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In this episode of the Fourth Wave in Therapy podcast, Dr. Peta Stapleton interviews Dr. Larry Burk, a holistic musculoskeletal radiologist, about the mind-body connection, particularly focusing on frozen shoulder and the emotions associated with it. They discuss Larry's personal journey into holistic healing, the role of emotions like anger and grief in physical ailments, and various healing modalities including EFT and expressive writing. The conversation also touches on the medical field's evolving perspective on mind-body healing and the significance of dreams in understanding our emotional health.

Takeaways

• Larry Burk emphasizes the importance of the mind-body connection in healing.

•  Frozen shoulder can be linked to repressed emotions, particularly anger and grief.

•  EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) can be an effective tool for addressing emotional issues related to physical pain.

•  Expressive writing can help individuals process emotions and facilitate healing.

•  Dreams can provide insights into unresolved emotional issues and guide healing.

•  The medical field is slowly recognizing the role of emotions in chronic pain management.

•  Anger is often a common emotion associated with shoulder issues, but grief can also play a role.

•  Healing modalities like acupuncture and hypnosis can complement traditional medical approaches.

•  It's essential to address emotional issues to prevent recurring physical ailments.

•  Every symptom can be viewed as a message from the body, guiding individuals towards emotional healing.

 Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Mind-Body Connection

03:07 Larry's Journey into Holistic Healing

05:57 Understanding Frozen Shoulder and Emotions

12:08 The Role of Anger and Grief in Shoulder Issues

17:58 Exploring Healing Modalities

24:03 The Medical Field's Perspective on Mind-Body Healing

29:57 Dreams as a Pathway to Healing

35:55 Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Keywords: mind-body connection, frozen shoulder, emotions, holistic healing, EFT, anger, grief, expressive writing, dreams, healing modalities

Note: this is unedited.

Dr Peta Stapleton (00:01.53)
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Fourth Wave in Therapy podcast. I'm so excited today to have a long-term, I'm going to say friend and colleague now, Dr. Larry Burke. Larry, thank you for joining us.

Larry Burk (00:16.802)
glad to be here. It's a long way on the other side of the globe here. And I'm gonna move one picture back here because I know it's very, very bright right now.

Dr Peta Stapleton (00:25.36)
You're very welcome. All right.

Larry Burk (00:27.82)
Yes, and I have my other typical props in my office here. I have my Yoda sitting on my paper shredder.

Dr Peta Stapleton (00:37.053)
I love it, the wise one, the wise one. Looking over us as we chat.

Larry Burk (00:41.39)
Well, he's there to remind my clients not to say the word try.

Dr Peta Stapleton (00:47.376)
Cry.

Larry Burk (00:48.44)
Because you remember from Star Wars, was, there is no try, only do or do not.

Dr Peta Stapleton (00:54.792)
do or do not. Let's keep that in mind. I'm going to introduce you, Larry, to anyone that might be new to your world. So Larry now is retired, a holistic musculoskeletal radiologist who works in an online health coach kind of setting now. He's trained in hypnosis, medical school training, of course, and radiology at the University of Pittsburgh and then University of Pennsylvania.

Associate Professor of Radiology and head of the musculoskeletal section at Duke University. And I got to visit Duke some years back, such a beautiful campus. If anything, it reminded me of Hogwarts, Hogwarts, the Harry Potter. It just had that kind of feature, all the buildings. It was just stunning. It was amazing. You were the co-founder and executive education director of the Duke Integrative Medicine Unit and introduced at UCLA Acupuncture for Physicians.

Now, Larry and my world have crossed because of EFT, of course. You learned it in 2002 and began using it at Duke Integrative Medicine. Your mentors are Carol Look, of course, the great Carol Look and Margaret Lynch-Renier, who, of course, is another wonderful giant in the EFT world. Larry has many books. We've actually got them below so you can actually go and access them. One of them that I thought was absolutely fascinating was about dreams.

and particularly dreams that can save your life and women in that talking about their dreams of breast cancer diagnosis that were absolutely accurate. But today, the topic that we're going to unpack in this fourth wave is about the mind-body interaction and emotions in a certain area of the body. And this area of the body is the shoulders and certainly frozen shoulder as a condition.

The reason why we're chatting about this is Larry has a brand new book out and we have the details for that below as well so that you can go and explore that ebook if this topic is of interest. But Larry, maybe can we start with that whole kind of concept and topic of you've come from a medical background yet really approach the body from a very holistic point of view.

