by David Lloyd Eaker Certified GNM Clinician.
One day, last August, I woke up with such intense pain in my right foot that I couldn’t walk on it. I know I hadn’t injured it. I was puzzled and surprised. I usually wear flip-flops on hot summer days, but I knew I hadn’t tripped up while wearing those either.
I woke up with so much pain I couldn’t believe it! It was the second and third metatarsals that connect to the other foot bones. I had to get a knee scooter — that’s how much pain I was in. I felt stuck at home.
The third day, the pain moved to the medial metatarsal. How odd, I thought. Now the inside part of my foot was in excruciating pain. What is going on?
In GNM, bones, tendons, cartilage, and muscle are all controlled by the Cerebral Medulla (White Matter) part of the brain. The Special Biological Program (SBP) is related to a Self-Devaluation Conflict (SDC). There is tissue loss in the first phase (Conflict Active Phase), followed by cell replenishment and pain in the second phase (Healing Phase). Where the bones are concerned, the skin around the bone (Periosteum) has a nerve plexus with a multitude of nerves. The stretching of the periosteum along with this nerve plexus is the reason we feel extreme pain in the healing phase of our bones in a self devaluation conflict.
I was definitely feeling extreme pain! I tried to recall when I had injured my foot in my life. I knew I had sprained my right ankle twice, but those are different bones from the metatarsals.
Around the 7th day, the pain went down to the joint between the metatarsal and my big toe. So now I was even more curious about what was going on!
I remember what I was doing the evening before the pain started. I was trying to book a flight for my summer getaway and my brand new debit card was suddenly declined. I was literally “stopped in my tracks”. The account was practically brand new and had funds, why was it suddenly declined? Why can’t I go forward with this? I felt surprised and agitated. After all, it was a brand new account but I had to find another card to use.
I was trying to book my vacation for a spot I had been visiting in California for several consecutive summers. Could that have been my DHS or a track my psyche fell on? Maybe the pain I felt will go away by the next day? I wondered if I had found the Biological Shock? That must have been when the SBP was initiated. I was puzzled but I began to recall that the previous year when I was in California, my then girlfriend accompanied me.Then I remembered in the previous year, that I began to realize that my girlfriend was likely bipolar according to her behavior. She would be on top of the world for a few weeks, and then she would suddenly go into fits of anger for a few weeks without any warning right out of the blue!
I remember there was one evening when I couldn’t tolerate her anger so I told her I was going out with some other friends for the evening. She kept insisting that she should go with me. I told her she would have to change her attitude, but that didn’t go over well…she immediately started yelling, screaming, and began calling me names. I realized at that moment that she really did have a serious mental imbalance. She had all the typical behaviors of someone with bipolar disorder.
I finally said, “I’m leaving!” That’s when I saw her leg come up, and then I felt excruciating pain in my right foot when she forcefully stomped on it!
Fortunately, I had shoes on, and the pain subsided within a few days.
After recalling that evening, I thought for sure it would release the conflict in my psyche and that my foot pain would go away. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case! I still needed to use my knee scooter and I was stuck in the house for another week.
Bones damaged by a SDC or broken bones usually take about 6 weeks to heal, so I counted 4 more weeks on the calendar to have something to look forward to with the reassurance that I would soon be healed.
My turning point came in the middle of the third week — a light bulb went on! I asked myself whether there was any other time in my life when I had hurt my right foot?
In GNM, we know that our psyche has layers that store old memories which sometimes serve as a protective mechanism if they aren’t readily available. It’s like: “It’s like peeling the layers of an onion where we peel the outer layer off first.” Once the outer layer is peeled away, our psyche has access to the next layer. Understanding that process helped me to remember an incident involving my first pair of hiking boots!
My memory took me way back to eighth grade when hiking boots were popular and like other kids I wanted a pair. I pestered my father for several weeks, like any annoying teenager and finally my father agreed to buy me a pair of hiking boots however he bought me a cheap pair at a discount store. Nonetheless, I thought it was cool to have such big boots to wear to school and I felt empowered because I was another inch taller!
We all experience embarrassing moments in life. This may seem like a story from a typical sitcom, but this is how it played out:
The very first day I wore the boots to school, another kid approached me in the crowded school hallway and asked me, “Are those steel-toed boots?” I remember being puzzled because I didn’t even know that some boots came with steel toes… I said, “What??” But he didn’t answer, smirked, and suddenly stomped on my right boot, laughed, and disappeared into the crowded school hallway. It was crazy and I hardly knew the kid.
Talk about being taken by surprise by something UNANTICIPATED! Definitely a biological shock, a DHS (Dirk Hamer Syndrome). With my tail tucked under I limped to my next class with pain in my foot.
Fast forward to last August and my painful foot. I had forgotten about that school hallway incident. But once I remembered the story again, and the humiliation, insult, and disrespect I had felt that day, and recalled everything that had taken place, within a day and a half my foot pain completely disappeared. I was walking normally on my right foot again, as if nothing had ever happened.
When I figured it out I felt a sense of relief, a lightness, like my body would float in the air. It was subtle, but I was feeling it! Some people, when they identify the conflict, they have tears well up in their eyes! I felt it! I recognized it and resolved my conflict.
The commonalities in these situations that gave me the foot pain were that in each case I hadI had been stopped, suddenly not being able to move forward at the same time I was insulted, disrepected. In 2 cases something new was involved and I thought less of myself in each case. It was a typical self-devaluation conflict (SDC)!Conventional Medicine calls this sudden turn around a “remission or a spontaneous healing” because they are unable to explain it.
I could finally go shopping and get out and walk around. The foot was still a little stiff for a day, but who cares? I could walk again!
It’s amazing how layers of memories build up over our life that we sometimes need to peel away, like an onion.
I hope by reading the GNM Chronicles that you are learning the basics of GNM and hopefully it will help you to understand that to resolve your own issues you sometimes need to peel away some layers.