What is your Body Telling You?

Our body is constantly talking to us, giving us messages about our emotional and mental wellbeing. It is a deep source of knowledge and a great tool for transformation. If we listen and learn to work with it, it can guide us to health and wellbeing. If we ignore its messages we may well suffer unnecessary illness or distress as a result.

Many people do not even hear when their body talks – they dismiss its communications as just another headache, pain, virus, stiffness or cold. For others, they hear but do not develop a full enough understanding of what is being communicated to use the information for positive change.

In my work as a healer one of my main focuses is to help my clients become aware of their body’s messages and to use this information to transform their perception of themselves and how they live their life. Physical symptoms are usually the external expression of inner emotional or mental struggle. They are a symptom of being out of alignment with who we truly are or of not fully accepting ourselves. They are an expression of the parts of us that we are ashamed of or deem unacceptable – the parts we hide. They are the external manifestation of those emotions that are unexpressed but which burn inside us and play havoc with our minds.

Physical illness rarely comes out of the blue, although it may feel like it does when it happens. Generally it is preceded by warning signs which come in the form of emotional symptoms such as stress, fear or anxiousness or small aches, pains and routine illnesses. Often we notice these signs and promptly cover them up with medication. Doing this is like noticing a red warning light in your car, bringing it to the mechanic and getting him to take the bulb out of the light. In reality nothing has changed except you now are no longer aware that you have a problem.

Medication can play a vital role in treating illness but it is also vital to look at the deeper cause of your problems and to find out what you body is telling you. If you don’t address the underlying problem, the emotional or physical symptoms will often get worse or appear to be resolved but later reoccur in a different and more threatening disguise.

I have suffered on and off throughout my life with severe ear aches. As I have watched these ear aches come and go over many years a pattern emerged – the ear ache always comes when I feel intense stress. My ear aches used to last weeks in the past, now within a matter of minutes of feeling the first pain, I know the problem and I stand back from my life to see what is going on – by doing a few breathing and energy grounding exercises I can clear the pain within a few minutes. The ear ache has become my friend – most of the time I don’t even realise I am stressed until I get the surge of pain in my ear. In the past I would have thought – “goddamit – I can’t believe I get an earache now of all times” – now I think “earache - I must be stressed – got to stand back and see what’s causing this”

Each physical area of the body relates to an area/aspect of your life for example the stomach area relates to the self - self confidence, self esteem, self care and self acceptance. When you feel anxious in your stomach it can be a sign of not feeling sure of yourself. When you suffer from digestive problems or problems with any organ in that area the underlying problem is likely to be related to how you feel and think about yourself. To truly heal a physical problem in this area you must heal your relationship with yourself. Each area of the body has a similar story.

There are books which give maps of body areas and parts and what they relate to. I also teach this in my "Understanding the Human Energy Field Course". These are useful guides but your most useful guide is your own body. I truly believe and have witnessed both in myself and my clients how the cells and energy of our body hold all the answers and all the guidance that we need.

A few years ago I was working with a wonderful healer and at the time was feeling very overwhelmed by life. She asked me to bring my attention to the area of my body where I felt the tension most strongly. I felt it in my chest and with her guidance I connected to that area of my body to allow the tension to speak to me. As different emotions, feelings and thoughts came to mind I spoke them out uncensored. I started by noticing how anxious and tight my chest felt and continued to talk out all that came to my awareness.

After some time a memory surfaced of a lady that I had worked with in a healing session a few months prior to this who had breast cancer and from this, a fear came up that I too had breast cancer (I had been experiencing breast pain since that healing). My healer asked me “and what if you do have breast cancer” I could barely believe or speak the response that came. It horrified me and I found it hard to believe that it lived in the depths of my being somewhere but it did. The response was clear “if I had breast cancer that would be good because then I could just let go – I could stop struggling, stop stressing and just be”. What a message to get! What a gift to find out before I had managed to create this illness in my life that some part of my being found my current stressful way of living so unacceptable that breast cancer seemed like a good solution.

This information was so powerful– I could no longer ignore what needed to be addressed in my life. I could no longer continue to put dealing with my stress on the long finger. I now knew how badly my body and my soul cried out for my way of living to change. This was a big wake up call. Either way the depths of my being had plans to create space and lower stress in my life – I could choose to create this myself now while in the fullness of my physical health or I could wait until I was struck by illness and was forced to create it. It was a pretty simple choice for me one I couldn’t afford to ignore.

This is the power of the body as a messenger. This is the opportunity our body gives us if we are willing to listen and take notice. This is where we can avoid or reverse physical illness and in parallel create emotional and mental happiness and wellbeing. By listening to our body as a guide we give ourselves the choice – the choice to change what isn’t working about ourselves and our lives. By ignoring our body’s messages we take away our choice, and leave fate and luck to make those choices for us.