It’s Sunday. December 28. A lull between the manic, joyful madness of making Christmas merry and the tightening of New Year’s noose of celebration mixed with expectation. Yep… so much preparation and anticipation. Then, it dissipates in hours.
Lists. We make ’em before the events. To do. To buy. And then we construct a kind of Fantasy Football League of lists of what not to do going forward, in the annual rush to improve our lives in whatever way is important to each of us in 2026. Yet again.
So, I do feel lists qualify as one form of writing. Bullet points, words next to boxes to check off, and full sentences. Start on a page big enough, and it’ll end up as a journal entry. I used to kind of poo poo ‘journaling’ as not real writing. It wasn’t generally paid, published or impactful on others’ lives. I was wrong. Turns out I have many boxes of archived pages and short-form scribbles. Writer, teacher and big-time meditator, Natalie Goldberg once advised a participant who confessed in our online masterclass to having journals from 10 years ago.
“Oh, just throw those notes out. You don’t need them.” I recoiled in horror. DECADES, I have kept my notes. There are pretty journals, nostalgic covers or businessy books, started and abandoned after a couple or a score of gripping pages. Scrapbooks with notes written LARGE in coloured pens so my deteriorating penmanship could still be deciphered and perhaps seen in a new perspective on the different colours or sizes of paper. I’ve been a closet journaler for years, not even admitting it to myself, apparently.
Below is an email from Kash Khan, whose health posts, DNA testing and theories I have followed for a while. This is taken from his UNCENSORED email, as it is titled, where he is free to say what he deems necessary. It is a complete piece about the science of the power of expression on our very health. Enjoy. I’m going back to slowly decluttering, the semi-legible brilliance I have hoarded all these years, as my holiday project.
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Your back hurts every morning. |
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Your migraines won’t stop. |
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Your IBS has controlled your life for years. |
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Doctors say there’s no structural cause… but the pain is real. |
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What if your brain is creating the pain to protect you from something else? |
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How The Mind Creates Physical Pain |
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In the 1980s, Dr. John Sarno proposed a radical idea: |
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Most chronic pain isn’t physical—it’s psychological. |
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Your brain restricts oxygen to muscles and nerves just enough to create pain, but not enough to cause damage. |
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The pain keeps you distracted from buried emotions your unconscious mind considers too dangerous to feel. |
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Emotions you couldn’t process as a child because feeling them was unsafe. So you buried them. But they never disappeared—they just found another way out… through your body. |
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The Evidence |
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A 2013 Northwestern University study tracked people with acute back pain for one year using brain scans. |
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Among those who developed chronic pain, brain activity shifted from the area processing physical sensations to the area processing emotions. |
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The emotional brain was generating the pain. |
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A 2007 USC study tested mind-body treatment on chronic pain patients using education, journaling, and psychotherapy. |
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Average pain reduction: 52%. |
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Research on Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET) now validates this approach. |
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A 2021 study in JAMA Psychiatry found that half of fibromyalgia patients who processed repressed emotions became pain-free. |
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Not “pain reduced.” Pain-free. |
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The Solution |
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Your unconscious mind protects you from feelings it believes will destroy you. |
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As a child, expressing rage or other intense emotions was unacceptable, so your brain learned to redirect that energy elsewhere—into your body. |
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This may explain why chronic pain often: |
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The solution isn’t surgery or medication—it’s awareness. |
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When you understand that symptoms are psychological, and sit with them—you give them an opportunity to disappear. |
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Awareness breaks the pattern. |
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Start journaling about buried emotions, resume normal physical activity without fear, and stop treating your body like it’s broken. |
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Nothing is damaged. You’re avoiding something your brain thinks you can’t handle. But you can. |
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Until next time, |
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Kashif Khan |
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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Information on this site is provided for informational purposes only. It is not meant to substitute for medical advice from your physician or other medical professional. You should not use the information contained herein for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease or prescribing any medication. If you have or suspect that you have a medical problem, promptly contact your regular healthcare provider. |
