
one that people can exsiss.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So what change again? You tried all sorts of self
help processes and somehow you induce deep healing and maybe
you can't put it. Maybe, I mean when people do
shift into the new life, it's hard to put it
into words. What exactly happened. It's like a huge shift
takes place. You can't wait to describe it. But what
sort of concepts first of all, causes shift and what
(10:32):
set of concepts kept the shift moving forward? That I
really don't want to finish off what you have to
offer your walk in your door as a patient or
a client. You know, where do you offer me to actually,
you know, change my brain to where it wants to go.
But I have to emphasize with you the pain really
does disappear. If you find that really hard to believe.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Right, Yeah, So back to the neuroplasticity. One thing when
I started, I was using sensory stimulation. First thing I
did was I put a mint in my mouth and
I was walking at my neighbor's dog in the morning
after my husband had his incident. When I heard about neuroplasticity,
I jumped on it right away because I knew that
would hope, new hope for me. So I kept walking along,
(11:11):
and rather than hearing the pain messages and feeling the burning,
I kept talking to myself, Oh my tongue is getting
cold from the mint, you know. So I started doing
a lot of sensory stimulation activities, and I started linking them.
I started using visual sensory, I did audio sensory. And
here's something very important. It's just not a one dynamic
(11:32):
thing where one thing is going to work. What I
was doing was when I was walking, I started to
talk to people. I started becoming social. I started taking
time and not talking about how much pain I was in,
but I would even if the when the burning was
still going on. Before I really was down the avenue
of improving, I was changing my life into a life
of joy because I was out in the community. I
(11:53):
was no longer staying in the bedroom, just you know,
licking my wounds of agony. And each new thing I
achieved opened up the world to me. And one big
thing that's not talked enough about in pain management is sleep.
I didn't understand that if you only sleep three hours
a night, which I was doing, your body's going to
ache more anyway, even if you didn't have CRPS. So
(12:15):
I started linking together all these lifestyle behaviors that were
going to strengthen how my total body felt. So I
was no longer just saying I'm taking care of my
burning the CRPS. I'm becoming healthier all over, becoming balanced.
I was finding balance in my life. And then I
would do something called the comfort cake. Before I left
(12:35):
my house in the morning, I met thinking about all
the layers I was going to do to make me
comfortable and happy throughout the day. It may be listening
to certain music, it may be watching some documentary that
brought joy in my life. But I always had something
planned for myself instead of waiting to deal with how
high were my pain levels? I get away from talking
about pain levels. I didn't identify I'm an eight today
(12:58):
or I'm a nine today. I talk about being in pain.
You know, I was always moving towards comfort. That was
my thing, the comfort cake. And so one thing built
on another, and I didn't know how fast I recovered
because I was still using the opioids.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
And then there was a lot of stuff in the news.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
People were dying, you know, all the news in twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So I approached my doctor.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I said, I want to taper off of all this
medicine because whatever pain I still have left, my mindfulness
and neuroplasticity.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Will get me through the day. And I was shocked.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Once I stabilized from getting off of six medications, I
was pain free.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And so I just want to unwind a few things.
I mean, I can't tell you word for word you've
described the healing process. I mean, it's unbelievable. So I
discovered many years ago the number one thing that is
a factor is sleep. The NATA shows one night of sleep,
one night of poor sleep actually increases your pain fifty
percent the next day. There's actually more correlation with life
(14:00):
can sleep than pain as far as disability. Sleep is
a huge deal. And until you're sleeping, I always when
I was in practice doing this learning by back then
trial and error is that if you're not sleeping, forget
about it. And people say, well, I can't sleep because
of the pain. Well, the data show is actually that
lack sleep actually causes the pain. It's not the other
(14:21):
way around. So that's pretty fascinating. So that's remarkable that
you figure that out very quickly. Then you talk about
cognitive restructure. So let me answer a different question. So
one of the cardinal rules now that we have in
our process is called not discussing your pain medical care
at all. What percent of your working hours you think
(14:42):
you were discussing your pain when you were talking to
other people.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
After I started doing your plasticity.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Or before no, no, no, before just over the suffering days.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
You know, I was.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Pretty isolated, so it wasn't that I was. I was
talking to myself about it more than anything. I used
to say, nobody can believe how much pain I'm in,
but they wouldn't believe how I live.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
And then people would always think I had a bad backing.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
See I was moving kind of slow, and it was
a short cut way of saying, oh, how's your back today,
because they had no idea what CRPS was. But I
was in that domain of being a.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Pain patient, you know, so you discuss your pain relatively commonly.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
It was more common, though.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I do have to say I noticed a change, a
shift in me where I was becoming more the more
I became resilient. Even before I knew about neuroplasticity, the
less I talked about it. You know, for the first
fifteen years I talked about it, and after that I
shifted out.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So we know, one of the worst prognosis, for instance,
problem biology is belonged to a bibromiologist support group. Yeah,
and the problem is, again, you fought neuroplasticity. Your brain
can development exactly plays attention. So you want to separate
from your pain and your physiology and then move a
different direction. And so it's really hard. We would do
these workshops. It was an absolute must that she could
(16:00):
not discuss your pain and medical care. Also, no complaining, gossiping,
giving unasked for advice or criticism. In other words, no negativity.
