A Comprehensive Mind/Body Approach: Conversation with Linda Elarde and Dr. John Stracks
Video: Watch the full session here →https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWmD8PfMhWw
Dr. Stracks: Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. John Stracks, a physician who focuses on the reduction and elimination of physical symptoms using mind-body medicine methods. I'm here today with Linda Allarde. Linda is a special education paraprofessional who began experiencing chronic pain about 15 years ago, around 2008. She worked within the conventional medical system for diagnosis and treatment but knew something else was going on too, and eventually discovered mind-body healing methods. Over time, she's gotten substantially better, and I wanted her here today to talk about how that happened.
One quick note before we get started: if you'd like to learn more about my practice and the people who work with me, please visit our website at CormendiHealth.com.
Linda, thank you so much for being here.
Linda: Thank you for having me.
Dr. Stracks: You're welcome. Let's start by orienting people — it's been about 15 years since your symptoms first developed. Can you tell people what happened and what things were like back then?
Linda: Sure, I'll try to condense it into a bit of a nutshell. I started experiencing severe lower leg pain — my right leg, on the outside — and it would come and go, but it would get very severe at certain times of day or in the evening. On a scale of one to ten, I remember telling you it felt like a hundred thousand. It just knocked me out of the park.
Dr. Stracks: That's pretty severe — a hundred thousand.
Linda: It was severe. You did point out to me at one point that I have a tendency toward hyperbolic language, which was actually helpful — it helped in the process of calming it down. But that's where it started. After it persisted for several weeks, I started feeling alarmed, and the fear set in. I went to my doctor, and he said it sounded like a bit of sciatica and prescribed an NSAID — extra strength — to take four times a day for 10 days, then check back in.
It didn't do anything. If anything, it felt like it was getting worse. I went back, and he recommended gabapentin. I didn't see any improvement with that either. He said the next step would be an MRI, and then maybe a referral to a spine specialist colleague of his. That felt like jumping from A to Z very quickly — I just had some pain in my lower leg, and otherwise I'd been fine before this kicked in. The jump straight to a spine specialist felt shocking.
So I started asking around and found an acupuncturist/chiropractor through a referral from a colleague in my neighborhood. I had acupuncture and other treatments there, and I did improve — but it took a year. He told me it would take a while to resolve. Ultimately, after a year of weekly treatment, tapering to every two weeks, then monthly, and starting an exercise regimen, I did see real success.
Looking back on it through a mind-body lens, I'm pretty sure what made his treatment so effective — because I'd tried one other acupuncturist before him and it wasn't a good experience — was that I felt very safe with him. He had a welcoming, non-alarmist approach and was confident that if I could just relax and go with the process, I'd be fine, but that I needed to be patient and take it day by day.
Dr. Stracks: So he stopped you from being outcome-dependent — fixated on "when will I be better" — and you lost that expectation?
Linda: Right, exactly. He was letting me know I could just go along and see what happens over time.
Dr. Stracks: A lot of people listening know that so much about pain and symptoms is about finding safety — that's why people often ask me whether they need to stop non-psychological treatments. But there are a lot of practitioners out there who are very safe, very useful people in a treatment plan, and I'm all for people getting better no matter how they get there. That approach worked well for you for a long time, I think — though it didn't last forever. You had a lot of relief, but then things started getting worse again?
Linda: I did have relief, and it lasted about a year and a half to two years. But then I started having other pain — it shifted, which in hindsight is also a sign, though I didn't know it at the time. It shifted to my hip flexors — when I would walk, I'd feel stabbing pain there. I went back to him, and his wife treated me for the hip flexor. I'd feel better after each visit because they made me feel so safe — they were kind and confident, played nice music, had these lovely themed rooms — it felt like a spa, not a medical experience.
That continued for a while, with improvement after each visit that would always come back. Eventually it came back with a vengeance — I couldn't even stand up straight. They call it "shopping cart syndrome," where leaning on a cart gives you relief because it bends your spine. That's when I went back to my doctor, because I was starting to feel alarmed — the pain was shooting down the back of my legs, and I had no pain in my back, only in my legs.
Dr. Stracks: Do you have a sense of when this was — 2016, 2017?