Dr Peta Stapleton (03:07.372)
in terms of emotion and where it's stored in the body. And I know we'll get into things like frozen shoulder and the emotions there, but at what point in your career did this come into your world or did you go and explore emotion in the body?

Larry Burk (03:21.526)
Yeah, I think I was on a pretty straight and narrow path during medical school. And it wasn't until almost at the end of residency when I woke up one day with shoulder pain and there was no injury done that. And that was my left shoulder. And it went on to have continuing pain. Now that was not a frozen shoulder. That was so-called impingement syndrome.

which I was studying at the time because I was doing early research on MRI of the shoulder and that was a hot topic. And it didn't get better for months and months and months. And one of the surgeons I was, and one of the things I did, one of the surgeons I went to put me on a very powerful NSAID, you know, which was Indocin at the time, which is Indomethacin. And I was popping those in one week, one after another, and then I started.

getting ulcers in my mouth and I could barely shove the pills in, let alone eat anything. And after a week, I kind of thought, oh, wait, maybe that's a side effect from that drug. And I quit taking it, the mouth ulcers went away. And that's my first real severe side effect from a pharmaceutical. And back then I knew nothing about the symbolism of any musculoskeletal or other types of symptoms in the body. So I was

pretty much clueless as to why it happened. And all I knew at the time was the medical model and the surgical model. And so I talked to one of my surgical colleagues and doing an arthroscopy on my shoulder, which was the emerging new hot intervention at the time. And that was one of stupidest things I've ever done. So he went in and I did an MRI scan of my shoulder before, but I had no clue what I was looking at. It was the first MRI of the shoulder I'd ever seen and there was nothing in the literature.

So he did the scope, removed my bursa. I had bursitis and I just no rotator cuff tear. And then he shaved off the underside of my acromion. So he modified my anatomy. And that was the theory at the time was that was why it was causing the impingement when you lift your shoulder up. And I recovered from the surgery and my shoulder pain didn't go away. And it didn't go away. I finally went through intense physical therapy.

Dr Peta Stapleton (05:40.784)
Wow.

Larry Burk (05:47.31)
That didn't help. I got injections. And that went on for from 1984 to 2004, 20 years. And I was hampered. did every acupuncture, everything I could think of. And then finally, at the end of that period, my first marriage broke up and my shoulder started getting better.

Dr Peta Stapleton (05:57.676)
serious.

Dr Peta Stapleton (06:12.592)
Wow.

Larry Burk (06:13.646)
And by that time I had learned EFT, I had done a lot of acupuncture myself and I had come to realize that there might be a somatic metaphor stuck in my shoulder and it was repressed anger from my first marriage that I'd been repressing for decades. And so my left shoulder finally started to recover and that was, I had like a breakthrough and changed jobs, got divorced and...

All these things happen. then two three years later, my right shoulder started to hurt. And by this time, I'd already been doing EFT for a few years, and I was doing acupuncture in the clinic at Duke, and I was applying my hypnosis skills, and I had had one patient with a frozen shoulder. knowing with my EFT training, said, well, did anything happen the week before your shoulder started to hurt? And she said,

And that was six months ago. She didn't remember, know, and she was a hospital pharmacist and she had taken all those drugs and they didn't help and they made her constipated. It was just like, she knew enough as a pharmacist that she was having side effects. So she was real frustrated. And I just did the acupuncture the first visit. There was nothing, could nothing to tap on. She didn't remember anything. And the next week she came back, did more acupuncture, but I asked her,

She goes, yeah, I remembered my best friend just up and moved away, didn't say goodbye, haven't heard from her since. I've been angry about that ever since. And I said, whoa, there we have the clue. And then we did some tapping. And I was doing a special kind of acupuncture at the time, which was one of my mentors out in British Columbia, Michael Greenwood, had taught. He was the first guy to introduce me to the concept that it might be a psychosomatic issue. And sure enough,

this very simple acupuncture. You put one needle in between the thumb and forefinger on either hand, but one in between the second, third toes, and you stimulate them vigorously. Ordinarily, you kind of want to be gentle with an acupuncture. And the patient goes, and you say, good, just keep breathing. And you have them hyperventilate and go into an altered state. the chi really starts to flow. And this woman's hand started to shake.