And so it's not psychological. It's a programming issue. But
your brains can develop or replace your attention. And I
did the same thing. I was fifteen years of really
bad chronic pain, and I became an epiphanatic because on
(16:20):
the Internet I always looking for the next solution and
I talked about my pain all the time. I vote
psychotherapy for fifteen years. That's a lot of psychotherapy, and
my pain got way way worse. But if you look
at the brain as a computer, similar artificial intelligence, it's
going to program wherever replaces attention. So it is hard.
(16:40):
People actually have a hard time stopping discussing their pain.
And I get it. I mean it's overwhelming your life.
Why wouldn't you discuss it? Well, it's just an absolute role.
I do coaching twice a week also, and so the
cardinal rule is you cannot discuss your pain. But we
held the workshops. People literally go behind the building to
discuss or pain. It's I mean it's hard. I mean,
(17:04):
you know you're in trouble. You want you feel like
you're connecting to other people and you're connecting, but you're
connecting on your pain. So that's an interesting part of
your journey also. So so sleep's a big one. Understanding
the problems a big one. You know, positive outlook and
vision is important. So let's have about social isolation for
a second. How isolated did you get?
Speaker 4 (17:27):
I had gotten excuse me, very isolated.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And actually that is a you know, I talked about
the six pillars of lifestyle medicine and within it a
sleep of course, and social connection is really important.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
That's very very valuable.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And I do talk about it in my book, because
even when you're bed ridden, you could figure out a
way to be socially connected, and not so much as
support groups where you're gonna I call them the moaning
grown groups.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Oh there you go, Yeah, the moaning grown groups.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
But I do caution about the brain and reading about
somebody else's agony, so you know, it's hard to walk
somebody through the fact that you know, yes, you've been
living this way, but you can connect socially and they
people brighten up.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
It's just it's like, you know, pouring.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Water on a daisy that needs water and suddenly it blooms.
So it's one of my go to things about the
social connection. Is very important not to be isolated and
not wait until the day comes that.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
You lose your pain.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Everyone has well, the day that my pain goes away,
then I could start living.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
You can't do that.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Well. The data shows that fifty three percent of Americans
are socially isolated. That's a lot. And I went through
my chronic pain process being social. I thought it was
the worst part of the ordeal. I don't know how
you felt, but the only word I can use for
the social isolation was crushing. I mean, how did you
feel in that mode?
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah, crushing is a good word.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And again I was, you know, the rest of the
world was on something called Facebook, and I was not
at a computer because my hands didn't work and voice
recognition didn't work, so I didn't have any of those
kind of outlets. So after my mother used to call
me all the time, she passed away in nine So
my husband would go to work all day, my kids
were already in college away from the house. I would
go all day long without talking to anybody. And that
(19:05):
is not healthy.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
No, it's really, really, really bad. What we've also learned
the last couple years in our scientific informal scientific study
group is that, and I did not know this, is
that when you're socially connecting, this drug called a hormon
called oxytocin. We always thought that was a pregnancy lactation
hormone turns out one of the older molecules in the
body and is highly highly anti inflammatory, and it occurs
(19:29):
with social connection. And there's a doctor, Sue Carter, who's
an oxytocin genius. She's world renowned. She'd been doing the
research for fifty years and she's the one that's pointed
out the value of oxytocin, and humans have thrived and
survived by social connection. We don't have it, people get sick.
So we tease her a little bit because we think
(19:51):
that that oxytocin social body in factor may may be
the answer to chronic pain.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Well, you're speaking something really important.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I call them the happy neurotransmitters, and among them is
oxytocin and then dopamine. What do we have serotonin A
do O, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
The E word and.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, yeah, there's there's also the growth for them. But
also your thiroid levels change. Also your sidi kinds you
inflammatory sidikind's dropped down dramatically. But the bottom line is,
we'll go back to the whole problem is that you
induce deep healing. I mean threat physiology is necessary. I
mean we're on alert all the time. I mean every
(20:38):
living creature is threatened. We have to stay alive by
our efforts. And I did learn one day that dolphins,
for instance, sleep with one eye open. I mean we're
all on alert to stay alive. So firefly is always there.
But if you're if you don't have any respite from it.
In other words, if I can't get threatened by a dog,
the dog goes away, should least oun takes a nap.
(20:58):
If your boss yells at you, your brain keeps going
and your body stays in fight or flight. So is
a chronic stress is what causes illness and disease? Is
not the intermittent stresses. So again, increasing time and safety
i e. Social connection is a big factor as far
as actually inducing what I call deep healing. So what
(21:21):
I like to just back up on when I read
your book, I mean I didn't see any base that
you didn't cover. I mean I was very impressed. I'm
delighted to have met you in US connecting because it's
going to take a village to switch this paradigm around.
