Your body. This wonderful vehicle, that allows you to touch, laugh, dance, play, eat, smell and experience the multiple wonders of life, doesn’t do things for no reason. To explore a healing journey starts with acceptance, patience and the realization that this is not a linear path…
Your Body Knows
Most of us grew up with concept that it’s weak to be vulnerable. That if we feel something is not OK, then we must just keep pushing through. We often start out life learning that the body is simply meant to get us from A to B and we must ignore any signals we feel from the body; masking symptoms with chemical medications. We have learnt to numb out the body’s genuine cries for help, not realizing that these signals are our early warning system. We only pay attention when we are in agony or immobilized, but again the little white pill or surgery will fix it all, won’t they?
The paradigm we have all grown up in teaches us to hand our sovereignty and the responsibility of our healing over to others. We expect them to fix our problems and make us happy, and to do so quickly. And if they don’t fix us fast we have a right to get angry with them and blame them for our suffering. This paradigm doesn’t work for any of us, not for the patient nor the professional. This isn’t how we heal.
Our programmed intolerance of suffering has taught us to fear it, hate it, become impatient with it and do everything in our power to override it. But this just leads to greater suffering. But what if healing isn’t entirely about getting rid of symptoms? What if it’s about listening to the full story held in our body?
When we begin to realize that imbalances and healing are simply a part of normal life, we can drop the expectation that life and our bodies are meant to be perfect all the time. The ebb and flow of emotional and physical experiences are part of being in a human body. It’s how we navigate what is working for us and what isn’t. It’s how we know how deeply something has affected us and it’s also how we can release old pain.
The Invitation to Heal
What would happen if we started listening to our bodies? What would happen if we began to respond to the signals, paying attention to what creates discomfort and make changes in our lives? What if we invited old pains to tell their story, to take us into the vulnerability that we have desperately attempted to avoid? What would happen then? Could we actually heal?
Imagine if we could look at our suffering and healing process as a gift? Imagine if it was actually a journey to new understanding? That discord could open the door to appreciate life on a deeper level than ever before?
I’m not saying that we just need to sit still and cultivate deep trust and not use herbs, homeopathy, osteopathy and any number of amazing natural tools that help the healing process, I’m saying healing is about inviting the full story, and first and foremost re-cultivating what we knew instinctively as young children – our body is innately designed to heal. By cultivating this state of trust we may be pleasantly surprised how our healing path unfolds. We may experience beauty we never knew existed.
Everything in Life is about Relationship
Attaining wellbeing is more than the food that we eat and the exercise that we do, it’s about our relationship to our body, to vulnerability and to being imperfect. No matter how much money we spend on healing tools, they are all worthless without a compassionate relationship to ourselves.
To know what our bodies really need, we just need to stop, listen, and invite the story to emerge in its own way, in its own time. I guarantee that you innately know more about your body than the best doctors or healers on the planet. It’s not about knowing the information that the experts have, it’s about knowing if those tools are going to work for you or not! When you learn to listen, your body it will tell you everything that you need to know.
What you weren’t taught at school:
1) The body is constantly repairing damage, cleanse out toxins and generally doing it’s best to heal itself.
2) As the body is constantly balancing homeostasis, it takes a long time for lifestyle disorders to develop within the body.
3) Epigenetics show that we are born with various switches on our DNA either active or inactive. hese switches can be turned on or off by nutritional and emotional changes.
Healing teaches us to trust, it teaches us that we are not in control, we can’t make things be what we want them to be. All that we can do is discover the tools, put in the effort and trust the beautiful unfolding process.
