How the Mind-Body supports or inhibits wellness
The Mind-Body Connection is talked about ALL THE TIME, but truthfully, as energy practitioners, we find that while our clients know the term, they don’t understand what it really means.
Mainstream psychology has advanced the conversation, with pioneers like Bessel Van Der Kolk, Gabor Maté and Peter Levine talking about how the nervous system, the fascia and the cells hold trauma imprints. They’re well aware that held trauma diminishes the ability to fully heal, emotionally and physically.
There is a lot of important work being done to support somatic release – moving traumatic impact out of the physical body. We support this work, and as appropriate, refer clients to somatic practitioners to progress in their healing.
But truly, the body pays the price when emotions are suppressed and repressed. Every one of us does this from time to time – and for many, physical illness, distress and pain syndromes are the result.
- We may have been taught not to express anger, or sadness, or anxiety or fear.
- We may find certain emotions difficult to feel, like guilt and shame.
- We may live or work in an environment where emotions are not welcomed.
It may not be trauma, but it can have implications on the body when feelings are not validated and allowed.
What happens to repressed or suppressed emotions?
Image copyright Energy Healing Institute
When feelings are avoided, repressed, suppressed, they leave the Astral plane, where they belong. Feelings are the way we understand our experience. Feelings aren’t bad – they’re information and context.
Using the graphic above as a visual reference, the emotions present in your field, when suppressed and repressed wind up in the energy system of your physical body! That’s where the body pays the price – illness, chronic pain, auto-immune, phantom or mysterious aches and pains are amplified and exacerbated by this foreign energy.
Your energy patterns can sabotage emotional awareness and increase somatization.
- Energy dysregulation – chakras too open or closed, lack of boundaries – can result in you being flooded with other people’s resonating emotions
- Stuffing your feelings disrupts your body’s harmony – just because you choose not to feel it, doesn’t mean it goes away!
- If you lack embodiment, you can be numb to your emotions – containment and presence foster conscious awareness
How do you evolve your Mind-Body-Energy Connection?
Truthfully, the work is to figure out what you don’t want to feel, and accept and acknowledge it, and then learn how to release it! It’s a matter of conscious awareness, energy regulation, and energy clearing.
I used to feel a very limited amount of the anger and shame I carried. While my temper was volatile and I lost my cool regularly, I could also suppress my anger and justified my lack of composure as a stress response to the difficult experiences I was navigating. In therapy, my wonderful, compassionate therapist led me to becoming consciously aware of, and to own and acknowledge my anger and rage. He helped me to expose the soft underbelly of my shame. It was life-changing…to a degree. I was now aware, conscious of what I was repressing, avoiding feeling.
But my life didn’t change. I had no idea that I was vacuuming other people’s anger into my energy field. That when I repressed anger, I was stuffing their anger as well as mine! I had no idea that my body was manifesting inflammation and auto-immune response because of energy dysregulation and the inability to release held energy.
Knowledge is indeed power. It gives you, (and everyone), the ability to perceive and understand ourselves. Knowledge without action, including energetic action, is empty awareness.
If you’ve:
- got stuff going on in your body
- stuff or repress uncomfortable emotions,
- lack embodiment,
- have energy dysregulation
you ARE NOT to blame. It’s not because ‘everything happens for a reason’ and the overt spiritual shaming that accompanies that New Age concept.
You DO have agency, choice and an opportunity to shift and evolve.