And in mainstream medicine this is considered quote psychological and
very quote soft medicine. And guess what I'm going to
(21:44):
ran for a second. I mean mainstream medicine does not
have any data. We're stuck in structure, not in the
physiology revanches. You take a car, A parked car has
no symptoms. You have to turn the car on. Same
thing in Bruce Bruce Slipton, by chance or of Bruce Lipton.
So he's a friend of mine. He lives in Santa
(22:05):
Cruz and you wrote a book called The Biology Belief.
He gives are a crude analogy, but he's correct. Is
that which is the difference between living human being and
a cadaver, Well, it's energy and life and physiology. It
ever has the same structure, but no symptoms of course,
So it's a functioning body that causes I'm sorry, the
functioning about this body keeps us a lie. A dysfunctioning
(22:28):
body or poorly functioning body is what creates symptoms, illness
and disease. So it's about the physiology. But someone stick
with your neal plasticity part of it, because when your
tensions on things that are joyful, it's not psychological. You
actually change your body's chemistry. You're lowering inflammation, you're putting
fuel back in the cells, you're regenerating and healing. So
(22:49):
it's physiological, not psychological. So I'm really excited about your book,
and essentially everything you talk about in there is actually
lowering physiology from through physiology to safety. We call it
dynamic healing because it hammens every day, all day long.
But I also want to say on. One thing you
talked about is that I have a little trim called
active meditation. Have you heard me use this terminol?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Probably not, I've heard you use.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
It's like three to five seconds of just you know,
dropping your shoulders down, feeling the breeze, tasting your food,
instead of fighting all the pain and central input, unpleasant thoughts,
et cetera. Is ably place your brain on a different sensation,
Like right now you listen to a sound, drop it down,
and as you repeatedly put your brain on other sensations
(23:34):
while you're not fighting the pain, you're simply put in
your brain where you want to put it. It sounds
like that's something that's a big part of how it
started your healing, right, And it's.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Sort of like going into neutral, into a better place.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
One thing I haven't mentioned is the importance of pat
companionship in my life. And in the book, I talk
about walking my neighbor's dog, okay, walking, you know, and
I have exotic birds in my house because until I
went through minute Pause, I used to be allergic to dogs.
So it was right at that point where suddenly I
could take my neighbor's dog for a walk. That was
(24:08):
really something I look forward to, So that gave me
a little bit of joy before I discovered neuroplasticity. So
I just want you to know that pets are really valuable,
and in my book I do talk about if you
cannot afford a pet, or your environment means you can't
support a pet, there's many ways you can enjoy animals,
and they're fifty percent of my book proceeds are going
(24:28):
to go to animal resk ording organizations because that's how
I value the human animal bond and healing.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well. Again, there's abundant, abundant data on pet therapy, horse therapy,
different pet therapies, all sorts of guide dogs. So no,
absolutely can it's about pets that they're easy to get
along with another humans, right, I agree, So it's still
it's still a lot of contact with another life. But
(24:57):
and of course they're great. So anyway, so this is
I would highly recommend looking at her book Unwinding Pain.
She has all sorts of concepts, but it boils down
to this is partly really what emphasizes today is this
neuroplasticity is that you find ways to regulate your physiology
(25:17):
one skill set. But so I call it creativity, you
create the brain that you want. So as you create
the brain that you want, that's where as I put
in a virtual desktop on your computer, you just program
a different brain. And one of my more brilliant scientists friends,
doctor Navio, so the picture of a beautiful house that
had burned down, and he pointed out you, you can't
(25:38):
rebuild that same house with the burned down timbers. You
have to rebuild your brain. So you can't fix your brain,
you have to rebuild it. And what you're talking about everything,
and there's never one solution, that whole combination of things
that you present that actually heals the pain. But the
message I want to give today and I think I can,
that's why I'm so exy about talking to you, is
that chronic regional PAINSTIM is worst to the worst. It
(26:01):
does not get worse than that. And you are not
only not only you're not your way past management that
you just don't have that problem anymore. So again, for
me personally, it convinces me that I think you can
reprogram your brain around anything, and total body pains sort
of impressive to me. So anyway, so there's a lot
(26:23):
of hope for me when I talk to my clients said, yeah,
let's go talk to Bonnie.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
If if I leave you with any image of me
is hope. You know that we all have resilience. It's
just a matter of watering it and letting it grow
and come forth. And remember that pain is a four
letter word. You could talk about discomfort. And now you're
going to massage this and you're going to do some
warmth you know, heat treatment there, and you're going to
(26:49):
move on with life and not be stuck in a
moan and grown situation.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
So just to be clear, you have the book Unwind
your Pain. They'll be coming out shortly. How else can
we access your resource.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Bonnie Lester dot com.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Okay, could sign on there and you could get my
newsletter which I have some great I have a great brochure,
not brochure, but information about sleep and also stress management,
all the pillars, anti inflammatory foods that you should consider eating,
how to do social connections, and to avoid risky substances
(27:24):
that may be impeding your healing. You know, you want
good circulations, so you really got to stop smoking. You know,
there's so many things that your whole body can heal.
