Has anyone heard from @Shashank?
Noā¦
The other day I realized that @jesus.carlos hasnāt been online for a long time either; and that of those who participated in the meeting with Geoffrey, I think that fudoshin/rasengan has never registered hereā¦
And what about Craig? Does anyone have contact with him and know why he did not register here?
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Iām in occasional contact with Craig. Heās doing his own thang 
Heās alright. Might catch up with him in July
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I texted with Craig the other day. He is going well, except he did get Covid recently. I believe he is recovering well.
Yeah, there is quite a few that havenāt checked in for a long time.
Hey @Andrew ! Thanks for making me feel importantā¦which amplified āmeā and now it needs to be investigated to subdue 
Jokes aside, Iāve been lurking here n reading from time to time. You seem to be doing really good !
Iāve been a bit silent for a while because I thought of navigating the whole psychic maze of work, relationship and biological family which all had a bit of a constant āCovid flavourā(if you know what I mean haha), but that Covid flavor is now non-existant after the Omicron wave and now things seem to be picking up better on the Actualism front.
The other thing is my IBS issues(for which Iāve started a bit of homeopathic treatment, but the doc says its all due to anxiety and maybe sheās right). Whats remarkable is that when I donāt have any gut issues, Iām feeling good to great by default and then no other issue mattersā¦so that IBS issue is the major impediment for nowā¦but its a bit of a viscous loop - gut trouble > emotional trouble > gut trouble > emotional troubleā¦but not sure which one comes first at the moment
Like @claudiu is talking about that connection to the purity of the actual, I am so very clear there is this whole other brilliant fairytale-like world sitting here, but I simply donāt know yet how to reach there forever or the worse - once I get close to it, the āPost AF Braggartā identity surfaces and starts taking credits ā¦ āNo son, thats not how I became freeā¦what I did wasā¦ā 
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Oh yes. Very very possible it is the stress/feelings that come first and the IBS after. In fact it seems likely based on what you say. Though there is no way for me to know for sure.
For a period of about 2-3 weeks a few years ago, during a very stressful time at work, I developed a repetitive stress injury. I simply couldnāt type for more than a few minutes at a time, or my hands and forearms would hurt tremendously.
It was very alarming as I make a lot of my living from my technical skills.
I also read very disheartening things, that I had been causing this injury for many years before, it had built up over time, that each time I type I re-injure it, that gotta take it slowā¦ ā¦
However then I came across the book The Mindbody Prescription. I highly recommend you read it as it conveys the gist of the idea extremely well of what is known as āpsychosomatic painā.
To the contrary of what is commonly believed, psychosomatic pain is not āmade upā. It is actual pain that you feel (or actual gastrointestinal distress, etcā¦). However, in these cases, the source or cause of the pain, is psychic, not physical, in nature.
Reading the first part of the book made a compelling enough case for me to consider that my pain was in fact caused by essentially a deep refusal to look at my emotions. I considered that it might be indeed that my psyche was essentially finding a way to manifest (actual) physical pain as a distraction from having to feel the uncomfortable emotions that I was super stressed at work.
I saw signs right away that it didnāt make sense per se to think itās only physical. For example I could never quite exactly localize it ā when I thought I could it would shift slightly. And the pain only happened while doing work-related things on the computer, for example. I didnāt experience hand or forearm pain in other circumstances, and I was even able to rock climb. I put it down to well maybe the motion is so different that it doesnāt trigger the same pain ā¦ ā¦
However one day I decided to test it. If it is true, then I should be able to type just fine and not experience pain. So I booted up an online typing competition game, started goingā¦ the first second or two was fine, then I started to feel the pain coming on, and thenā¦ ! ! ā¦ the pain completely vanished! I was able to finish the race completely fine without any finger issues, and this was me going at my full typing speed.
So it was obvious then to me itās physically causedā¦ and all it really took to ācureā myself, was simply to consider that it might be psychically caused.