Linda: Yes, around 2016. In 2015 I was dealing with the hip flexor pain, but it wasn't severe enough to impact my life yet, and it was intermittent. Then it became chronic and started spreading — down the backs of my legs and into my glutes. That got pretty intense. For about a year, I didn't sleep through the night — it woke me up every night in excruciating pain, and I didn't know what to do about it.
The Search for a Diagnosis
Dr. Stracks: What was recommended? Did they send you for imaging, try other medications?
Linda: I tried it all. They put me on tramadol, which I took for one day and then said no thank you — it didn't help the pain at all and just made me feel loopy and out of body. So I stopped that, but I was taking two extra-strength Tylenol every single day for about a year and a half, just to function.
My doctor referred me to a spine surgeon, who evaluated me and said he didn't think I was at a point where he'd recommend surgery — let's try physical therapy first, which I appreciated. I went through three rounds of PT, about 10 weeks each, with different treatment approaches, and none of it worked. One PT told me I was so hunched forward that my bottom rib was nearly resting on my hip bone. She said she suspected severe stenosis and recommended I see another doctor.
I went back to the surgeon, who referred me to a physiatrist. All the doctors along the way were kind and compassionate — I really did experience that. The physiatrist had MRIs done and showed them to me, which was honestly horrifying — my spinal canal was significantly narrowed. He recommended cortisone injections, saying not everyone gets relief, but he thought I was a good candidate.
Dr. Stracks: So the narrowed spinal canal — that's when you got the diagnosis of spinal stenosis?
Linda: Yes, that was my diagnosis. The imaging showed little pockets of fluid and other things that just didn't look good — it was scary. He was very kind about it, but I have to backtrack a bit: I've had a fear of doctors and medical procedures since I was very young. I've done some work on where that comes from, but I used to flat-out faint — my blood pressure would plummet. The first time was in first grade, standing in line, when a boy in front of me started describing how he broke his arm. The next thing I knew, I was inside on a couch — I'd hit the deck.
I continued to have that reaction to anything medical — enough fear and anxiety that I'd just drop out of sight. I didn't get a name for it until I was 50: vasovagal syncope. Learning it was an actual, recognized thing that happens to other people was really reassuring — I'd always assumed I was just a strange, unusual person prone to things no one else experienced. Still, it was a real issue, because you can get hurt on the way down when you faint, and my blood pressure would drop dangerously low.
I gave the physiatrist a heads-up, and he offered to give me twilight sleep so I wouldn't have to be fully present for the injection. That experience actually went fine — no problems. I thought maybe the sciatica was getting better, but then I immediately started getting pain in the front of my leg — it had rotated to the other side. I remember being at work, taking a step, and thinking, "There's something else going on here — this isn't just about my body."
Dr. Stracks: You just knew in that moment it wasn't purely a physical issue?
Linda: Yes, I knew there was more to the story, but I didn't know what.
Discovering Mind-Body Medicine
Dr. Stracks: So you started Googling — that's how a lot of people find out about this. What did you find?
Linda: I was at work during a quiet lunch break, in my own little private room, and I started Googling — I put in "chronic pain that shifts" and "sciatica pain that moves around." I came across Dr. David Hanscom's site, BackInControl.com. He's a complex spine surgeon who wrote a book called Back in Control. The information on his site just resonated deeply — it made sense to me. I also check every box for traits of a highly sensitive person, so I'm always wanting to investigate, understand, and dig deeper.
I emailed him — his email was right on the site — and he responded almost immediately. He was running a twice-weekly Zoom group, right before the pandemic hit — this would have been around February or March of 2020. I remember I'd had the bilateral cortisone injection in February 2020, right before everything shut down. Within a few weeks, we were all remote.
Dr. Stracks: What in what he wrote really struck you — what helped you start to understand this could be more than a purely physical issue?
Linda: I think a lot of it connected back to my father, who struggled with severe anxiety that would sometimes morph into depression. He also had physical issues that seemed closely tied to his emotional state. I was young at the time, but something clicked when I remembered that I'd had a lot of gastrointestinal issues as a child, and was prone to ear infections and other ailments. It felt familiar — this pattern of emotion, thought, fear, and physical manifestation. I didn't know how to put it together back then, but I sensed there was something there.
Dr. Stracks: And then you joined Dr. Hanscom's group, and not long after — in June 2020 — you and I met for the first time.