And that's that's what I.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Talk about Oh fantastic. Well, Bonnie is a pleasure meeting
you and we will stay in touch and thank you
very much for being on the program.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Well, it's been a delight talking to you and Tom, so.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I'd like to thank our guest Bonnie Luster for being
on the show today and explaining the different techniques she
discovered and used that helped her heal from complex regional
pain syndrome. I'm your host, masters reminding you to be
back next week for another episode of Back in Control
Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe, and in the meantime, be
(28:12):
sure to visit the website at www dot backincontrol dot com.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Thanks for listening today and join us next week for
Back in Control Radium
Hello, and welcome to Back in Control Radio with Doctor
David Hanscombe.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Back in
Control Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe. I'm your host, Tom Masters,
and our guest today is chaplin Bonnie Lester, a pain
coach who has certified in Advanced Pain Rehabilitation. She has
personally overcome complex regional pain syndrome after a thirty year
(00:35):
struggle with this challenging chronic pain condition. Drawing on her
own recovery and evidence based research, she now specializes in
teaching neuroplasticity techniques and comprehensive lifestyle strategies to help others
overcome their chronic pain. She has helped hundreds of clients
(00:55):
significantly reduce their pain and improve their quality of life.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Welcome, Thank you, Tom. I like to welcome back Bonnie Lester.
She's a chaplain who lives close to me in Dublin, California.
I live in Oakland and she's a pain coach and
we just spent half an hour or her talking about
chronic pain. She was called chronic regional pain syndrome also
known as reflex of the dystrophe, which next to TMJ
(01:23):
is considered one of the worst pains that a person
can experience. Now, the first podcast she told us her
story in nineteen sixty had a car accent. She has
some procedures end up with total body pain for almost
thirty years and she's now doing fine. So she now
specializes in teaching her a plasticity techniques the confidential lifestyles.
She has a book coming out called Unwinding Pain, and
(01:45):
we'll talk about how to access her services at the
end of the program. But she since twenty ten has
been basically free of chronic regional pain syndrome, which in
the medical world is considered unheard of. So Bonnie, welcome back,
Thank you for having me here. Yeah, we're very excited
about hearing your story because when people coming with chronic
(02:05):
regional paint syndrome, they're just so discouraged. They've been bounce
around the medical system. We actually know from primate research
that when you keep dashing hopes, you actually induce depression,
and so so Harry Harlowe. Back in the seventies, Wood
was experiment with monkeys much that would not be past
Muster today. But he did all these things with monkeys,
(02:29):
but he could not induce depression until he inventor was
called a pit of despair, and his staff hated it.
But he had a cage where it was small at
the bottom, wider at the top, had an open cage
at the top. The monkeys would scrambled up the side
of the cage and then slide back down, jump up,
slide down. In about half day they would quit doing it,
(02:50):
and then they was sit in the middle of the
cage and just not move and so basically induced depression
by repeatedly dashing hopes. So you were in the medical
system thirty years. All sorts of strategies were taking place,
and you had sort of an interesting respective from your background.
But somehow you live with total body pain for almost
(03:11):
thirty years, which is remarkable. Well it's even more remarkable
since twenty ten you basically healed. So what I'm really
interested in, what my autist wants to hear, is that
what something happen around twenty ten that seemed to change
as some type of a shift to allow you to
go from you know, deal with the symptoms, actually going
to pain free. So I'm curious what happened around twenty
(03:33):
ten that seemed to help you move forward.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Well, I learned about neuroplasticity and that fact, no matter
what age you're at, you can retrain your brain.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
All the way up until twenty ten, people would say
that CRPS would be Oh, there's a flaw in your
nervous system, but you know it can't be debugged, which
is frustrating because my husband is a computer genius and
he was working throughout the night debugging all these computer programs,
and I used to fantasize, Oh, if you can only
debug my nervous system. Okay. Now, up until that point
(04:06):
in time, I was doing a lot of imagery.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
I did a lot of mindful work. The way I
survived with the.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Burning chronic pain is I wore a tens unit throughout,
you know, different parts of my body. I did a
lot of mindfulness activities in my life. I never gave
up hope. I know when I connect with a lot
of people, they don't have hope. They've been beaten down
by the medical system. They're frustrated, and they're looking for answers.