Larry Burk (08:36.49)
I had two medical students with me at the time and they were watching this and they're going like, what's going on here? And the woman was going, she knew something was happening. And I knew it was like an energetic healing release. I told the medical students, just watch. And at the end of the session, she was starting to move her arm up and improve her range of motion. And she said later when I talked to her, we did a couple more sessions. That was like a turning point in her whole life. And she still talks about the friends 20 years later.

So that was my turning point. But then when I got the frozen shoulder two years after that, I knew what was going on. I go, oh no, this could last for months. And I was desperate. And I was doing EFT, but was doing superficial EFT. was doing, and sometimes that works. I was just, my shoulder's really angry. I'm really angry. And at the time I was angry about American politics. So I was ranting and raving and tapping, but it wasn't quite.

you know, getting there and all I had been doing when it started was a little gentle yoga. Just gentle yoga, not much else, you know. And, but I could feel first the pain comes on and then a few days later the range of motion starts to diminish. And I knew it. I said, my God, can't, and they're not that common in men, but I said, I'm getting it, you know. And so I call my medical intuitive friend who is the psychic who's done readings for me over the years.

And I said, I think I've got a frozen shoulder. Could you? I wanted her to do energy healing on me. So I get into the office thinking I'm going to get energy healing. She goes, would you like to know about your past lives related to this shoulder problem? I said, well, yeah, why not? And she goes, you were stoned and poisoned in the dark ages for your righteous anger and unjust authority figures. You want to do that in this lifetime? And I'm like, OK, no. So I went deeper with the tapping into.

Not only was I tapping on the angry at the American politics, but I was angry at the Spanish inquisition. And I was like, and my shoulder started getting better. And I was better within three months, which sometimes it lasts for two or three years, which is brutal. And the people on my Facebook group, I run this frozen shoulder healing group on Facebook, they're just furious about being frozen.

Larry Burk (11:04.258)
but very few of make the connection that maybe I was angry before it started to freeze. So that's been my main message on this group and also in the book is to get the word out and thank you for your contribution to that process. It's been a wild journey.

Dr Peta Stapleton (11:16.974)
No, yeah, and I often think lots of these things do start with our own experience in the beginning, don't they? We get some and then the connections and we see that then as a common is, and that's what's coming to mind for me. Is anger the most common emotion in shoulder issues? Is that what you're coming back to or is there something even interesting?

Larry Burk (11:38.99)
That's what I, in my experience, that's been, but other people on the group will say, well, no, when I point out it's an emotional, they say, well, it was really grief for me, you know, and any kind of emotional burden could manifest like that. And you think about it from the chakra point of view, it's probably most likely a combination of the second chakra, which is usually about anger, and the fourth chakra, which is about grief. So it might be those two chakra imbalances combined. And I think,

And the thing that's so amazing for me as a radiologist about frozen shoulder is you know, there are lot of psychosomatic illnesses out there. The big one everyone thinks about is fibromyalgia, you know, which is clearly a trauma related, you know, problem. And they get trigger points all over their body and many of them have a trauma history with a high A score. And but when you do an MRI scan on those people, you see nothing.

their muscles are all normal, their joints are all normal, their spine's normal most times. But when you do an MRI of the shoulder and someone's shoulder, their synovial lining of the joint is inflamed. And when they go in and do an arthroscopy, guess what? The normally pink lining of your joint is angry red. It's the ultimate somatic metaphor. You can see it. can...

That to me is why it's, and the only research paper that's been done on it is by Dawson Church. And unfortunately, it was a very short trial. He did one session of EFT and the pain and psychological things improved, but he did not measure the range of motion, which would have been over a couple of weeks. That would have been marvelous. So that study still needs to be done. And I'm hoping to be able to do that someday.

Dr Peta Stapleton (13:26.522)
That'd be brilliant because it is common, like people talking about shoulder issues or the aging process and things like that as well. And sometimes it just gets put down to that more so than emotions or some sort psychosomatic kind of response. Is it common? Like, you see it? I know you're running a group especially for this type of topic, but in your practice at large when you were actually working, was it really common? Like how common is?

Larry Burk (13:55.63)
Well, when I was doing just regular radiology, you would see a, I mean, a frozen shoulder, possible frozen shoulder case every day or every other day. but you got to realize that they don't get an MRI scan to diagnose frozen shoulder. That's diagnosed by the clinical history. And you ask the woman, can you unbutton your bra strap or not?