Linda: Yes. Dr. Hanscom was so generous with his knowledge, running those groups twice a week, and I got to know others experiencing chronic pain in all its forms. He recommended you — said there was a wonderful, mind-body-oriented physician in the Chicago area. My first thought, honestly, was "Does he take my insurance?" But then I decided it didn't matter — I needed to reach out.
Dr. Stracks: And that turned out to be a great collaboration.
Linda: It really was. We went through that whole process of exploring what was going on, and I learned so much. You were so encouraging. One thing about me is that I really need the science — I don't do "woo" very well. I need to know: is there evidence behind this? Are there good studies, not just random claims? I started researching Professor Lorimer Moseley in Australia, who is an absolute delight to watch, even in a lecture — brilliant. Everything he said and his research just clicked: yes, this is what I have.
Dr. Stracks: I think that's such an important first step for almost everyone. What I frequently say is that getting better requires two things: first, understanding the science — understanding where the pain is actually coming from. We recently opened Cormendi Academy, which includes a number of lectures and lessons on exactly this. The first part is a five-hour series that Michelle Grimm, our physician's assistant, and I recorded specifically on pain science, because we think it's that important for people to understand.
Linda: It was essential for me — I'm very reality-based, and I need to know what's real in the universe I inhabit. I also recognize the mind-body connection is something of a mystery, but the science is there, even if I don't fully grasp every mechanism.
I remember Dr. Moseley's TED Talk about being bitten on the leg by an eastern brown snake and nearly dying — but his brain initially registered it as just a scratch from a twig, because growing up in the bush, his legs were constantly scratched by twigs (his nickname was something like "Scratchy"). Later, walking in the bush again, an actual twig brushed his leg, and he was floored with excruciating pain — because his brain remembered, "last time this happened here, you almost died," and sent serious pain as a warning.
Dr. Stracks: It really illustrates that pain isn't about tissue damage the way we all assume — something happens, damages tissue, sends a signal to the brain, brain reacts. That's not really what the science says. Pain is the brain's appropriate reaction based on its assessment of danger. As human beings, it's always safer to overestimate danger, at least initially — better to mistake a stick for a snake than a snake for a stick. But over time, we have to recognize what's genuinely dangerous and what isn't, and find a way to turn that alarm off. That's where a lot of people get stuck.
Linda: Exactly — we get stuck. What I learned that was really helpful is that when your brain responds in an overreactive way to a stimulus, out of fear, it becomes like a myelinated superhighway — very efficient at coding sensation as pain, even when it's really just minor discomfort. Your pain threshold actually lowers. I felt like that was happening to me. Seeing the diagrams, the research, hearing the explanation — once I understood this applied to me, physiologically, I could move to the next step: retraining my brain to be less afraid and raising that pain threshold back up.
Retraining the Brain
Dr. Stracks: That was about three years ago when we first talked, and when you first talked with Dr. Hanscom. What have you done since then to help retrain your brain and lower that pain sensation?
Linda: During the period when the leg pain was transitioning — it turned out to actually be coming from my hip, though I never felt it there — I learned that pain will bounce around, like whack-a-mole. It's in one place, then another. Which is actually good news, in a way — it means your brain is a very active participant in the sensation. But it was a long process to take what I knew cognitively and embrace it somatically and experientially, because you can know things intellectually and still react as if you don't.
One of the things I learned is that your thoughts are not always true — they're not you — but when you're in pain, discomfort, or fear, they feel very true. And from an evolutionary standpoint, that makes sense.
Dr. Stracks: Better to make what's called a "type one error" than a "type two error" — if you make one kind of mistake, you might become something's lunch; if you make the other, you've just gone to a bit of extra effort for nothing. Better to overestimate danger.
Linda: Exactly. And then I spent about a year in Dr. Hanscom's group, took some of your groups and classes, and worked with a somatic therapist. One crucial thing was allowing myself to separate from old assumptions about how things work and stay open to new understanding — like Dr. Moseley's phrase, "no brain, no pain." That sounds bizarre at first, but understanding that while signals come from the body, it's the brain that determines whether there's pain — that's a real leap.
Dr. Stracks: How many times do you think you needed to hear that before it really sank in at a gut level? I ask people this regularly.
