5 ms·

I suggest reading "The Mindbody Prescription" by John E Sarno. Here is an overview of what it talks about: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc http://w

by nileshk 17y ago

I suggest reading "The Mindbody Prescription" by John E Sarno. Here is an overview of what it talks about: http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc (I know it's a Word doc, but that is the best overview I've seen) It helped me recover 100% from what I thought was "RSI" and I no longer believe that typing can cause injury. I bought a Unicomp Model M a few years after this recover, not for nostalgia, but to increase my typing speed and accuracy, which it did. The only downside is that it is loud.

lutorm 17y ago
I'm a longterm RSI sufferer, now largely recovered, and I while I agree that there is certainly something to the theory that stress and reduced blood flow is part of the problem, it seems to me that he's overstating his case: "To be perfectly clear: in TMS theory, the cause of pain is not the structural abnormalities (tendon or muscle tears, tissue inflammation, herniation, degeneration, decrepit muscles, etc) or behavioral “problems” (poor posture, a bad ergonomic setup, improper typing habits) typically identified by medical practitioners. None of them are responsible for the pain – none." My personal experience readily invalidates this. I can type for a full day on my Kinesis Advantage practically without a problem these days, but if I sit with the Macbook for a day, I can certainly feel the strain. Doing that for 2-3 days will bring back quite a lot of discomfort. Why would I all of a sudden have more unconscious stress just because I moved from working at my desk to the couch?
- nileshk 17y ago
  That experience doesn't invalidate what he says, in fact its right in line with it. I suggest reading his book to fully understand it. Here is my take on it (which probably doesn't explain things as well as the book does): Your belief is that the Kinesis keyboard causes you no discomfort, but the Macbook keyboard does. You've conditioned yourself to react this way; and your subconcious mind is fully aware of what is going on and is orchestrating the reactions and exploiting your beliefs so that it can cause distractions. The distractions are to prevent repressed emotions from surfacing. The actual physical reaction is real (oxygen deprivation to the areas), it's not "all in your head", but the root cause is psychological. The mind is in control here. There may be some physical component to it. It may actually be more strenuous to use the MacBook keyboard than the Kinesis keyboard. Or in my case, slamming my fingers down aggressively on an arcade-style game controller for an hour probably could cause some discomfort. But that doesn't mean it will lead to a long-standing injury or chronic pain. Your subconcious mind will use the knowledge of what you think causes discomfort. Of course you should see a doctor to rule out things like multiple sclerosis. I had been to many different doctors and tried various alternative therapies as well (such as acupuncture), and tried different ergonomic changes (including the Kinesis contoured keyboard), all which did not help me. So I was in a position where I was open to trying anything that could help me, and this was the only thing that did.
  - lutorm 17y ago
    I see what you're aiming at, but I'm skeptical. I'm happy it worked for you, though. The thing that helped me was http://www.triggerpointbook.com/ http://www.triggerpointbook.com/
  - grandalf 17y ago
    This is totally fascinating. Would you care to share more about your experience and how you cured yourself?
    - nileshk 17y ago
      I have been meaning to finish writing some blog entries that detail the whole thing. If you're interested here they are in their not-ready-to-be-published form: Short version: http://www.nileshk.com/node/73 http://www.nileshk.com/node/73 Long version: http://www.nileshk.com/node/71 http://www.nileshk.com/node/71 I've been meaning to finish editing these entries for a while, so I will try to do that sometime soon. If you'd like me to notify you when I've finished them, you can e-mail me at hackernews /AT/ nileshk.com. The "long version" doesn't talk much about how I actually cured myself yet, but really details everything that lead up to it. But really, there wasn't much to the actually cure. I read the outline that I linked to, and it just made sense to me. I immediately read The Mindbody Prescription and it was like it explained everything that I had been experiencing and why it happened the way it did. After I finished reading it, I immediately just started trying to go back to normal and doing the things I do without restrictions. I started repeatedly telling myself "there's nothing physically wrong with me." After a week my pain was almost gone, and I told my employers that I'm ready to start working full time again (I was working part-time at that time). A month later I was completely back to normal, typing without pain and without fear of the pain returning, playing my musical instruments without pain, and using my hands and arms without any restrictions. I did also take a look at the things in my life that could have caused repressed emotions. Things that had emotionally effected me, but I just wasn't dealing with. I tried to force myself to face these things by just thinking about them and trying to "feel" the emotions that they caused. This was a gradual process over the course of the next months, and is an ongoing thing I continue to do. Now the reason this worked for me was because I immediately completely believed the ideas it presented. In my case things were lining up for me to come to this realization, I just needed it explained to me the right way (in a scientific, concrete sort of way that I can make sense of and believe). So there is this "leap of faith" you have to take with this approach, which makes it difficult for a lot of people. For me it was easy to take, because it made sense of everything I had experienced (even some things before the wrist pain), whereas before I was confused as to why such a thing could happen and only had useless diagnoses such as "fibromyalgia" or "thoracic outlet syndrome" from my doctors. For me, there had been lots of hints as to what was really going on, but no clear explanation until I came across this. What I'd suggest (assuming you've already seen a neurologist and eliminated diseases like MS as possibilities) is read this book, and if it doesn't immediately make sense to you, just keep it in mind and start observing the patterns of how your pain occurs. Give it another read after a while and see if it makes sense.
holygoat 17y ago
When I had my serious RSI episode, about 7 years ago, I observed that simply sitting at my desk or looking at my computer from across the room would induce pain in my mousing hand. There was a majority physical component -- actually using the mouse was much, much more painful -- but there was also a psychological component. I suspect that this was anticipatory tension or somesuch, similar to a flinch response.
10ren 17y ago
html version: http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/ha...
grandalf 17y ago
I'll check that out.