And the diagnosis is made if you cannot get your hand above your belt behind your back, you have it. for men, obviously, but there's something called the Appley scratch test where you put your thumb behind your back and you see how far up you can reach. It should go the whole way up between your shoulder blades. And that's normal. So you just compare one side to the other. so that's, and also when you.

I love looking at different systems of symbolism. We already talked about chakras. The five elements is in there as well. the five elements, know, anger is associated with the liver. And sometimes gallbladder problems manifest as shoulder pain, you know, and, and, but the other more popular new age one is Louise Hay, you know, and I've used her heal your body book for decades. And when you look up shoulder pain, not frozen as well, just shoulder pain in general, it's

She's got a phrase for everything, her affirmation is, shoulders are meant for bearing joy, not burdens.

And you her book, as a physician, you read that book the first time, you think, this is bullshit. You know, it's like, but then you realize there's a nugget of truth in every one of her intuitive impressions.

Dr Peta Stapleton (15:39.716)
Yeah. And is that that concept then of perhaps what are you carrying around in life when the pain started or is there a period of time beforehand that might not be connected in someone's life?

Larry Burk (15:50.74)
It's usually, it might be simmering for a month or so, but it's that week before that when something happens that's, it's like pushes you over the edge and triggers that inflammatory process because, you know, prior to that, you might be aware that you're carrying something there, but, and they do talk about four stages of frozen shoulder. The first stage is where this acute pain and you can't move because it hurts so much. But what they do,

sometimes if to the extreme example that they'll put someone under anesthesia and test their shoulder to see if it just hurts or if the motion is restricted. So stage one it hurts a lot but if they anesthetize the shoulder it you have a full range of motion. Stage two it hurts a lot and when they anesthetize it you can't quite

move it. And then stage three, that's when you have Tyrannosaurus Rex disease, which is, think about the little picture of T-Rex with the short little arms. That's pretty much it. can't comb your hair. Lucky if you can brush your teeth and it's maddening. And unfortunately, it's also very difficult to sleep, to find a comfortable place to sleep. people are just really distraught. The only good news is that it usually only lasts

for a year or two and eventually resolves on its own, but the suffering that goes on for the couple of years is horrendous. And then the really bad news is a third of the time it comes back on the other shoulder. And that's brutal. When people know, no. And it might be just shortly after the other one healed. And my hypothesis about that is they've never dealt with the unresolved emotional issues and it's gonna predispose them to

Dr Peta Stapleton (17:33.199)
Blam.

Larry Burk (17:48.738)
coming back. I don't have any proof of that but I'm suggesting if you do the emotional work the first time through maybe it's not coming back the second time.

Dr Peta Stapleton (17:58.542)
And you've talked about not just the chakras and acupuncture in there, but also EFT or tapping. Are there any modalities, I guess, that, you know, if anyone wants to go off and explore based on shoulders or, you know, even other parts of the body that you've found highly effective? know EFT for both of us has, you know, a bit of a passion, but any other modalities to help process these kind of things?

Larry Burk (18:21.934)
Yeah, I took a course at Duke Integrated Medicine about five years ago on expressive writing, which is just a wonderful, simple technique. And I don't know if it's considered mainstream psychology or not. Is it? I mean, it's evidence-based, you know.

Dr Peta Stapleton (18:36.228)
Yeah, look, yeah, and absolutely, we might call it journaling sometimes. Sometimes we do alternative hand journaling. So we do teach that in psychology now where even our students in class as a practice will journal with the opposite hand, non-dominant hand. So you're absolutely right. Expressive writing has been studied and it is something that is recommended even in mainstream kind of approaches.

Larry Burk (18:52.878)
Yeah.

Larry Burk (19:00.524)
Yeah, I mean, James Pennybaker is the guy who did all the research on it, dozens and dozens of articles. But the distinction I make between journaling, which I have people do, keeping a dream diary, you want to keep a record of that. But in expressive writing, the way I was taught, you don't want to keep a record of it. You want to get it on the page and then destroy it, either burn it or shred it or put it under Yoda, this paper shredder. And I do tell people that if they're dealing with

someone who's still alive, you know, I usually recommend shredding. And you can write like a rough draft of a letter to someone and then not send it, know, just shred it. Someone who's died, I do recommend burning it because the metaphor is the smoke is taking the message up to heaven, you know, so and that that works pretty well. But yeah, I and I said the guidelines are just right emotionally. Grammar doesn't matter.