Linda: I probably watched 200 YouTube videos of Dr. Moseley and others. I even went to Mayo Clinic to check whether this was just an Australian phenomenon with one entertaining researcher — they called it "central sensitization syndrome," but it was exactly the same concept. I like confirming things from multiple sources — different names, same phenomenon. I also went to Dr. David Clarke's work, and so many others in the field doing amazing work to bring this understanding to the public, because we still carry that Cartesian model — brain here, body does this — when really we're one integrated system.
Dr. Stracks: Were there other things that helped — being around other people, being in a group?
Linda: Definitely. I read a lot of books, listened to podcasts like Nicole Sachs's, and read her book — she explains things a bit differently, and having multiple perspectives that all point to the same underlying truth was really helpful. She had her own dramatic experience with pain and the medical establishment, being told she'd never have children and that her spine couldn't support it — and her life has been a complete rebuttal of those dire predictions. Hearing that story was encouraging and inspiring.
Dr. Stracks: At what point did your body start to feel noticeably better?
Linda: It came in waves, on and off. I remember a six-week summer class with Dr. Les Aria, and one of the things I learned was "pendulation" — in a calm, meditative state, you do somatic tracking, following the pain, and if it feels like too much, you shift focus to a part of your body with no pain, then check back in, gradually lowering the alarm. I remember doing that and getting up to a day with zero pain in my body. I thought, "Is this really a thing?" The pain came back the next day, but it was evidence that something about how my brain was creating this experience in my body was real.
I also started investigating meditation and learned that real meditation — certain Buddhist practices — doesn't require clearing your mind, because you can't. That was such a relief, since I have a very busy mind. I could just step back and observe how busy it was without judging it as a "failed" meditation — it's just another variety of the experience. That was transformational, and it changed how I observe my own experience.
Dr. Stracks: What you're describing is gradually decreasing the sense of danger — the pendulation work is about noticing what's happening in your body without reacting to it as an emergency, noticing which parts feel good, and tolerating the parts that don't without needing to jump out of your skin. Then adding meditation, where you observe your busy mind and realize that just because it's racing doesn't mean there's an emergency either. Gradually, that sense of danger — in your body, your life, the world — starts to settle. And I think that's when your experience of the pain itself started to calm.
Linda: I felt that difference. I also became really aware of the narratives that drive us — narratives from family, personal experience, self-assessment, culture, media. There's this pervasive expectation that if you're not happy all the time, something's wrong with you. I had to flip that: if I claimed to be happy every single moment, that would mean something was wrong, because I'm a human being having a human experience in a biological body — it's supposed to include pain and discomfort. Those are just messages about what's going on.
Dr. Stracks: Making friends with your body — pain isn't the ending, it's information. As people learn more and become less afraid, they start being able to listen to it and learn from it, and that's often when people really start to get better.
Linda: That was huge for me. None of this is easy or fast. From Kristin Neff's work, and from you — you'd say, "we don't talk to ourselves like that around here" — I did talk to myself that way, and meditation let me start seeing those narratives. My favorite Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher says: if you fall in the river, you can't see the river — you're being swept downstream by the thoughts and feelings. But if you're sitting on the bank, you can see the river. So I'd imagine myself sitting on the bank, watching the narratives about what might happen, how it would affect me in a year, everything I wouldn't be able to do — that whole alarming storyline — rush past, and I could choose to just let it go by instead of chasing it.
I'm quick at catching those thoughts now — I'm sure I'll be catching them for the rest of my life — but I can recognize a storyline and say, "that's probably not going to help," and let it pass. That's been enormously helpful for calming both the urge to do something immediately and the physical sensation itself. My somatic experiencing therapist helped me notice that feeling in my body — like a predator sneaking up, needing to bolt. I had to practice staying — lying down or sitting through meditation — and just observing that urge without acting on it. I love a quote from a yoga instructor I had in my twenties: "Don't just do something — sit there."
The Hip: When There Really Was Physical Damage
Dr. Stracks: Let's talk about your hip, because it's an important part of the story. You'd learned so much, felt a lot better and less reactive — but your hip never fully resolved through this work alone, right?
