This is the man who healed me from a year of chronic pain in my hands and arms in 2000.

His name is Dr John Sarno, and I've never met him, but I got better by reading one of his books.

After 12 months of traipsing around to doctors who could find neither cause nor cure for the very debilitating pain I was suffering, and who said I would just have to get used to living with it and managing it, I got onto the internet and discovered that there was indeed a cure for unexplained pain.

Sarno's book was based on the idea of the mind and the body being interconnected. If our minds are unable to express emotional discomfort, for whatever reason, the body will express it for us.

Sarno's cure was a very simple one; spend time thinking about all the things you're trying to suppress or not think about.

I spent 20 minutes to half an hour a day writing (painfully at first) and thinking about old hurts, new pressures and various other pains that I thought it was unchristian to admit to. I didn't have to resolve the pains or the problems - I just had to acknowledge them and think about them.

Within a month I was mostly pain free. Within two months I was completely pain free. Since then, whenever I try to suppress certain emotions or thoughts, I notice that my arms start to hurt in one particular place.

I haven't had cause to think about Dr Sarno much recently until I met an old friend who now suffers from various chronic disabilities and illnesses. I wonder if Sarno's theories extend beyond pain and into all sorts of physical difficulties?

Googling him, I discovered he has written this book recently. I think I'll have to buy it and have a read. Sometimes I forget that I was healed in what I consider to be a miraculous way - but certainly not the way I would have ever thought of.

It's good to remember miracles.