When the Body Speaks

What if physical symptoms aren’t separate from your emotional life, but another way your body communicates?

After an unexpected break due to illness, I reflect on what it means to truly appreciate health and I explore the mind-body connection through a biopsychosociaspiritual lens. I discuss chronic illness, emotional conflict, inherited family patterns, stress, and the atmospheres our bodies grow up in, offering a perspective that bridges Western medicine with holistic approaches. Rather than viewing physical and emotional health as separate, this episode invites listeners to consider how the body may carry unresolved experiences—and how healing begins by asking deeper questions.

Walk with me.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning. Everyone. Welcome to Embody Wisdom. A walk in a talk with Dr. Brook. Live from my neighborhood. Coming to you after a couple week hiatus. I was feeling quite unwell over last weekend. So I was unable to transmit the material that I was meant to transmit to you. So I guess I wasn't meant to do that. Um but it has brought me to think about what I wanted to talk about today. And I what I wanted to focus on is like the mind-body complex. Like the conceptualization of the mind-body complex. Now, I'm saying mind-body complex because um I think also I think I also want to talk about like what you don't appreciate when you don't have it, you know, or when you're not in a certain space or not with something. In other words, when you're experiencing something like you're supposed to experience ill health and um and then you're so, look at this pretty deer here that's walking. So pretty. Good morning, honey. Um a little distracting today. Distracted. Um, because I was when I was feeling so ill, all I could think about was feeling better. And then I thought about how when we're struck with chronic illness or feeling so out of control of our bodies when we get to get that back, how how distinctive a shift it is. So I don't know, I talk to a lot of people who um are old and they've taught me a lot about how hard it is to get old. It's really hard to get old, especially because you don't feel well and because your body's old. And it's like we don't appreciate that. I don't think we're like really taught to appreciate that. Or we're not really, let's say, I'm gonna say ironically or not ironically, embodied. You know, we don't really necessarily I mean I guess some people do, I don't know, but like I wouldn't say I was necessarily taught to focus on maintaining my body um for the long term. You know, exercise, exercise, exercise, all these things. And it's this idea that maybe that let adds to our longevity and our overall current sort of health circumstance. There's a huge beautiful crow here, too. Animals are out of the beautiful morning. Um there she is. Um so we're not really taught to be in our bodies, and that was part of what I was sort of gonna say is that there's no word, and I think I mentioned this before, but there's no word for embodiment in eastern philosophical thought. They don't, there's no word for it. In fact, I've heard about sometimes God, that there's one story about the Dalai Lama. I don't remember what the concept was, but he was standing in front of a bunch of Western therapists, and I can't remember what the concept was, but it was like he didn't understand what they were saying. So they had come up with something they were talking about, and he had to get someone to define to him what they meant because it's kind of like there's no separation between the mind and body in Eastern thought. It doesn't exist. So this idea of the mind-body complex, we in the Western world, it's like we separate everything, so the mind and the body are like two separate entities, and then you could have something like a psychosomatic illness, right? But the idea of the psychosomatic illness is often it's all in your head, people feel like that, opposed to where is the origin of the illness? What is the root cause of the illness? And a physical illness, and the root cause of a physical illness could be emotional. In fact, there is an idea that all illness begins in the mind. So people say to me, Well, what does that mean? Like that begins in the mind, but it's in my body. A big one is like I, you know, I have a scan, and there's amyloid plaque in my brain, and that is the cause of my symptoms. Okay, I'm not look, you have an organic, you have something organically going on in your body, you have a tumor. I am not saying it is not in the body. It is, but I look at this more if we want to look at it from more an embodied perspective, or a mind-body complex, meaning it's all interconnected. And so a million years ago, I think this was even when I was like an undergraduate, um, there was this idea about the biopsychosocial spiritual approach to mental health, bio-psychosocial, spiritual approach, and now that's what I would call this. Where does the suffering originate? Where does the dis-ease originate? And that helps it heal. So if you don't feel well, right, and a lot of times we talk this could be about you know these immunological illnesses that people have. Well, they start somewhere. And I read something many years ago about the center of autoimmune because it's the body attacking itself being um it's like it's it's like a it's like there's a sense of that um like uh self-hatred. And there are many people I've worked with, and if you understand the source of that