Linda: Right. The pain in my leg — mostly my thigh and hip flexor, with cramping in my foot — was in my left leg only; my right leg was fine. It affected my ability to walk. I was using a cane at work, then a walker, then a wheelchair. It was excruciating. I went back to Dr. Cole's office and asked if they could help me figure out what was going on, thinking their supportive environment might jump-start things again. His wife treated me for about six weeks, but I told her I didn't think I was improving, and maybe imaging was in order. She agreed right away.
I'd actually had an ultrasound on my left hip back in 2019, after I couldn't get my left leg into a certain yoga pose. They'd found a small bone spur and said it was normal for my age — don't force it, but keep the muscles limber. That made sense at the time and seemed to explain things. But as the leg pain worsened and the sciatica symptoms returned, it felt like that classic mind-body spreading pattern, driven by fear.
She sent me back to the same doctor who'd done the original bone spur ultrasound. This time, his face visibly changed. He asked, "Were you in an accident?" I said no. He asked how I'd gotten there — I said I drove myself and walked in with my cane. He asked if I had a surgeon, and said, "You don't have a hip joint left — it's just massive fluid and broken bone fragments." My hip had become necrotic; the top of my femur was essentially gone, grinding a hole into my hip socket. He said I had the highest pain threshold he'd ever seen in a patient. I told him, "On a scale of one to ten, it's been about a million, but I guess I'm getting used to it." He said, "No — you need attention immediately."
At that point, it felt like we'd jumped straight to Defcon 5. I reached out to my rheumatologist, since I now have a whole team of specialists as I approach 65. She asked why I was using a cane, and when I explained, she sent me down for X-rays immediately, then told me I needed to see Dr. Ravi Bashal — the best in the area — for a hip replacement.
Dr. Stracks: I remember you telling this story in one of our group sessions — you were devastated, partly because you'd worked so hard to avoid surgery, given your fear around it.
Linda: Completely. I thought I'd pass out just from the environment alone, and there was also an emotional piece — I felt like I was betraying that hip. It was the hip I'd carried my babies on. So much was coming up. You really helped me by saying it wasn't life-threatening, it was painful, and I could take a couple of weeks to prepare rather than rushing straight into it the next day. That gave me space to think it through.
Dr. Stracks: And you did some pre-surgery prehab.
Linda: Yes — I found online meditation and self-hypnosis tracks specifically for surgery, including one from a man who worked with hospital patients to prepare them psychologically and emotionally. I listened to it every morning and night, sometimes during the day too, in the weeks before surgery. You'd also told me about Peggy Huddleston's book, Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster — that people who used these techniques healed faster, bled less during surgery, and had better outcomes overall, completely contrary to the narrative my fear was telling me.
And something I think is important: once the decision to have surgery was actually made, the relief started right then — not after the surgery.
Dr. Stracks: That's when you coined the phrase "hybrid mind-body-physical" case.
Linda: Right — because once I met the surgeon, having learned from you and Dr. Hanscom, I told him right away that I needed to talk about how I could have a good outcome, and what I needed from him as a person. I said if that wasn't his style, I'd need to find someone else. He sat down and said, "We've got plenty of time — tell me what you're thinking." I told him I needed him to see me as a whole human being — my emotions, my life, my children, my husband, everything happening around this "wonky hip" — not just a hip to be fixed. I know as a surgeon he's a technician, but I needed a humanist too. It still makes me emotional thinking about it, because I knew in my core that healing well meant feeling that same safety I'd felt in Dr. Cole's practice. He took my hand and said, "We're going to take good care of you — 2022 is going to be a very good year for you." It was so affirming that my pain dropped by at least 50% just from that conversation, before any procedure at all.
Dr. Stracks: That's amazing — the sense of safety alone, just from being heard, dropped your pain.
Linda: Completely. He told me he'd never seen a hip in that condition — essentially no hip left — in a patient still walking around, even with a walker. He said, "You've done everything humanly possible to avoid surgery, and I can assure you this is your best and only option now, and I will make sure you feel good on the other side."
Dr. Stracks: How did you feel afterward?
Linda: I had the most amazing experience. Going in, I had no sense that I'd pass out — I'd practiced the breathing from those meditation and self-hypnosis recordings twice a day for four weeks. I monitored my breathing to avoid hyperventilating, and whenever I felt a flicker of anxiety, I'd ask someone to explain what was happening — self-advocating before the fear could take over, and it would settle right back down.