And I usually just recommend five minutes. Just fill one side of a page. And then when you're done, go back and circle the highlighted words that it had the most charge on. And then that's what you could use to set up your EFT. I say, before you destroy it, let's do some tapping. And then you can destroy it. that way, and then after the tapping, of course, I use that computer metaphor, which is.

Every bad thing that ever happens, like a malware program that gets downloaded into your marion system, uploaded into your brain through your nervous system, and then all that file up there has a picture and a story in this malware program. And all you got to do for the tapping is just find the file name, repeat the phrase, the target phrase to get that program running in a fashion that you can control. And then hit the delete key over and over again and uninstall the program. And then I usually combine it with hypnosis afterwards.

So then you're putting in a new program. And people like that explanation, so I've used it over and over again. And actually it's based in memory reconsolidation neurophysiology. it's actually a real good mechanism for how it actually works.

Dr Peta Stapleton (21:11.856)
And it is that act, isn't it, of saying out loud what is happening internally, which actually is the premise of a lot of ancient approaches, even in the talk therapy, think back to Freud or lying on the couch in free association. It's the act of actually saying the truth and the idiot of naming it. Yeah.

Larry Burk (21:31.818)
naming it, naming it, yeah. And I also like Gary Craig's three strategies for success is be persistent. You can keep doing it over and over again until it's gone. Be specific. And then the last one is important is be emphatic. So if you're not getting anywhere, scream or cry when you're doing it and you'll get the program running, you know, and that's valuable. Yeah.

Dr Peta Stapleton (21:56.782)
Yeah, I love that. We highly promote to our teenagers in therapy rant and tap and swearing is allowed in lots of teenage therapy sessions just so that they can truly get it out.

Larry Burk (22:01.986)
Mm.

Yes.

Larry Burk (22:09.868)
Yeah, no, it's very important. then, and I do emphasize in the book that it's important to do, I categorize expressiviridium EFT as an inflammatory, anti-inflammatory remedy. And acupuncture also. And then there are certain remedies you can actually take like DMSO is a big one, dimethyl salvoxide and castor oil are two of the most

popular ones, you can even combine them together. Kestrel is a little messy. But and then I don't recommend any non-steroidals. Those things poison your kidneys, poison your liver. And I don't recommend muscle relaxants or any other things that they're mean, even a TENS device does numb the pain, but it doesn't help the inflammation. So and then the worst thing you can do is go to physical therapy and have some aggressive massage therapist or physical therapist.

start to work on your shoulder. And I had that happen to me. man, it was excruciating and just made it worse. makes the ramps up the inflammation. you know, and oral steroids have side effects. One of the go-to things for orthopedic surgeons is just to do an injection of steroids into the shoulder. And that does directly decrease the inflammation. So there's something to be said for that. But steroids anywhere have side effects and can damage your joint and things like that. yeah. And then beyond that, there's

more aggressive approaches where you would put someone under anesthesia and then just jerk their shoulder around till you break up. And that's brute force. And in surgery, they go in and they strip the lining of your joint out and it's just, so those are last resorts. And a lot of surgeons are reluctant to do it until people have done six months of something else.

Dr Peta Stapleton (24:03.812)
And tell me, where do you think the medical field is at with embracing the mind in body, perhaps?

Larry Burk (24:12.118)
I think in chronic pain itself, there are some inroads being made by people like, well, it was really started with John Sarno and his Heal Your Back Pain books back in the 70s at NYU. And he was this legendary physiatrist who people would come from all over the country. Celebrities would come heal their back pain. And he basically said it's all about repressed rage. He just spelled it out there.

And none of his NYU colleagues would refer a single patient to him because he didn't do any research. He just had tons and tons of anecdotal case reports. Finally, his protegees, Howard Schubiner and Alan Gordon and a few of these other guys have been doing, and David Hansken have been doing research and publishing papers with, like you, they're doing fMRIs before and after.