With the benefit of hindsight, what clearly happened is that I spent two nights working on a powerpoint presentation, doing a lot of CTRL+C and CTRL+V, which developed an actual injury in my hand. The actual injury must have healed in a day or two, but it triggered the psychosomatic symptoms and turned it from a normal easily-healed acute physical injury into a chronic impossible-to-heal physical injury. This is a common way that it happens, apparently.
Another is that some people will say experience back painā¦ then they find a willing back surgeon and get a back surgery (!), at which point the back pain is cured, and then ā¦ ā¦ they get shoulder pain! Turns out then itās a bad rotator cuff, they get the shoulder surgery and then ā¦ ā¦ pain appears somewhere else! This is what happens when people donāt treat the issue ā the psyche finds a plausible way to continue the pain symptom, given what happened (i.e. if back surgery happened that must cure back pain so now āIā must find another excuseā¦)
All that being said, your IBS could be physically causedā¦ butā¦ I highly recommend you read the book and give it a try 
.
Also, welcome back! 
.
Cheers,
Claudiu
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Yes I have experienced something similar, for many years I experienced almost constant neck pain, that would lead to a feeling of tension and unease across my whole body as well as tiredness, headaches etc. I tried all sorts of physical solutions like stretching, cleaning up me diet, exercising etc. and the solutions never lasted for long. I always believed It was to do with my posture so I would spend hours researching and performing different exercises to ābalance out the bodyā.
It was only when I uncovered that I essentially repressed a bunch of emotions for a very long time that the neck pain and general tension and pain disappeared.
I still get surprised nowadays when I find myself physically feeling bad or unwell only to find that once the cloud of sorrow shifts away I am once again feeling physically great, I was actually noticing that very thing today. This time I managed to catch it as it was happening and before I knew it I was feeling physically great again. Itās really weird the extent to which the psyche affects the experience of being alive.
Although IBS does sound a bit more physically sourced than neck pain so I guess itās something to be explored for each person.
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One of the crazier things that happen that I read in the book ā¦
So people , generally on the older side , present with back pain. They do X-ray. They find bone spurs. The doctors say the bone spurs cause the back pain. They do surgery. All seems fine ā¦
Except apparently something like 90% of people develop bone spurs at that age. And not all of them experience back pain. Itās simply a painless form of aging. So it may be that the vast majority of back surgeries are simply not necessary , it is just āmeā the identity stuffing things up !
Interesting notes also. Psychosomatic illnesses are social too. People used to faint back in the day, when experiencing shocking or overwhelming things. Nobody faints anymore. It has fallen out of fashion.
Also - stomach ulcers! People used to get them all the time. Then it became known that stress causes stomach ulcers. So now people donāt have stomach ulcers anymore because that wonāt succeed in diverting attention - the person will know itās stress.
Very sneaky :D.
About IBS, Iām not too familiar with it. But I know one year in college for the first month or two I was essentially always socially anxious. And I certainly had many an irregular bowel movement. For me it was obvious it was caused by the anxiety - so it didnāt develop into an issue. But I certainly know stress can cause gastric distress.
That isnāt to say IBS might be a physically caused condition , or that at least some cases are physically caused. But I can certainly see it being a psyche thing.
Oh also , as an aside - I used to always get sick after flying. Like get some cold or flu. Not anymore :D. The power of the hidden psyche ā¦
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Yes, I understand the psychic to neck/back/shoulder/wrist pain connection very wellā¦having suffered each one of them from time to time but now Iām able to manage them easilyā¦its like a small manageable chronic part of my life hehe
Iāve noticed that (just as Claudiu is saying too) that I could actually do a lot more physical work with these body parts but somehow a low physical activity such as sitting or typing from these very same body parts leads to all sorts of pains ? So there is a psychic aspect to itā¦usually, its always some kinda stress and rush with some kinda uncertainty/ doubt that leads to aggravation, so the key is that once I see myself going in that direction, I just slow down a bit, walk around and things remain under controlā¦however the deeper underlying issue - which is ultimately the fear of losing job and income - ultimately needs to be addressed but overall I can say that with repeated seeing, this fear is reducing gradually.
When it comes to IBS, I did rule out major organic issues by getting both a colonoscopy and an upper endoscopy, so now its mainly dietary modifications to try out along with getting rid of this anxiety(which I suspect is the major reason !)