For the surgery, they used a spinal block and twilight sleep rather than general anesthesia. I could hear music and people talking, phasing in and out, but felt no discomfort or pain — other than wanting to shift the shoulder I was lying on. Afterward, in recovery, they wanted to give me hydrocodone for pain, telling me it would kick in and I'd want it — I refused it. I never had any post-surgical pain at all.
Dr. Stracks: That's remarkable — and it tracks with what I tell my patients. When people go through surgery without this preparation, it's almost always slower and more frustrating than they expected. But people who've done the prehab, read Peggy Huddleston's book, done the meditations, and worked with their surgical team the way you did — they consistently report far less pain and much faster recovery than anyone believes possible.
Linda: It really was astonishing. When I left his office after that first conversation — before any procedure — my pain was already way down, just from having my fear and anxiety reduced. I felt confident I'd have a good outcome, and the entire hospital team reinforced that, telling me over and over, "Don't worry, your only job right now is to lie there — we've got you." I'm a bit of a control freak, but I was able to surrender to that, and I genuinely had no pain the next day.
An OT and PT came to show me how to move around, but I had to stay completely off that leg for six weeks — no weight-bearing at all, using a walker. I asked the physician's assistant why the recovery timeline was longer than what I'd heard for others, and she had the surgeon explain: I was the smallest patient he'd ever put a hip in, and they'd used robotic assistance because of how little room there was to work with given my small bone structure — they didn't want any risk of fracture. There was also significant swelling and inflammation, since my muscles had been compensating for a hip that essentially wasn't there anymore, and things needed time to settle and heal properly.
Learning to Trust the Body Again
Dr. Stracks: Before we wrap up, I want to explore one more thing. A lot of people watching have learned about mind-body medicine, part of which is understanding that you're not damaged. But it turned out there was real physical damage here that needed to be addressed — and you did address it. People often ask me, "What if I'm injured and don't recognize it because I'm focused on this mind-body work?" Do you feel like doing all of this work delayed you in recognizing the physical injury in a way that was harmful?
Linda: I don't think so. Even though the doctors were shocked I'd been walking around on that hip, the pain had always presented in my leg — I had significant muscle knots and spasms, so I assumed it was muscular. I didn't know it was actually my hip. But when I told the acupuncture team, "You've helped me before, but I'm not improving this time," they were quick to send me for imaging rather than dismissing it. So maybe someone else might have caught it a bit sooner, but I didn't endanger my life or my limb — I just experienced a longer period of discomfort than necessary. That was really the only cost.
Dr. Stracks There can be pressure, in mind-body medicine circles, to view everything through a "brain lens" rather than a body lens. But my memory is that even while you were doing all this work and making real progress, you still felt something needed further evaluation, and you pushed for it. People often ask me what happens if something gets "missed" — and in almost every case I hear about, it's not that the patient missed it. It's that the medical system told them it was all in their head, or that nothing showed up on a test, or that everything would be fine — when the patient already knew something needed attention.
Linda: I wanted confirmation. If the doctor had said, "Yep, still just that bone spur," I would have been completely fine continuing exactly what I was doing. But part of me kept thinking I should have made more progress by then — so maybe there was something else.
Dr. Stracks: When I see people for the first time, part of my job is assessing whether there's a physical issue significant enough that they won't improve without it being addressed. About 95% of the time, based on history, evaluation, and prior workups, the answer is no physical injury is standing in the way. But sometimes there is a physical piece that genuinely needs attention.
Life Now
Dr. Stracks: So — new hip, all this knowledge under your belt — what's life like now? How do you feel day to day?
Linda: As you've noticed from the intake forms in our group, my pain is essentially zero. I get up every day — I haven't transcended to some astral plane, I still live in a body, and I'm about to turn 65, so bodies do things. But it doesn't become chronic anymore. I might notice a twinge if I'm stressed or emotional — an old sciatic flicker, my brain still remembers how to flip that switch — but I don't spiral into "oh no, how long will this last, is this going to become chronic again." That old narrative just doesn't take hold the way it used to, thanks to daily meditation practice. I'm not an expert, but I show up every day and commit to watching what's going on, and I recognize when a familiar unhelpful narrative starts up. I assume it'll move through me and be gone — and it always is now.