They call it emotional awareness and expression therapy. It's got some good stalt in there and a few other things and expressive writing and They're publishing papers in mainstream journals paint journal pain and showing hey works for fibromyalgia workflow back pain And it's a breakthrough in the whole chronic pain realm I think that's but but yet what we're up against is in the radiology department. I would see it's just a an injection factory, it's like

People just come in. used to sit there and when I was reading my scans, I'd be sitting in the room where the nurse was triaging all the injection patients. they'd be like, well, no, you have to wait three months till your next injection. Because, you know, and people just come back every three months and it just became a printing press of money for the department. there was no addressing the root cause or anything, you know. And that was, and that's a billion dollar industry.

Dr Peta Stapleton (26:01.636)
Yeah, yeah, you're right. I think the chronic pain in psychology as well as a field has been very much embracing that embodied pain kind of concept, if you like, probably because the cognitive therapies have been tested as therapy for chronic pain and have actually not been successful at all to the point where the Cochrane reviews are saying cognitive therapies are contraindicated for chronic pain.

And that probably almost forced them to kind of go, all right, well, let's have a look at maybe an embodied pain approach.

Larry Burk (26:37.358)
Oh yeah, like Bessel van der Kolk, you know, and all that. Of course. And one of my close friends at Duke, who's kind of a rogue psychotherapist, he stumbled across internal family systems on his own. And he has these patients having their dialogue with their different parts and they get better. And he's like, he's a miracle worker.

Dr Peta Stapleton (26:57.956)
Yeah, yeah. And I think there's been a very big embracing of schema therapy, you know, with the parts and things like that as well, which, you know, NLP back in the day was talking about EMDR talks about, you know, talk about aspects, you know. So I think you're right there. There's a lot of different kind of modalities that are very similar in their approach. They may just use different language around. And is that is that something talking about, you know, having conversations with the body part? Does that

have a place.

Larry Burk (27:28.908)
I so. whenever my shoulder hurt, no, my story though now goes on for another 10 years after my frozen shoulder. it really, every time I attempted to, my pain was gone, but every time I attempted to get my strength back, I would...

I would get a flare up of pain afterwards. And I did a lot of work around that. mean, a lot of other holistic things. I got all my fillings taken out. had chelation therapy. did a lot of other, joined a men's group, you all these kinds of things that I did. And finally, in, I guess it was 2016, I was able to start getting my strength back. And now I'm...

strong, you know, I haven't been this strong since college when I was a pole-walter and I did, boy, I did 90 push-ups this morning, you know, so and if you just told me I could have done that 20 years ago, I said you're crazy, you know, and so it is possible to heal, I mean, which is amazing for me and

And I guess, but now I made friends with my shoulder pain. This is what I encourage all my pain. Your shoulder pain is now your biggest ally. It's going to tell you when you're sitting on repressed emotions and then you get to do something about it. And it's like, it's a message. Don't shoot the messenger with some medication. Do something about it. So what I usually do, as often I don't know what I'm angry about and I just start tapping on my shoulders really angry, my shoulders really angry and I don't even know.

And then by the end of the tapping, you know how things kind of emerge and I'm like, yeah, that's what it is. And then an hour later, my shoulder will be better. And now I do do an intense workout, I don't have any pain afterwards. So it's like, wow, you know, unless I'm sitting on an emotion.

Dr Peta Stapleton (29:17.188)
Yeah, that's amazing. And I do think there's such great value, isn't it, in embracing the body and that message and the conversation that, you know, potentially can occur that can give you relief, which is what we're looking for in terms of.

Larry Burk (29:30.252)
And guidance, and really guidance. And that's why I've kind of shifted into doing a lot of dream work with my clients too, because it's the same message. It's either coming from your symptom or it's coming from your dream symbol. it's like, and Edgar Cayce was the one who said, nothing important happens to us that isn't foreshadowed in our dreams. And so, and if no one's paying attention to their dreams, it's gonna show up in your body as a symptom. But if you're really proactive,

You'll be keeping a dream diary and if you got an emotion that's bubbling up from the subconscious, you'll deal with it before it manifests in your body and that's ideally the way to do it.

Dr Peta Stapleton (30:08.858)
Fantastic. So dream journal next to the bed everybody and expressive writing when we need to as well. Larry, tell us a little bit about the book that we've got links below, but tell us a little bit about the book and what people can expect to read.

Larry Burk (30:22.702)
I'll mention one thing about keeping a dream diary just as a clue is you want to keep your dream diary by your bedside and you want to write a question down every night that you want an answer to. It could be about your physical health, but it could be about your job or your relationship. Only one question a night and any dream you get will be a response to that. And you can sometimes get up to three or four or more dreams a night and every 90 minute REM cycle you get another dream.