And what I do is I plantacy to hope and
(04:35):
I water it and help them find a resilience within
themselves to you know, feel better. And the one thing
I always do is I banish the word pain. I
always talk about okay, so you had more discomfort that day,
you know. I call myself the pain police. You stop
thinking of yourself as that I'm a pain patient. I'm
in chronic pain. You're always giving yourself the label, and
(04:55):
your brain is hearing that like, oh pain. That means
I have to warn her that something's going on and
be a alert. And then the other situations that you
get into have more pain you bump your elbow than oh,
we better say that's really painful, you know, And so
I re engaging the body to learn not that they're
in a pain state. The sympathetic nervous system is in
(05:16):
an excitable state, the fight or flight thing, so it's
down regulating. Turning the volume down is what I in retrospect,
That's what I was working on. Now I know the language,
but I listen to my body and that's what I
was doing.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Well. I think there's two parts of healing. One it's
turning down the volume. No word is regulating and physiology,
and the other one is in neuroplasticity and creating joy. Right,
there are two separate skill sets. If you're trying to
do the hedonistic lifestyle to outrun your pain. Why the
data shows is actually inflammatory. So what you're doing you
(05:52):
learn to separate your identity from this. Stress physiology is
a gift, by the ways, what keeps us alive, So
you learn to regulate that, and then simultaneously you're intimately
nurturing joy and your brands can develop wherever replace its attention.
So I have a little saying that to have a
good life, you have to live a good life. It
takes practice. So I'm gonna put one concept out there.
(06:16):
I really want to hear what you have to say,
cause I get to hear myself talk all the time.
I mean, one day one of my fellows and clinic
asked me says, don't you tired of talking? I go, no,
not really, So I will stop talking here in a second.
But the bottom line is is that if you take
your stress physology personally and fight it, you've now established
(06:37):
stronger connections. You can separate from it and then move
a different direction. You create a whole different set of circuits.
So the healing actually occurs in ner plasticity, recreating these
new circuits that you're not fighting in the all circuits.
So I roll at a website post called quit fighting darkness,
just turn on the lights. So it's not positive thinking,
which is a way suppressing negative thinking, but you mean
(07:00):
the word hope and moving forward that you never gave
up on, so that positive vision and making positive choices
start to really change your brain. But nonetheless you've done.
You did a lot of work, so I guess say
one more thing. Sorry. So the term has come up
in my mind the last couple of months, just relatively recently,
(07:21):
is deep healing versus self help. And with deep with
self help, we do all these things to help ourself
have less pain. Little pain still running the show. So
I'm gonna do with all these techniques to have less pain.
I don't want to suffer. And that doesn't work because
you're still trying to fight the pain. So deep healing
occurs when you train yourself to be with the pain,
(07:44):
not to fight it, to be with it, which is
a learned skill and mind over matter doesn't work because
the pain you had, particularly is a really bad pain.
But as you start training yourself in little bits at
a time to learn to be with the pain, at
the same time nurturing joy. We call that deep healing
and deep yon occurags we spend more time in safety
physiology as opposed to threat physiology, and in fire fighter
(08:06):
threat physiology your consuming resources. Your body's on fire, it
keeps building on itself, and safety physiology your body heals,
so deep yon occurs as your body actually is in
city physiology is some tipping point. The body really does
regenerate and heal. Because the body didn't heal, we won't
be alive here today. So what you have done in
(08:27):
my terminology is induced deep healing. But again twenty ten,
as you came out of this chronic regional paint syndrome
that's been fourteen years ago. That's unbelievable. But if you
understand the body, it's not right.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
That's right, and I have to speak on to your
deep healing. That includes I use cognitive behavioral therapy. It
has to do how I think and engage in the world.
Instead of saying, oh, my neck's on fire, I'd say,
oh it's tight, let me rub you. You know, I
engaged in it in a different way. I didn't fight
the pain, but I found out how to soothe it
and feel comfortable with it.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
So I wasn't in a panic, right.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Right, So we have a model called dynamic healing where
connubial therapy changes the input every nurses and that process
of your stresses, and then the other physiology or the output.
So there's different ways in each portal actually lower your
threat physiology. But what I'm really curious, I think, what
we really want to hear from you is that can
you define from your perspective what neuroplasticity means, because as
(09:24):
you build this different set of circuits, you don't have
to fight the pain service anymore. Is they become somewhat
irrelevant in a way.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Well, the way I have to explain it's different ages.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I say, think of your brain as having a highway
and you keep going down the same highway all the time. Well, neuroplasticity,
if you stimulate your brain in other ways, you're paving
new highways, you know, stretches in the highway, and you
do it enough times that the old highway that was pain, paint, pain, agony,
agony becomes a detour that you never go to anymore.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
It's unused. So you're paving yourself, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
And that's the best visual I could give, And people
seem to respond to that. There's a lot of other
metaphors to use, but I go for the simplest, shortest
one that people can exsiss.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So what change again? You tried all sorts of self
help processes and somehow you induce deep healing and maybe
you can't put it. Maybe, I mean when people do
shift into the new life, it's hard to put it
into words. What exactly happened. It's like a huge shift
takes place. You can't wait to describe it. But what
sort of concepts first of all, causes shift and what
(10:32):
set of concepts kept the shift moving forward? That I
really don't want to finish off what you have to
offer your walk in your door as a patient or
a client. You know, where do you offer me to actually,
you know, change my brain to where it wants to go.