self-hatred, let's say you're an I an illness like a fibromyalgia illness, it um it will clear up the symptom, the fibromyalgic symptom. Now, will the whole syndrome clear up? Well, maybe not necessarily, because this brings me to something I'm doing some research about, which is like environments. Okay, atmospheres. Atmospheres. So when I meet when I mean by atmospheres, and I brought this, and I talked about this a couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago, a few episodes ago, um, about how the goop, well, your body grows up in goop. So the concept of the goop, if you didn't listen to that, is like it's like you grow up in an environment, and that environment goops you up. So let's say it's a it's an environment of invalidation. Wow, this is like a really beautiful day today. Um and I guess when it's feeling so bad and I couldn't go out and walk, it just makes me appreciate that more. You know, when um many, many years ago, I was talking to my therapist at the time, I think it was in my 20s, and there was one of the a new song, a new live like you're dying song, and I was like, why can't I live like I'm dying? And she simply said to me, Well, Brooke, because you're not. And I was like, uh oh, right, good point. So if you feel really ill, right, and you can't do what you want, then you could feel like that idea of like the moment is now, like, because what happens if you don't get another moment? And it's not even like a morbidity thing, it's just like a life thing. Like, are you gonna feel as good tomorrow as you felt today? You know, and we're all after something, running towards it, trying to get it, trying to get this health, trying to get this, you know, well-being. Instead of just like focusing on how do I feel today in my body, how's my mind-body doing? No, no, you know, does everyone go like how's your mind-body doing?

unknown 9:55

No.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

No. Now, you might be focused on a symptom once you get it, have the symptom, but are we actually focused on our mind-bodies, both those concepts on the daily? I would say partially. But anyway, in those moments when I wasn't feeling well, I uh definitely, definitely, definitely came into a deeper appreciation of what I was what I could and could not do. Not in my mind, not because I was getting um interference or barriers in the mind. I literally could, my body would not allow me to do it, I could not do it. And I think these are important distinctions, only because in one case we can face the fear and walk right through it or whatever the barrier, but in another case, we may not be able to lift our head off the pillow. And those are two very, very different things, and if somehow we confound them in our minds, we're mistaken, right? But it still can feel very similar. But that's why if we are in our bodies and we understand this whole complex thing, we can look at various different sources to try to understand the root cause of whatever's happening in our body. Now, I don't know if if you break your leg and you have an injury, you know, you know where the root cause of that came from. If you know you have a family history of something, likely there that it's that. You see what I mean? It's just it's obvious if you look at it. So if you're caught, you know, if you're worried about a certain getting a certain illness because it runs in your family and you do preventative medicine around, well, that makes perfect sense. That's part of your heritage and it's in your genetics, and you know it. It's real. So if we live in our bodies and we embody what's in our bodies and we understand that there's a bio, psycho, social, spiritual approach even to illness, physical illness, then we have many other portals to heal from. If we go to the Western medicine portal, which is you know really focuses on rational science, biology, what you can see, and someone's like, well, you know, we did all these tests and it's not coming from here, it's not coming from here, it's not coming from something we can see, it's written off as something psychosomatic, maybe. And when sometimes when people say, like, oh, someone recently was telling me about how she's not able to process iron, so her iron stores are low, which contribute to tremendous fatigue, and then it's sort of like, okay, well, if she if another person hears like, oh, maybe I have that, well, maybe you do, but what are the mechanics behind why she might not be able to digest her iron, digest her strength, digest that now? Could that be genetic? Sure. Could that be likely not social, but it could be from, if I go back to this little point I just made up, about the atmosphere you grow your body grows up in. Okay, not just your psychology, the atmosphere your body grows up in. Now, I gotta rock here. Okay. Um, so that could be if you grow up in chronic invalidation, then let's say you're you wake up in the morning and you're tired, okay, but you go, I gotta get up and I gotta go. Now, there's an idea that women um didn't have menopausal symptoms uh before the industrial revolution. Now, they of course they went through changes, they went, but they didn't have symptoms. Now, you know, every my generation of women is definitely about highlighting self-care around these types of changes. But the point is is that we're a lot of us are career women, and we act like we treat our b we treat our bodies like we're men. And this is one author that I would take on this. I don't know, I don't remember