Iām not sure how true this is but it looked pretty genuine - Read recently, that a fellow cured his longstanding anxiety with a Magnesium supplement for a month which the doc had put him on ! It couldāve been placebo who knows, but Magnesium deficiency seems technically connected to mental issues and such.
Interesting because I have been supplementing with magnesium bisglycinate for a while now but I guess its hard to distinguish wether it is the magnesium or actualism that is helping with mental issues
It was my mum who got me onto the magnesium as she is a massive health nut so she would no doubt say its more to do with the supplementation.
Just to expand on my experience with this - I found that to cure the psychosomatic pain I did not have to resolve the underlying issue! Actually all I had to do was agree with myself that I would rather experience the unpleasant emotions of stress , anxiety , even despair , etc., than to have these strange physical pains. And that was all it took. The underlying issue wasnāt resolved , but the physical pain was :).
I remember an anecdote from the book where someone was looking into whether their back pain was caused by emotional issues as opposed to physical ones. They recounted a story where they felt the back pain coming on, and then they started to wonder what was bothering them. They sat for a while and they actually arenāt able to figure it out ā¦ ā¦ but the back pain had vanished!
I say this to encourage you that if it is psychosomatic it may be much easier to cure than you are thinking. But YMMV
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Wow @Kub933 ā¦ looks like there is something to Magnesium afterallā¦As far as I recall, even Vineeto takes or used to take Magnesium supplements but it could be its similar sounding confusing cousin Manganese. I think she was taking it for some fatigue issue
Regardless, I think I will get a full Vitamin n minerals blood checkup doneā¦afterall we are actually made of these mineral stuff of the universe, so the universe detecting itās own deficiency as and in a flesh n blood body is fun stuff lol
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" Just to expand on my experience with this - I found that to cure the psychosomatic pain I did not have to resolve the underlying issue ! Actually all I had to do was agree with myself that I would rather experience the unpleasant emotions of stress , anxiety , even despair , etc., than to have these strange physical pains. And that was all it took. The underlying issue wasnāt resolved , but the physical pain was :)."
Aha I think I see now what you meanā¦I think I understand this approach. Perhaps, it has to do with ācome what mayā or "do whatever damage you wanna do, I donāt give a shit "ā¦so this stance itself might be working to reduce and eliminate that very fear sourced unpleasant emotions
Hmmmm so itās more that the purpose of psychosomatic pain is to distract away from emotional pain.
When I was stressed about work, I would have these unpleasant feelings of stress, of my burden, my responsibilities, my duties, etc. when my hands started hurting now I was focusing on this physical pain , woe is me, I really want to work (which I sincerely felt I did) but this pain prevents me from it, etc ā¦ ie I was now focusing on the physical issue instead of the emotional issue. A classic misdirect.
However as soon as I sincerely acknowledged that the pain was a way I was distracting myself from an emotional issue ā¦ the pain vanished. Because the misdirect no longer worked - I knew it wasnāt a physically caused thing - and so as it had no more purpose , āIā stopped doing it.
This didnāt resolve the underlying issues of stress, burden and responsibility - I still felt like shit about all the work pressure, to an equal extent as before (ie no reduction in the issue). But it put an end to the physical pain because the purpose of it (to distract from the emotional pain) was removed.
And also from the actualist side of it , such emotional recognition allowed me to be able to investigate the issues in a more effective way ā¦
I would recommend the book if you want a fuller description 
although I think this is the essence of it. But it has many more examples and descriptions and it can probably make the case better than I am. (I am just one person while the book describes the experiences of many.)
@claudiu Oops sorry, misunderstood you againā¦its only now I got what you meanā¦it does sound pretty new and strange to me.
The book and the anecdotes(including your own) sound really compellingā¦I think I will check it out further !
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Hi Miguel! Iām still here, but Iāve been very bussy. Still I have had dreams with Richard and with the method and I particularly liked the layout of AF diagrams. Iām more than willing to bounce possible Spanish translations. Cheers!
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