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Reprinted with permission - Synchronicity Magazine April-May 1999
There is an ancient wisdom we all have access to, a wisdom that can help us physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Long forgotten by many, this wisdom has started to make a comeback in recent years; and its use is becoming more prevalent in helping people heal.
It is body wisdom.
Body wisdom is, at its heart, a very simple tool we can use to enrich our lives, making them healthier, happier and more in tune with the Universe.
Greg Webb, a practitioner of applied kinesiology, has one of the most concise definitions of body wisdom and what it encompasses: There are no parts of your body which function individually; every part affects, and is affected by, the strength, health and balance of every other part of your body.
Your living system is comprised of body, spirit, intellect and emotion. If there is an imbalance in any one of these four aspects, it will affect all the others. For example, it is very obvious that when you are physically sick, it is difficult for the rest of your body to function. It is often difficult to think clearly, and you can feel depressed. As for your spirit, sometimes an illness can be that part of you saying: "We all need a break."
It works the other way, as well. Emotional pain can affect your ability to think, disturb your spirit, and even cause physical illness. Emotional crises are often more difficult to deal with than physical ailments. There are many times we suppress our emotions to the point we do not realize we have a problem. In most instances of emotional crisis, it does not take our body long to tell us there is something out of balance.
That is body wisdom.
Unfortunately, many of us have been taught to ignore our body's signals, to the point we are not even aware of them. Fortunately, there are numerous methods we can use, many routes we can take on the journey to reconnect with our body wisdom, and become healthier living beings. SHEN, applied kinesiology, Integrative Body Psychotherapy, hypnotism, and meditation, are just a few.
SHEN, or Specific Human Emotional Nexus, is based on physics and the existence of the Qi (chi) or the life-energy field that is part of every living thing. Vanecea Greene is a certified SHEN practitioner in Calgary. She says SHEN can be a very powerful tool to help people reconnect their body, mind, emotion and spirit. In the process, emotions that are harmful to a person's health are released so the body can heal itself.
"Painful emotions get trapped in the body, eventually creating an autocontractal response, something the body does automatically, without even knowing," she says.
A SHEN practitioner uses deep relaxation and the Qi present in his or her hands to help a patient bring up painful emotions that are causing the contracting. Once at the surface, the suppressed emotions can be released. This process allows the body's messages to get through to the conscious mind and healing can start. It is not just a physical healing, but an emotional and spiritual healing as well. Chronic pain can disappear, addictions can be beaten, and emotional stability can increase dramatically.
One of the best things about body wisdom is the fact that it never really disappears; it is always there, and even someone who has been cut off almost entirely from the body's messages can learn to heed them once again.
"I've worked with some people who are so cut off, they had no sensation I was even touching them," says Rosemary Entwhistle, another Calgary SHEN practitioner. "But the person can be re-educated to their body wisdom."
That is where the brain-body connection comes into the picture. Educational or applied kinesiology can be used to re-educate people about the source of their stresses and how they can be eliminated.
Part of that process involves muscle testing, a procedure Greg Webb uses every day. "If something is beneficial to us, it allows our body to dump a negative charge and replace it with a positive charge," he says. "If it is strengthening for us, that strengthening will show up in muscle response. It could be a nutritional supplement the body wants or it could be an emotional balance."
Conversely, if something - a thought, a food, an emotion - is physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually stressful, it will weaken the muscles and show up in a muscle test.
The way the body responds chemically to specific emotions is another way the body sends us messages about what is detrimental and what is beneficial.
"Tests have been done, using condensate of human breath," says Webb. "It varies widely in chemical composition, depending on what emotions are present. The condensate produced during moments of joy, love or laughter is much different from those produced when someone is feeling rage, jealousy or hate. Negative emotions produce very powerful toxins. And, just like with a breathalyzer test, if it's in your breath, it's in your body.
It is more proof that no one part of our living system can be ignored without imperiling the rest of the system.
One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in reconnecting with body wisdom is a reluctance to trust the body's messages. But when you think about it, ignoring your body does not even make sense, logically. Your mind can play games and convince you to do many things that are not in your best interest; your body, however, does not.
"The mouth can say many things, but the body can't lie," says certified hypnotherapist Dr. Tim Hall. "It's incredibly honest. It has an incredible sensibility and sensitivity to it."
Hall, who is registered as a mental health practitioner in Alberta, uses hypnosis to help people return to the brain-body connection. And he has seen it work.
"Reasonably sophisticated research now shows there is a tremendous connector between the mind and the body; in fact, even the cells of the body have a certain wisdom in and of themselves. So there is a physiological base for this sort of thing."
Beyond that, there are some pretty obvious indicators of the brain-body connection. "Most people don't tend to make a connection with their body. But when you ask them, 'Where do you feel this stress in your body? It's 'Aha!' and they can feel it."
He can then begin working with that part of the body, hypnotically, to show them how to download the stress so it does not escalate into an undesirable expression of emotion such as fear or anger.
Another method of working with the body rather than the mind is through the use of body psychotherapies such as IBP. "Almost all psychotherapies help bring people unconscious material to consciousness so it can be seen and understood," says Carol Hechtenthal, who practices Integrative Body Psychotherapy in Calgary. "In IBP, the body is the unconscious, so rather than talk about things, the client is taught how to listen to the body. We sometimes find that unconscious beliefs held in the body since childhood are directing our behavior and our feelings. Reconnecting with the body allows us to work right where the action is."
Hechtenthal says by reconnecting with our bodies, we relearn how to take care of ourselves, using the wisdom we were born with but have forgotten. "One of the biggest obstacles to tuning in to the body wisdom is failure to live in the present moment," she says. "One of the easiest ways to teach people how to live in this moment is to have them focus on this breath, and to focus on what they are feeling in their body, right now."
This helps to achieve a release and trigger the healing process. "For example, if someone focuses on what's going on in their body, and feels tension in the shoulders, we ask them to breathe into the. Often, as they do, it starts to release, just because they are aware of it and body's message has been acknowledged."
Although he does not refer to specifically to body wisdom in The Seven Spiritual Lows of Success, Deepak Chopra does teach it. When we are faced with a difficult decision, he tells us to ask the heart for guidance. If a choice feels comfortable inside the body, it is a good choice; if it feels uncomfortable, it is most likely a wrong choice. Silent meditation is one way to develop a sensitivity for feeling what the body is trying to say; as Chopra instructs, "take time each dat to be silent, to just Be."
Meditation takes many different forms: it can be stationary Buddhist meditation; it may be a moving meditation such as Tai Chi Chuan; or it can simply involve going for a walk and experiencing nature. There are countless books, courses, and internet sites devoted to this subject. But no matter which meditation you choose, it contains a thread common to all: letting go in order to listen to any messages your body might be sending.
The instances of body wisdom provided here are but a few of the many examples of its existence and its role in healing. But every example points to the fact that if we choose to ignore our body's wisdom, we also choose to ignore an ancient tenet of Zen wisdom, spoken by the Taisen Deshimaru: Think with the whole body.
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