exactly the data he drew from for this, but he he did the research. It wasn't like he just like came up with this idea, and what his take on it was was you know, all the caffeine, all the pushing through, all the not paying attention to body signaling, not resting um in line with our menstrual psych, all these things. And so now the body is in a different state than if you had taken care of it like you're a woman. Not that doesn't mean like don't work, but it would have me it would mean that the expectations are different because the female per uh makeup is different. Well, that's not respected, and as a result of that, the body has more of a revolting experience because the nature of the entire, let's say the entire atmosphere has been push, push, push, and now the body's going, you can't push anymore, and you gotta rest and you gotta take care of yourself, or you're not gonna feel well, and instead everyone's getting estrogen patches, you know, like it's like in some sort of solidarity that we all pushed ourselves and now we're all suffering together, and now we don't have to suffer because we're now you know we're compensating for that. So let's say that's a climate or an atmosphere, your body has it from working. But if you grow up in chronic in a space where there is chronic stress or chronic oppression or mind fucking, you know, gaslight. I mean, this causes your body is living in that stress, and it does lead to biological abdation, a biological adaptation to maladaptive patterns. Why not? Right? So it makes sense that there becomes physical ramifications. There's also an idea, if a symptom is not dealt with, let's say an emotional symptom is not dealt with, it goes in the body and it stays there latent, a conflict, an emotional conflict. So there was uh this wonderful research study done so many years ago, and this was really it was a sort of a groundbreaking study, and it was done about with group psychotherapy and women with breast cancer, and there was a dramatic improvement when they compared the group of women who had this is like it's so beautiful back here today. The weather is also really good. This is not my appreciation. It's really good though. Um so the groups, the women, the women, the groups with the breast cancer. And there was a dramatic improvement in the women who participated in this group compared to the women who maybe did some other kind of intervention. And oh my god, this tried to be replicated because this is what we have to do in research. We can't just show it one time, has to be replicated. Now, this is the interesting thing about it. I don't really think it was replicated. I'd have to do some research, but let's say my understanding for the purposes of this audio is that it really couldn't be replicated. Well, let's say those women they didn't have an expectation, they did it like from this opening in their hearts and they healed the conflicts that contributed to their breast cancer. So we would say that those conflicts, now if we want to just look at the body, and we understand we have a mind-body complex, that that those were conflicts of the heart, and because it's located there. Now, someone's gonna say, hey, Dr. Brooke, but my I have the the you know, I have the gene, I've been tested, every woman in my family has had this. Well, I'm not knocking that. I'm just saying that there is also there is a possibility that beyond your genetics, that all the women in your family could have also had these certain heart conflicts. It all comes together, it doesn't have to exclude anything. So everyone's going this or that, and I'm going this and that, this and that, and that's a ancient philosophy. It's called Tantra, not the you know, not the sex tantra, and it really is about the fabric is endless, the quilt is endless, just keep adding, keep adding, right? Add squares to the quilt. You don't have to exclude anything, you can change your mind as you go. I mean, this is the beauty, it doesn't, it doesn't, it evolves based on its own merits. So you don't have to exclude any of it. So of course, I'm not thinking, oh, let's throw Western medicine and now let's all be homeopaths. No, no, but why not be both? Why not draw from both? If we need it, if we need to. So if sorry, I'm getting a little interruption in my mind right now. Um so for able to navigate from a point of view that's inclusive and not exclusive, we give ourselves more opportunity to heal. Okay, so the reason why I'm saying that I don't know if this could be replicated is because it took it out of the original context it was in, where there was very little expectation. There was obviously healing around this, around these women. Um, it could have just been like a perfect storm where there was really good camaraderie and maybe like experimental for everybody. And they just came together and they followed the protocol and they talked and it undid things for them. They got unknown. Like there's ideas in the breast of calcification. I think that's considered like a very early cancer stage. And that from a homeopathic or a like I'll say even metaphysical point of view is meant to be from emotional conflicts because it's in the heart area. Okay, and each of the chakras, as I've said, this is centers, energetic centers of um, if you don't know in the body, um, and there's an idea that that each person comes into this life and they have one chakra in particular that one energy center in the body. And if you look at these energetic centers, you