Joanne Lee SmithChronic pain and symptoms recovery Nurse / Coach

My First 'Wow Moment' with Mind-Body Healing

14 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this personal testimonial, Joanne Smith recounts her first attempt at freeform journaling inspired by Dr. John Sarno’s recommendations for mind‑body healing. She describes abandoning structured formats, instead scribbling thoughts and focusing on emotions, particularly anger. After a week of this practice, she experiences a noticeable reduction in uncomfortable bodily sensations, which she describes as a "wow moment." This unexpected relief convinces her that writing about anger can influence physical sensations, sparking a deeper curiosity and commitment to exploring mind‑body healing techniques further.

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So I just did it, did the journal thing, didn't have any particular order with it. Dr. Sarno said you could have like current things that are potentially, things from the childhood and things about your personality, you could, you know, split it into 3 columns, but I kind of didn't really do that. I just literally just went freestyle with a scribble. I think faster than I can write, I'm never, I've never been a neat writer, so there was no way that I was going to be concentrating to write down a beautiful diary entry, that's just never going to happen. So I just focused on the psychological elements, things that I may have been getting angry at, that's how I began. I did it for a week and I got my first wow moment really during those first times of doing that, I just got my first wow, there's something in this, there's something in writing about what I'm angry about, who would have thought, and scribbling it all out, that I just felt maybe a reduction in the intensity of the sensations that I were experiencing that weren't comfortable, and I just thought, there's something in this, and that was the beginning of me going in really deep into learning more and more and more about this stuff.