The Body Knows
“Where did this chest pain come from?…. I was so happy. I made my decision and felt at peace with it. Then suddenly woke up with this pain in my chest, out of left field.”
I have always been fascinated with blind spots. Maybe it’s my scorpio nature that wants to dig in and shed light on the darkest corners we hide even from ourselves. The emotions we bury, the fears, the disappointments, the losses that keep gnawing at us. The thoughts that keep us up at night fade in the day time during busy work and family life.
Do they really fade away and disappear? Or they are here to stay in our body, festering, growing every moment. Every morning we make the choice to move on with our life, we try to ignore them. Maybe we stretch and exercise, do our yoga routine, move our body and try to sweat it out. Still at awe that they are here. The pains, the stiffness, the tensions, the lack of strength, the palpitations, the reflux, the foot, the hip, the shoulder. Maybe it’s my posture. Maybe it’s my sitting all day. The way I sleep at night. Or the oily food I ate. So we correct all the maybes, and it’s still here.
The source of it is deeper, we haven’t touched it yet. So we talk to a mentor, get a massage, try acupuncture, some polarity, Cranio-sacral , reiki, energy work. And things start to move and shift. As if out of nowhere, we suddenly become aware of the dream we had. That held the seed of that deep fear that is lurking somewhere all the time. The one we are so afraid of, that we don’t even admit it to ourselves.
Now things start to shift and move. A dance has begone, a duo of me and my body. A deeper listening, a trust is established. It starts to make sense, as if a hazy picture coming into focus: it’s not out of nowhere.
*My heart is broken and I wake up with a left frozen shoulder.
*I’m scared of having a girl and I’m doing everything I can to postpone the implantation process, including falling down stairs, because my embryo is a girl.
*I never wanted a big wedding and I sprain my ankle
*My father abused me and my right thigh is spasming every time I hear from my sister.
*I need to stop drinking alcohol and I don’t know why this pain is coming on my right side, even though all my liver tests are good
*I’m forgetting everything and everyone, because my daughter is not forgiving me
*My calf is spasming because I don’t want to drive to visit my father who is sick
I can go on and on about moments of realization where a body part has become a messenger for a gap in consciousness. I can only think of it as the work of spirit. Being in our earthly bodies, most of us are not open to subtle cues of the universe that is trying to help us evolve spiritually, emotionally and in our awareness. We need our bodies, our earthly physical sensations to tell us and take us there. Like a loving mother, hold our hand and let us understand the issue by becoming aware fo the discomfort, the pain.
So is there a map to decode this body/emotion/spirit connection? Most of the old traditions of healing system are based on this map. The Ayurvedic system uses the chakras, the Chinese Medicine uses the acupuncture meridians and five element theories, the traditional Persian medicine uses the wisdom of herbs. This connection is deeply missing from the modern medicine model.
Why do I have a sore throat, or starting to have thyroid issues or even develop a nodule in my neck?
When all medical tests fail to detect the source, it becomes clear that energetically something is held in the throat chakra. The chakra of communication and creativity. Coming up from the heart, when the energy of the heart is being stopped or held at the throat repeatedly, it can lead to these issues. Sometimes all we need is a good cry, a loving shoulder. Sometimes we need to dig deeper, journalling, painting, singing, or talking to friends, writing that book that we’ve been waiting for. Or centering ourselves back, grounding and believing in who we are, instead of stretching ourselves thin to accommodate others.
The root chakra is the first chakra connecting us to the earth. A lot of sacral and hip issues start from that first chakra. Where is home? In this new world that a lot of us are immigrants and had to cut our roots from our original homeland and create new roots in foreign lands; it’s not a surprise that so many of us deal with root chakra imbalances. some of us are still killing one another over the issue of home and territory to this day. The need to ground and find one’s home becomes so vital and vulnerable. We truly become grounded when in our heart accept the earth as our home no matter where we are, not feeling we need to be in a different place and time, but be here and now.
Some of our pains and imbalances can go back generations. Generations of trauma and adapting to fears or harboring certain beliefs make us hold our body and breath in certain ways. I hear of the fear women hold, that roots in the beliefs of their mothers and grandmothers. Fears to be fully who they are, to be independent of, or dependent on men, sacrifices that were made in order to survive back in the days, strategies that stem from lack of resources that are not part of our current world any longer. They are so deeply coded in our behavior that we are not even aware of them. Why do I need to be so anxious in a particular situation? This is the response that my mother or grandmother would have. I’m in a totally different world, and still my heart rate goes up, I get sweaty, and I feel unease.
The next step, we start having autoimmune conditions, their forms might be different than our parents, but they stem from the same root. Or even cancers. Genetics play a big part in this probability game but so do epigenetic. How come some genes are expressed and some remain dormant? The truth is we are all present in the eggs of our mother when she was inside our grandmother. The nervous system, the vibration of our original cells are embedded in the ocean of our grandmother’s being. Our DNA is predetermined. How are we to break out of the heredity illnesses that seem so predetermined even before we come on this earth? Some parents are doing that by using IVF these days. To have more control over the outcomes. Some of us opt out of testing for genetic illnesses during pregnancy. Hence the prayer, give me the knowledge of what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
The point of energy medicine is that energy comes before matter. Where our awareness goes, our energy follows. The body is more ephemeral than what we assume it to be. We are not as solid and unchangeable. All our cells are constantly renewing and regenerating. So in reality we can shift and change our body much more than what we actually believe in. All of the ancient healing traditions, have longevity practices, that are used in small amount over a long time by connecting deeply with Nature. Practices such as qi gong, tai qi, yoga, or meditation provide an abundance of benefits that not only help the body heal and balance in times of illness and imbalance, but also help us rejuvenate, vitalize, and open to higher levels of intuition and universal energy. They ultimately bring humans closer to spirit, God, Being, or Source.
For those of us who are more intuned to the energetic world, we can see and detect the connections and the messages of nature and the universe. The more intuned we become with the energetic field, the less we are taken by surprise when our physical symptoms hint at us their messages. Or at least we are more open and curious about the energetic/emotional/spiritual source of the physical message. It’s nice when we connect the dots, see a pattern and weave a story underneath it. Like decoding a dream that only we know the true emotional message of it. But it’s even more profound when we become free of the story. We let go of it, and let ourselves just be, in a neutral space, accepting that the story is just one way that our conditioned mind knows how to relate. When we step into that neutral space, the spirit zone, that’s when true healing takes over, the energy flows freely, the mind sinks into a deep sleep, where dreams are not even invited, and our body gets a chance to fully Be.