Always write them down as soon as they occur if you wake up because you'll not recall them in the morning unless it was a horrifying nightmare. You might remember that. then, and I do recommend not using a white light. And there are these pens you can get on Amazon called Glovio pens, which are red. They're red pens. You just click on them. It turns the red light on, which does not disrupt your pineal function. And then you can see to write.

and then just click it off and you're good. And then you can deal with it the next morning. Some people, if you're thinking by yourself, they use a phone and dictate in your phone, which is great because if you can record that on your computer, you can keep that record on the computer. And then the real advantage of that is you can go back and search it in the future and see, did I have a dream about this? And then you can see if any of them came true. And I just connected with a guy named Carlisle Smith, who's a

retired psychologist, sleep therapist in Canada. He's like 10 years older than me, but he wrote a book called Heads Up Dreaming. And he was fascinated by dreams that came true. And he found that a certain percentage of his dreams, the short ones that weren't some long epic thing, the short ones that had some emotional charge, often came true. And he discovered he and his family did it for 30, 40 years since his graduate training.

Dr Peta Stapleton (32:00.645)
Wow.

Larry Burk (32:18.336)
And they discovered they could actually change the outcome, which I think is impressive. It's like dreamed about a car accident and, you know, I saw that car coming and, you that's super cool when that happens. So,

Dr Peta Stapleton (32:21.658)
Yeah, that looks so, yeah.

Dr Peta Stapleton (32:31.032)
Wow, that's amazing. So you've got this brand new book out to support people with knowledge and tips around frozen shoulders. Tell us a little bit more about it.

Larry Burk (32:42.936)
So it's frozen shoulder healing and then the subtitle is diagnostic methods. So how do you find out if you really have a frozen shoulder and what are the causes and risk factors and things and then treatment options. So going through everything from emotional approaches to surgical approaches and everything in between. And then I have some case reports at the end of clients that I've worked with. it's been and the key thing about made the book so much fun.

is I used perplexity AI for the first time in my life. And I was doing the literature search on all these different topics and my wife said, I've been using this for a while. might want, I was a total AI skeptic. I didn't want to be tainted by AI, you know, but I asked, tell me if, you know, steroids are good for frozen children and bring, and the thing about perplexity is it gives you a half a dozen references. And some of them are,

Dr Peta Stapleton (33:15.354)
amazing.

Larry Burk (33:39.352)
directly from Pumbed, but other ones are from clinics that use that therapy. it was, I learned a lot through that process. And so what I decided since I made the book a PDF, I've gone, I had a mainstream publisher once, I've self-published the book once. And then this time I was initially inspired by Carol Look who originally put out some PDF books a long time ago. And what I really liked about it was you can hyperlink all the references. So.

I've got 200 references in there. So when you're reading about acupuncture, you can click on six different links and read about how it relates to frozen shoulder. And that was exciting for me. And then I could link to your book and I could link to everyone else's, my blogs and my videos. So that made it so much fun. And that's why I think people enjoy reading the book and they can just download it from larryburke.com or letmagichappen.com.

websites go to the same place and it's in my little store and there's a little banner at the top which tells you how to click on it so and It's

Dr Peta Stapleton (34:42.48)
Amazing work, all that below, Larry. And I'm going to throw in there too, incredibly low cost. So only $4.99 USD. absolutely, I did get to read it recently and I was blown away. I just thought it was so helpful. I had some shoulder things going on and you're absolutely right. You know, I know what was going on in my life at the time. So I was able to target that. So it had a personal interest to me having a look through it. So it was really good.

Larry Burk (34:48.782)
Yeah.

Larry Burk (35:09.181)
Now do you keep a dream diary, Peter?

Dr Peta Stapleton (35:11.842)
I don't, but I do remember my dreams. So I am someone, and I've read your book about dreams, and I've got a couple of other dream books on the shelf there. I do remember my dreams. So for quite a while after waking, so I will often ponder what that was about. Was it symbolic, the theme? I don't physically write it down, but I had a reoccurring dream as a child. And I had it for several years. And I

Larry Burk (35:36.174)
that's a big one.

Dr Peta Stapleton (35:40.676)
being able to as an adult and certainly in the work we do now, realize what that dream was symbolic about and what was happening for me at the time. So yeah, and I never had the dream ever since, but yeah.