But I have to emphasize with you the pain really
does disappear. If you find that really hard to believe.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Right, Yeah, So back to the neuroplasticity. One thing when
I started, I was using sensory stimulation. First thing I
did was I put a mint in my mouth and
I was walking at my neighbor's dog in the morning
after my husband had his incident. When I heard about neuroplasticity,
I jumped on it right away because I knew that
would hope, new hope for me. So I kept walking along,
(11:11):
and rather than hearing the pain messages and feeling the burning,
I kept talking to myself, Oh my tongue is getting
cold from the mint, you know. So I started doing
a lot of sensory stimulation activities, and I started linking them.
I started using visual sensory, I did audio sensory. And
here's something very important. It's just not a one dynamic
(11:32):
thing where one thing is going to work. What I
was doing was when I was walking, I started to
talk to people. I started becoming social. I started taking
time and not talking about how much pain I was in,
but I would even if the when the burning was
still going on. Before I really was down the avenue
of improving, I was changing my life into a life
of joy because I was out in the community. I
(11:53):
was no longer staying in the bedroom, just you know,
licking my wounds of agony. And each new thing I
achieved opened up the world to me. And one big
thing that's not talked enough about in pain management is sleep.
I didn't understand that if you only sleep three hours
a night, which I was doing, your body's going to
ache more anyway, even if you didn't have CRPS. So
(12:15):
I started linking together all these lifestyle behaviors that were
going to strengthen how my total body felt. So I
was no longer just saying I'm taking care of my
burning the CRPS. I'm becoming healthier all over, becoming balanced.
I was finding balance in my life. And then I
would do something called the comfort cake. Before I left
(12:35):
my house in the morning, I met thinking about all
the layers I was going to do to make me
comfortable and happy throughout the day. It may be listening
to certain music, it may be watching some documentary that
brought joy in my life. But I always had something
planned for myself instead of waiting to deal with how
high were my pain levels? I get away from talking
about pain levels. I didn't identify I'm an eight today
(12:58):
or I'm a nine today. I talk about being in pain.
You know, I was always moving towards comfort. That was
my thing, the comfort cake. And so one thing built
on another, and I didn't know how fast I recovered
because I was still using the opioids.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
And then there was a lot of stuff in the news.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
People were dying, you know, all the news in twenty thirteen,
twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
So I approached my doctor.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I said, I want to taper off of all this
medicine because whatever pain I still have left, my mindfulness
and neuroplasticity.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Will get me through the day. And I was shocked.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Once I stabilized from getting off of six medications, I
was pain free.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And so I just want to unwind a few things.
I mean, I can't tell you word for word you've
described the healing process. I mean, it's unbelievable. So I
discovered many years ago the number one thing that is
a factor is sleep. The NATA shows one night of sleep,
one night of poor sleep actually increases your pain fifty
percent the next day. There's actually more correlation with life
(14:00):
can sleep than pain as far as disability. Sleep is
a huge deal. And until you're sleeping, I always when
I was in practice doing this learning by back then
trial and error is that if you're not sleeping, forget
about it. And people say, well, I can't sleep because
of the pain. Well, the data show is actually that
lack sleep actually causes the pain. It's not the other
(14:21):
way around. So that's pretty fascinating. So that's remarkable that
you figure that out very quickly. Then you talk about
cognitive restructure. So let me answer a different question. So
one of the cardinal rules now that we have in
our process is called not discussing your pain medical care
at all. What percent of your working hours you think
(14:42):
you were discussing your pain when you were talking to
other people.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
After I started doing your plasticity.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Or before no, no, no, before just over the suffering days.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
You know, I was.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Pretty isolated, so it wasn't that I was. I was
talking to myself about it more than anything. I used
to say, nobody can believe how much pain I'm in,
but they wouldn't believe how I live.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
And then people would always think I had a bad backing.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
See I was moving kind of slow, and it was
a short cut way of saying, oh, how's your back today,
because they had no idea what CRPS was. But I
was in that domain of being a.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Pain patient, you know, so you discuss your pain relatively commonly.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
It was more common, though.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I do have to say I noticed a change, a
shift in me where I was becoming more the more
I became resilient. Even before I knew about neuroplasticity, the
less I talked about it. You know, for the first
fifteen years I talked about it, and after that I
shifted out.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
So we know, one of the worst prognosis, for instance,
problem biology is belonged to a bibromiologist support group. Yeah,
and the problem is, again, you fought neuroplasticity. Your brain
can development exactly plays attention. So you want to separate
from your pain and your physiology and then move a
different direction. And so it's really hard. We would do
these workshops. It was an absolute must that she could
(16:00):
not discuss your pain and medical care. Also, no complaining, gossiping,
giving unasked for advice or criticism. In other words, no negativity.
And so it's not psychological. It's a programming issue. But
your brains can develop or replace your attention. And I
did the same thing. I was fifteen years of really
bad chronic pain, and I became an epiphanatic because on
(16:20):
the Internet I always looking for the next solution and
I talked about my pain all the time. I vote
psychotherapy for fifteen years. That's a lot of psychotherapy, and
my pain got way way worse. But if you look
at the brain as a computer, similar artificial intelligence, it's
going to program wherever replaces attention. So it is hard.
(16:40):
People actually have a hard time stopping discussing their pain.
And I get it. I mean it's overwhelming your life.
Why wouldn't you discuss it? Well, it's just an absolute role.
I do coaching twice a week also, and so the
cardinal rule is you cannot discuss your pain. But we
held the workshops. People literally go behind the building to
discuss or pain. It's I mean it's hard. I mean,
(17:04):
you know you're in trouble. You want you feel like
you're connecting to other people and you're connecting, but you're
connecting on your pain. So that's an interesting part of
your journey also. So so sleep's a big one. Understanding
the problems a big one. You know, positive outlook and
vision is important. So let's have about social isolation for
a second. How isolated did you get?
Speaker 4 (17:27):
I had gotten excuse me, very isolated.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And actually that is a you know, I talked about
the six pillars of lifestyle medicine and within it a
sleep of course, and social connection is really important.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
That's very very valuable.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And I do talk about it in my book, because
even when you're bed ridden, you could figure out a
way to be socially connected, and not so much as
support groups where you're gonna I call them the moaning
grown groups.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Oh there you go, Yeah, the moaning grown groups.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
But I do caution about the brain and reading about
somebody else's agony, so you know, it's hard to walk
somebody through the fact that you know, yes, you've been
living this way, but you can connect socially and they
people brighten up.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
It's just it's like, you know, pouring.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Water on a daisy that needs water and suddenly it blooms.
So it's one of my go to things about the
social connection. Is very important not to be isolated and
not wait until the day comes that.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
You lose your pain.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Everyone has well, the day that my pain goes away,
then I could start living.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
You can't do that.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Well. The data shows that fifty three percent of Americans
are socially isolated. That's a lot. And I went through
my chronic pain process being social. I thought it was
the worst part of the ordeal. I don't know how
you felt, but the only word I can use for
the social isolation was crushing. I mean, how did you
feel in that mode?
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah, crushing is a good word.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
And again I was, you know, the rest of the
world was on something called Facebook, and I was not
at a computer because my hands didn't work and voice
recognition didn't work, so I didn't have any of those
kind of outlets. So after my mother used to call
me all the time, she passed away in nine So
my husband would go to work all day, my kids
were already in college away from the house. I would
go all day long without talking to anybody. And that
(19:05):
is not healthy.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
No, it's really, really, really bad. What we've also learned
the last couple years in our scientific informal scientific study
group is that, and I did not know this, is
that when you're socially connecting, this drug called a hormon
called oxytocin. We always thought that was a pregnancy lactation
hormone turns out one of the older molecules in the
body and is highly highly anti inflammatory, and it occurs
(19:29):
with social connection. And there's a doctor, Sue Carter, who's
an oxytocin genius. She's world renowned. She'd been doing the
research for fifty years and she's the one that's pointed
out the value of oxytocin, and humans have thrived and
survived by social connection. We don't have it, people get sick.
So we tease her a little bit because we think
(19:51):
that that oxytocin social body in factor may may be
the answer to chronic pain.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Well, you're speaking something really important.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I call them the happy neurotransmitters, and among them is
oxytocin and then dopamine. What do we have serotonin A
do O, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
The E word and.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well, yeah, there's there's also the growth for them. But
also your thiroid levels change. Also your sidi kinds you
inflammatory sidikind's dropped down dramatically. But the bottom line is,
we'll go back to the whole problem is that you
induce deep healing. I mean threat physiology is necessary. I
mean we're on alert all the time. I mean every
(20:38):
living creature is threatened. We have to stay alive by
our efforts. And I did learn one day that dolphins,
for instance, sleep with one eye open. I mean we're
all on alert to stay alive. So firefly is always there.
But if you're if you don't have any respite from it.
In other words, if I can't get threatened by a dog,
the dog goes away, should least oun takes a nap.
(20:58):
If your boss yells at you, your brain keeps going
and your body stays in fight or flight. So is
a chronic stress is what causes illness and disease? Is
not the intermittent stresses. So again, increasing time and safety
i e. Social connection is a big factor as far
as actually inducing what I call deep healing. So what
(21:21):
I like to just back up on when I read
your book, I mean I didn't see any base that
you didn't cover. I mean I was very impressed. I'm
delighted to have met you in US connecting because it's
going to take a village to switch this paradigm around.
And in mainstream medicine this is considered quote psychological and
very quote soft medicine. And guess what I'm going to
(21:44):
ran for a second. I mean mainstream medicine does not
have any data. We're stuck in structure, not in the
physiology revanches. You take a car, A parked car has
no symptoms. You have to turn the car on. Same
thing in Bruce Bruce Slipton, by chance or of Bruce Lipton.
So he's a friend of mine. He lives in Santa
(22:05):
Cruz and you wrote a book called The Biology Belief.