by nileshk 17y ago

lutorm 17y ago

I'm a longterm RSI sufferer, now largely recovered, and I while I agree that there is certainly something to the theory that stress and reduced blood flow is part of the problem, it seems to me that he's overstating his case: "To be perfectly clear: in TMS theory, the cause of pain is not the structural abnormalities (tendon or muscle tears, tissue inflammation, herniation, degeneration, decrepit muscles, etc) or behavioral “problems” (poor posture, a bad ergonomic setup, improper typing habits) typically identified by medical practitioners. None of them are responsible for the pain – none." My personal experience readily invalidates this. I can type for a full day on my Kinesis Advantage practically without a problem these days, but if I sit with the Macbook for a day, I can certainly feel the strain. Doing that for 2-3 days will bring back quite a lot of discomfort. Why would I all of a sudden have more unconscious stress just because I moved from working at my desk to the couch?

nileshk 17y ago
That experience doesn't invalidate what he says, in fact its right in line with it. I suggest reading his book to fully understand it. Here is my take on it (which probably doesn't explain things as well as the book does): Your belief is that the Kinesis keyboard causes you no discomfort, but the Macbook keyboard does. You've conditioned yourself to react this way; and your subconcious mind is fully aware of what is going on and is orchestrating the reactions and exploiting your beliefs so that it can cause distractions. The distractions are to prevent repressed emotions from surfacing. The actual physical reaction is real (oxygen deprivation to the areas), it's not "all in your head", but the root cause is psychological. The mind is in control here. There may be some physical component to it. It may actually be more strenuous to use the MacBook keyboard than the Kinesis keyboard. Or in my case, slamming my fingers down aggressively on an arcade-style game controller for an hour probably could cause some discomfort. But that doesn't mean it will lead to a long-standing injury or chronic pain. Your subconcious mind will use the knowledge of what you think causes discomfort. Of course you should see a doctor to rule out things like multiple sclerosis. I had been to many different doctors and tried various alternative therapies as well (such as acupuncture), and tried different ergonomic changes (including the Kinesis contoured keyboard), all which did not help me. So I was in a position where I was open to trying anything that could help me, and this was the only thing that did.
- lutorm 17y ago
  I see what you're aiming at, but I'm skeptical. I'm happy it worked for you, though. The thing that helped me was http://www.triggerpointbook.com/ http://www.triggerpointbook.com/
- grandalf 17y ago
  This is totally fascinating. Would you care to share more about your experience and how you cured yourself?
  - nileshk 17y ago
    I have been meaning to finish writing some blog entries that detail the whole thing. If you're interested here they are in their not-ready-to-be-published form: Short version: http://www.nileshk.com/node/73 http://www.nileshk.com/node/73 Long version: http://www.nileshk.com/node/71 http://www.nileshk.com/node/71 I've been meaning to finish editing these entries for a while, so I will try to do that sometime soon. If you'd like me to notify you when I've finished them, you can e-mail me at hackernews /AT/ nileshk.com. The "long version" doesn't talk much about how I actually cured myself yet, but really details everything that lead up to it. But really, there wasn't much to the actually cure. I read the outline that I linked to, and it just made sense to me. I immediately read The Mindbody Prescription and it was like it explained everything that I had been experiencing and why it happened the way it did. After I finished reading it, I immediately just started trying to go back to normal and doing the things I do without restrictions. I started repeatedly telling myself "there's nothing physically wrong with me." After a week my pain was almost gone, and I told my employers that I'm ready to start working full time again (I was working part-time at that time). A month later I was completely back to normal, typing without pain and without fear of the pain returning, playing my musical instruments without pain, and using my hands and arms without any restrictions. I did also take a look at the things in my life that could have caused repressed emotions. Things that had emotionally effected me, but I just wasn't dealing with. I tried to force myself to face these things by just thinking about them and trying to "feel" the emotions that they caused. This was a gradual process over the course of the next months, and is an ongoing thing I continue to do. Now the reason this worked for me was because I immediately completely believed the ideas it presented. In my case things were lining up for me to come to this realization, I just needed it explained to me the right way (in a scientific, concrete sort of way that I can make sense of and believe). So there is this "leap of faith" you have to take with this approach, which makes it difficult for a lot of people. For me it was easy to take, because it made sense of everything I had experienced (even some things before the wrist pain), whereas before I was confused as to why such a thing could happen and only had useless diagnoses such as "fibromyalgia" or "thoracic outlet syndrome" from my doctors. For me, there had been lots of hints as to what was really going on, but no clear explanation until I came across this. What I'd suggest (assuming you've already seen a neurologist and eliminated diseases like MS as possibilities) is read this book, and if it doesn't immediately make sense to you, just keep it in mind and start observing the patterns of how your pain occurs. Give it another read after a while and see if it makes sense.

holygoat 17y ago

When I had my serious RSI episode, about 7 years ago, I observed that simply sitting at my desk or looking at my computer from across the room would induce pain in my mousing hand. There was a majority physical component -- actually using the mouse was much, much more painful -- but there was also a psychological component. I suspect that this was anticipatory tension or somesuch, similar to a flinch response.

10ren 17y ago

html version: http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/handout.doc http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/ha...

grandalf 17y ago

I'll check that out.