Larry Burk (35:55.212)
Well, yeah, it keeps coming until you get the message. I also tell people just in terms of two categories of dreams now, terrifying nightmares. They are designed that way to get your attention. It's like, and there's a powerful message and you got to really, you know, agree to look at it, you know, and then and the ones that are super pleasant healing, healing dreams are just like you're on the right path. Keep doing what you're doing. And so

Either way, the dreams are valuable. people who are terrified of their nightmares, I'm saying, you know, there's gold in that shadow and you got to find it. But the scary thing is when I teach psychotherapists EFT and I ask them, how many do keep a dream diary? It's like a pathetic 5%. And I say, didn't you learn anything about you have a Freud in your training? We had a week on that. And it's like, OK.

Dr Peta Stapleton (36:33.604)
Yeah, love it. No, it's great.

Dr Peta Stapleton (36:51.502)
Not a lifetime practice. All right, if any, listening in everybody, if there's one thing you take away, just about learning more about frozen shoulder and emotions, dream diaries, very helpful. And expressive writing, absolutely. There's a little shop here locally that sells these little packs called Write and Release. And they're valuable for young clients that I've worked with over the years where they can just...

Larry Burk (37:12.608)
Nice!

Dr Peta Stapleton (37:19.136)
right out, it could be about some friendship thing that's been happening. They have been incredibly powerful. Sometimes we, you know, burn them, destroy them, shred them. We've buried them, know, shredded them with our fingers. Right and release, such a fabulous exercise.

Larry Burk (37:27.032)
Yeah.

Yeah

And I think as a take-home message for people in general beyond frozen shoulder is any symptom you have is a message you want to make friends with it and let it be your ally to guide you to emotional healing. And if you do that, you've got your own built-in biofeedback system. You don't need to go and get hooked up to a monitor and have a machine tell you your tense. It's like your body's telling you already just pay attention and then...

you'll be aligned with your higher purpose because your body will keep you on track. And there is a wonderful guy in New Zealand who was one of my mentors too, Brian Broom. I don't know if you've ever connected with him. He did a series of books on somatic metaphors and his website is something like Whole Healthcare or something and he's in Auckland and he might be retired now, but he ran a mind body.

for training clinicians how to think that way. And if I ever get over there, I'm going to come visit him and visit you, obviously.

Dr Peta Stapleton (38:37.36)
Absolutely. What a wonderful place to wrap this up. Larry, thank you so much for all that you've done in the world, the books that you've contributed. I absolutely recommend everyone. All the links are below so you can go off and have a look at all of those. And if we can find some of those website links, we'll include them as well. Larry, thank you so much. I look forward to whatever gets kind of channeled through you next time and where you take your work.

Larry Burk (39:02.252)
Yes, thank you Peter. It's been fun and we'll see you again soon, I hope.

Dr Peta Stapleton (39:07.396)
We will. Thanks, everyone.

Larry Burk (39:09.218)
Bye.

Dr Larry Burk's Books:

Let Magic Happen: Adventures in Healing with a Holistic Radiologist - https://www.amazon.com/Let-Magic-Happen-Adventures-Radiologist/dp/0985506105/ref=sr_1_1

Dreams That Can Save Your Life: Early Warning Signs of Cancer and Other Diseases - https://www.amazon.com/Dreams-That-Save-Your-Life/dp/1844097447/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=gAmKD&content-id=amzn1.sym.0fb2cce1-1ca4-439a-844b-8ad0b1fb77f7&pf_rd_p=0fb2cce1-1ca4-439a-844b-8ad0b1fb77f7&pf_rd_r=130-7339803-5631245&pd_rd_wg=Wvxr0&pd_rd_r=2aaeac93-a83e-4013-98bb-1b16bb44717d&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk

Frozen Shoulder Healing: Diagnostic Methods and Treatment - https://www.amazon.com/Frozen-Shoulder-Healing-Diagnostic-Treatment-ebook/dp/B0F174F6ZS/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=gAmKD&content-id=amzn1.sym.0fb2cce1-1ca4-439a-844b-8ad0b1fb77f7&pf_rd_p=0fb2cce1-1ca4-439a-844b-8ad0b1fb77f7&pf_rd_r=130-7339803-5631245&pd_rd_wg=Wvxr0&pd_rd_r=2aaeac93-a83e-4013-98bb-1b16bb44717d&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk