What is my Pain-Injury-Illness trying to tell me and what do I do about it

Looking at how  we are often clueless about why the body is doing things, but that doesn't mean the body's not being extremely pointed and very succinct. It just means we've lost our fluency in communicating with it and this fluency is something we can reclaim.

Transcript

What is my Pain/Injury/Illness trying to tell me and what do I do about it?

First, I need to say, for the record, that some things which happen to us are random or "just because." Asteroids, various plane parts, tree bits and hail fall from the sky on or near us and there is not any greater meaning than "Well, that just happened!" We get sideswiped by a bad driver because we were driving near them and they made a bad choice, we and everyone with us gets food poisoning from the takeout food which got hot in delivery when it shouldn't, or we step in something no one wants to mention because the unmentionable happened right before we got there. In a life full of a bazillion people, animals, moving objects and objects which shouldn't move but do periodically, random happens at a high rate of speed.

With that said, more often than not the pains, injuries and illnesses we experience which aren't casual headaches or bumps and scrapes, are meaningful in some way. Our bodies are fully integrated with our soul, emotions and somewhat interconnected with our minds. 😊 Once the soul has tried to get our attention and failed long enough, when our emotions either can't break through or have been ignored, then the body will carry the message in ever increasing volume and pointed methods.

The difficulty is in understanding the message being conveyed. Experiencing limitations in mobility due to hip problems or painful knees doesn't necessarily tell you much intellectually. Having high or low blood pressure is something to be careful of but doesn't come with a fortune cookie message pointing you towards the true remedy. So, what can be done to figure these things out, especially when they are persistent and even progressive?

First, I recommend getting as clear an understanding of what is going on as you can. I usually suggest starting with Western Medicine because, while it is many things *sigh*, one of the things its very good at is diagnosing specific issues. It's not holistic in any way shape or form, but it can give you the insights you need to take next steps, definitely will tell you what things the problem is not, and give you many different options for short/medium/long term strategizing.

From there the options branch out into Functional Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Naturopaths, Osteopathy, Ayurveda and much, much more. The path towards healing, like any spiritual path, is winding, has various ways to get from here to there, and is as unique as the person traveling it. So, no solution is "one size fits all" and what works perfectly for one person could be the most irrelevant or even harmful thing to another. 

One of the difficulties of figuring out what the underlying issue is and what can be done about it is, in Western culture in general and in spirituality more specifically, we have this notion the body is a thing, a vehicle, a less than, lower vibration, often dysfunctional object which must be controlled, managed, repaired, restrained, and trained to behave in the way we wish. Which ignores the fact our body is...us. Our brain is a physical organ and our soul is fully integrated with our body, so they work in harmony, and the body is our greatest ally in helping us navigate this wild and wacky world. 

It is neither an enemy, nor stupid. It helps us survive trauma, keeps us safe from emotions or memories which could sabotage us in the moment, alerts us to good or bad things we're ignoring with our big thinking brains, and allows us to experience exquisite emotional and physical pleasures. It also collaborates to help us keep on our path, signal when we're off, point out when we are doing or being things which are harmful to us and others through a variety of means. And while we are often clueless about why the body is doing things, that doesn't mean it's not being extremely pointed and very succinct. It just means we've lost our fluency in communicating with our body.

But we can become fluent again with a little practice or through necessity or both. The key is to listen.  (Go ahead.  Roll your eyes.  I'll wait....)  

I don't mean listen with your ears, wait for some being from beyond to tap you on the shoulder, or have some vague sign show up out of nowhere. Well those aren't bad things so feel free, but they aren't what I'm referring to here. When I say listen, what I mean is get to a place where you can focus without being disturbed, get yourself as comfortable as you can be under the circumstances, and let yourself actually be with the pain/injury/illness.  No distractions, no listening in order to respond, confront, or aggressively manage the situation.

Once you're at a point where it is just you and whatever it is you're focusing on, then it's time to interocept. Anyone can do this as, unless there's nerve damage, we all have the ability to interocept. Perception is the use of our five physical senses to sense the world around us. This includes the external part of ourselves, but mostly focuses on our interaction with the world beyond our skin. Interoception is our ability to sense what is going on inside us. It's what happens when someone asks what we want to eat, if our headache is worse/better, or when the doctor asks where it hurts and how much. Our interior senses, both physical and Akashic, turn our knowingness inwards and we fill with information.

For example, could you tell me if your left toe is ok or not right now?  As you're reading this, I bet you started wiggling that toe slightly.  That's to get the external nerves, your perception system, to give you input.  But your mind immediately went to check on it internally, to interocept the situation, as in "nope, I don't feel any pain, weakness, or swelling," which you more than likely convert into the thought, "It's normal. Everything is ok."  

So, listening to the problem you're having works a bit like this.  You start by focusing the inner knowing you have, your interoception, on the issue.  If it's something like diabetes or arthritis, pick some area or organ which is affected most and start there. At the beginning your problem-solving left brain will catalogue everything and start telling you solutions.  This can take you away from the listening process and you turn your attention to listening to solutions rather than to the body itself.

If you can, and it's not always possible due to pain, fear, or frustration, but if you can, ignore those messages.  I call this the Karen Brain, and I try to tell it to "Sit down, Karen!"  

Then you can begin receiving information from the body, which really means more about being available to what happens when you focus on that particular aspect of yourself.  This is the hard part to explain because it varies so much between individuals.  And because we've been trained out of our holistic nature and so expect to receive a message about how best to remedy the situation through an action, medication, diet or some other direct response.

However, responses from our body and the pain/injury/illness we are experiencing can come in the form of memories. This isn't a way in which you're attempting to distract yourself nor is it a problem of not being able to meditate. If the physical issue you're experiencing stems from emotions which you've been denying or haven't yet processed, then memories of events which have caused them can start coming up, which can seem random or a distraction, but are pertinent to the situation.  Diabetes can be caused by deep sorrow or grief which has been pushed down or denied. Hence the first step of the remedy would be to begin experiencing memories which bring up these feelings.  Arthritis can stem from anger, righteous indignation or rage which has been suppressed and needs an outlet. If it can't find a way out it will burn its way in.  Knees which become painful can be due to our having carried too much of other people's responsibilities, burdens, or emotional baggage or can be because we have locked them in order to prevent change or being pushed over by others in dysfunctional situations.

We may get waves of emotion without memories as well. Sometimes the emotions need release, like water under pressure and so with energy and our attention, they are able to come back to us for processing and integration. Or we could get desires for things which seem irrelevant or childish. We could get longings for things we wanted long ago, and we thought we had put behind us. But our inner child, our soul, and our core self disagree, bringing these back up as necessary steps to our healing and returning to a more functional life.

Of course, there is also the possibility interoception of this nature will confirm what we already know. We already have good advice, a medicine regimen, a physical therapy schedule, dietary and supplement supports, and pointed information about how to not do whatever it is which caused this to get started and how to avoid it in the future. We just need to integrate this wisdom into our life, add this to our knowledge of ourselves and follow through on each part to accomplish our full healing. Not the easiest thing for any of us at the best of times. ☹

The thing to keep in mind is we humans are intricate, multifaceted beings living in an interconnected world. So healing processes like this are, to use an overused metaphor, are like onions. You understand one layer and you get through it, quickly or otherwise, and you find another layer. And then another. Which can seem like a cosmic trick on us which isn't funny, but it's not. There is an end to all the layers and a way forward to health. 

Because in reality, healing is often a multistage process which requires we move from one set of actions to another in order to heal completely. 

Just like with healing a broken leg, there is the initial intervention when someone (hopefully a medical professional) sets the leg, stitches any harmed skin and muscle, settles all the ligaments, tendons and other parts back where they belong and you are given a structure such as a cast to keep it immobile as it fuses back together. Then there is the frustratingly lengthy process of being in a cast and dealing with itching skin, aching bones, mobility devices, constantly having to figure out how to get from here to there and so on. Once this is done then there is the physical therapy which helps build everything back and the equally important reacquaintance with this new version of our leg as it will either be shorter or longer than it was before and so cause us to be structurally different going forward.

So interoception is not something we do once and then move on, it's an important part of how we work through the entire process from initial questioning to final healthy state. We can do it daily to see how much progress we've made, we can do it weekly if the process is connecting with emotions or needs us to take actions which take a bit of time and logistics to complete. We can use it to check in on how things are going if we've reached a plateau, remission, or place of long-term general maintenance. And once we're healed we can use it to continue our relationship with ourselves, and even fine tune our intuition and soul connection.