Chronic pain that's severe and dramatically impacts your life is a genuinely difficult condition. But normal aches and pains that come and go — that's just part of being human. I don't know how anyone avoids that entirely.
Dr. Stracks: We're all human, our bodies are going to react sometimes, no matter how much we understand the science. The trick is not assuming that reaction means something's wrong when it isn't — while still working with your care team to check in when something might genuinely be wrong. I think there's often a layer of fear driving pain because people are avoiding the possibility of a real diagnosis. What you had to do was embrace that possibility directly, which is no small thing.
Linda: No — I remember hoping I'd stay conscious just talking to the surgeon, given how my body reacts.
Dr. Stracks: Do you still get that vasovagal reaction these days?
Linda: I haven't experienced it in a very long time, even through things that would have triggered it before. I don't carry that same level of fear and avoidance anymore. It's not my favorite thing to think about, but it's a completely different experience than that overwhelming need to escape by essentially losing consciousness.
Dr. Stracks: You've done enough work that the urge to run doesn't need to be acted on anymore. I think what you're describing — being able to sit with uncomfortable emotions like grief, sadness, frustration, or anger without needing to make them go away immediately — is something so many people struggle with, especially in a culture that pushes constant positivity.
Linda: Exactly — I found real value in just saying, "I feel sad right now, there's a reason, and I'll feel sad until I don't anymore," and letting the emotion run its course.
Dr. Stracks: So — what's next for you? What are you doing next month?
Linda: Due to the pandemic, I haven't seen my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson in five years — they live in Tasmania, and everything was shut down for so long. My grandson was four last time I saw him; he just turned nine. So my son and his family here, my daughter and her family, and my mother, who's 88 and lives in California, are all coming together in Maui for a family reunion week. There will probably be a lot of big emotions — I know I'll have plenty — but in a beautiful place with the sound of the ocean, I'll be just fine.
I also just retired after 30 years in education, 22 of them at the high school I graduated from myself, and where my kids graduated too. So a lot of big life transitions all at once, and this trip will be a celebration of everyone being together again.
Dr. Stracks: And no pain to bring along with you.
Linda: None. I get up every day and can do everything I used to do, with very good flexibility. I garden in a full squat and can get back up from it — which I'm pretty proud of.
Dr. Stracks: That's wonderful. Any last thoughts for people out there listening, trying to figure out how to move forward?
Linda: I have real compassion for anyone going through this, because I know firsthand how overwhelming it can be. First: be kind to yourself and be patient. Don't be afraid to check things out if a little voice keeps telling you there might be more going on — because if there is, dealing with it directly, like I did, can lead to a really good outcome and a strong recovery. And if it turns out to be nothing, that just gives you more confidence to keep doing your mind-body work. I'd say it's important to check things out with a physician you trust, who makes you feel safe, and to advocate for yourself.
It's a difficult journey, honestly — you just put one foot in front of the other and show up every day. For me, moving from being outcome-dependent to outcome-independent was huge, because it lets you be present in the moment and proud of yourself just for showing up — even if that's two minutes of mindfulness meditation on a hard day. That goal-orientation is something our culture teaches us very early, and it's hard to let go of, but in this case, it's really about being present, doing what you're doing, and moving forward one step at a time. That's what worked for me.
Dr. Stracks: Thank you, Linda, so much for being here and sharing your story. It means a great deal to everyone listening to hear that people can start in one place and move through to somewhere entirely different.
Linda: You're very welcome. I hope whatever I've shared helps someone feel a little safer and a little more hopeful, and that they'll show up for themselves.
Dr. Stracks: Absolutely. And for anyone listening — if you'd like information about working with me or our team at Cormendi, reach out through our website, CormendiHealth.com, and our staff will follow up with everything you need to know. Thank you to everyone tuning in — every time we record one of these conversations, I'm reminded how fortunate I am to be part of a community of people working so hard, in brave and creative ways, to find healing. Until next time, good night, and take care.
Dr. John Stracks practices mind-body medicine via telehealth nationally and internationally. Dr. Laura Burke is a certified health and wellness coach specializing in the social dimensions of chronic pain and illness. To learn more about working with Dr. Stracks or the Cormendi Health team, visit cormendihealth.com. You can find Dr. Stracks and Dr. Burke's first interview on the Cormendi Health YouTube page.