He gives are a crude analogy, but he's correct. Is
that which is the difference between living human being and
a cadaver, Well, it's energy and life and physiology. It
ever has the same structure, but no symptoms of course,
So it's a functioning body that causes I'm sorry, the
functioning about this body keeps us a lie. A dysfunctioning
(22:28):
body or poorly functioning body is what creates symptoms, illness
and disease. So it's about the physiology. But someone stick
with your neal plasticity part of it, because when your
tensions on things that are joyful, it's not psychological. You
actually change your body's chemistry. You're lowering inflammation, you're putting
fuel back in the cells, you're regenerating and healing. So
(22:49):
it's physiological, not psychological. So I'm really excited about your book,
and essentially everything you talk about in there is actually
lowering physiology from through physiology to safety. We call it
dynamic healing because it hammens every day, all day long.
But I also want to say on. One thing you
talked about is that I have a little trim called
active meditation. Have you heard me use this terminol?
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Probably not, I've heard you use.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
It's like three to five seconds of just you know,
dropping your shoulders down, feeling the breeze, tasting your food,
instead of fighting all the pain and central input, unpleasant thoughts,
et cetera. Is ably place your brain on a different sensation,
Like right now you listen to a sound, drop it down,
and as you repeatedly put your brain on other sensations
(23:34):
while you're not fighting the pain, you're simply put in
your brain where you want to put it. It sounds
like that's something that's a big part of how it
started your healing, right, And it's.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Sort of like going into neutral, into a better place.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
One thing I haven't mentioned is the importance of pat
companionship in my life. And in the book, I talk
about walking my neighbor's dog, okay, walking, you know, and
I have exotic birds in my house because until I
went through minute Pause, I used to be allergic to dogs.
So it was right at that point where suddenly I
could take my neighbor's dog for a walk. That was
(24:08):
really something I look forward to, So that gave me
a little bit of joy before I discovered neuroplasticity. So
I just want you to know that pets are really valuable,
and in my book I do talk about if you
cannot afford a pet, or your environment means you can't
support a pet, there's many ways you can enjoy animals,
and they're fifty percent of my book proceeds are going
(24:28):
to go to animal resk ording organizations because that's how
I value the human animal bond and healing.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well. Again, there's abundant, abundant data on pet therapy, horse therapy,
different pet therapies, all sorts of guide dogs. So no,
absolutely can it's about pets that they're easy to get
along with another humans, right, I agree, So it's still
it's still a lot of contact with another life. But
(24:57):
and of course they're great. So anyway, so this is
I would highly recommend looking at her book Unwinding Pain.
She has all sorts of concepts, but it boils down
to this is partly really what emphasizes today is this
neuroplasticity is that you find ways to regulate your physiology
(25:17):
one skill set. But so I call it creativity, you
create the brain that you want. So as you create
the brain that you want, that's where as I put
in a virtual desktop on your computer, you just program
a different brain. And one of my more brilliant scientists friends,
doctor Navio, so the picture of a beautiful house that
had burned down, and he pointed out you, you can't
(25:38):
rebuild that same house with the burned down timbers. You
have to rebuild your brain. So you can't fix your brain,
you have to rebuild it. And what you're talking about everything,
and there's never one solution, that whole combination of things
that you present that actually heals the pain. But the
message I want to give today and I think I can,
that's why I'm so exy about talking to you, is
that chronic regional PAINSTIM is worst to the worst. It
(26:01):
does not get worse than that. And you are not
only not only you're not your way past management that
you just don't have that problem anymore. So again, for
me personally, it convinces me that I think you can
reprogram your brain around anything, and total body pains sort
of impressive to me. So anyway, so there's a lot
(26:23):
of hope for me when I talk to my clients said, yeah,
let's go talk to Bonnie.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
If if I leave you with any image of me
is hope. You know that we all have resilience. It's
just a matter of watering it and letting it grow
and come forth. And remember that pain is a four
letter word. You could talk about discomfort. And now you're
going to massage this and you're going to do some
warmth you know, heat treatment there, and you're going to
(26:49):
move on with life and not be stuck in a
moan and grown situation.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
So just to be clear, you have the book Unwind
your Pain. They'll be coming out shortly. How else can
we access your resource.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Bonnie Lester dot com.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Okay, could sign on there and you could get my
newsletter which I have some great I have a great brochure,
not brochure, but information about sleep and also stress management,
all the pillars, anti inflammatory foods that you should consider eating,
how to do social connections, and to avoid risky substances
(27:24):
that may be impeding your healing. You know, you want
good circulations, so you really got to stop smoking. You know,
there's so many things that your whole body can heal.
And that's that's what I.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Talk about Oh fantastic. Well, Bonnie is a pleasure meeting
you and we will stay in touch and thank you
very much for being on the program.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
Well, it's been a delight talking to you and Tom, so.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
I'd like to thank our guest Bonnie Luster for being
on the show today and explaining the different techniques she
discovered and used that helped her heal from complex regional
pain syndrome. I'm your host, masters reminding you to be
back next week for another episode of Back in Control
Radio with Doctor David Hanscombe, and in the meantime, be
(28:12):
sure to visit the website at www dot backincontrol dot com.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Thanks for listening today and join us next week for
Back in Control Radium
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