know, you have like the um root chakra, and then so that's the first chakra, you have the second chakra, that's the genital section, the genitals, you have the third chakra, also emotional center, you have the third chakra, which is that the center. A lot of times, if like, for example, if people have extended tammis, not that that also isn't your body type, but that's a lot of times that the idea is that you give your power away. Give your power away to others, because that's the power center. So that's between sort of your navel area and your heart. Third chakra, fourth chakra, heart, fifth chakra throat, sixth chakras, third eye, and the seventh chakra is like the crown that goes to um, you know, transmits from above to below to the density, so comes from the spirit into the crown. So this this is all it with an assumption that you understand that we are a mind-body complex. It it doesn't work otherwise. Like the theory, you can't even talk from this space if you're not incorporating that. And people, and you know, I get like there could be like this poo-poo thing. Well, you know, like that's whatever. But when you're suffering, you can't figure out why you're suffering. All of a sudden, people are like, okay, I'll I'll I'll look at whether or not this is an emotional conflict. Because part of why I think I really wanted us to talk about all of this is because it really bothers me that we don't simplify. That we don't simplify things. Sometimes our feelings are hurt. And if we forget someone hurt our feelings, that's very dangerous. And where does that forgetting go? Those feelings, that upset. It goes in your body and it stays there until it's represented for review. It doesn't go away. So if it if you if it let's say like that those conflicts keep happening because you grew up in an invalidating atmosphere, or you grew up in a space for me, very tied to my digestion, where you couldn't digest what was happening, like it just wasn't reasonable what was happening, like you just couldn't do it, you couldn't understand, not wouldn't, just couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, then um, then it's gonna show up in your intestines. And if this is chronic, and like and the other thing is it's by design, the whole thing has a design. I mean, we want to even go further deeper. So I'm saying all this, but there's even like further underlying designs of how your body's designed and what the lessons are, and and it's all interconnected. And so what I'm saying is if we're trying to heal something and we touch on all of these things, we are far more likely to get a result. I'm sorry, than um than it than not than not. Sorry, I just got scared by someone who came up behind me really quickly. You might have heard my whoo. I was like talking like I'm talking. I was I was like talking like you guys are my audience, and it's like I'm this big performer back here in the wooded area. This guy like comes up on oh my god. Oh my god. So not that has not happened before. First uh, first time for everything. So, okay, where was I? So if we could include all of it, then we have a better chance of trying to target the best intervention to get the most result. But if someone hurt our feelings and we don't go to the feeling sector because no one's directing us there, like let's say, for example, for migraines, you get migraines, headaches are notoriously due to stress and and hormonal withdrawal. It's not, you know, not one thing. I know like many women who have chronic migraines at certain kind of parts of their the month of their monthly cycle. Um, so I'm not again, we're not I'm not saying it's not all interconnected. And look at my defense of this because I think that I'm defending it because I hear too much of the time this not being considered. It's like the things you can't see are not considered, you can't see feelings, it's like they're disenfranchised. But that being said, that doesn't mean you don't have amyloid plaque on your brain, and it doesn't mean that you bought you you're you don't have uh symptoms of looping, you know, if you're having brain, you know, some brain problem. But if that happens every time you get emotional, then um then it it you understand that if you if when you're not when you're being objective, if those symptoms don't come on, I'm thinking of one person in particular who's an older man, he's fine half the time, and then the other half of the time he's not fine because he's he's so ashamed, and his body his brain no longer can handle or manage the the neuropsychological structure of it, of it coming, you know, of it. Um it's like I I look at it, it's like it's like it's raining in his brain, and his brain can't handle the flooding because as he got older, and he's like, it's getting worse. I'm like, it is because your brain's getting older, can't handle the stress. But he grew up in a stressful atmosphere. And let's say the plaque is an adaptation to that atmosphere, and now it's there's repercussions. So um okay, so if we interconnect everything I'm saying, if you use your physical symptom, now the bottom line is it I I think I mentioned earlier, it starts first as a feeling or an idea in the mind. That's where it starts, potentially. There's an idea, as I said earlier, it's every but let's just even say um it starts there and it's not dealt with. Well, then it's gonna go into the body. See, here um because this wasn't dealt with on the emotional plane. So if you deal with it on the emotional plane and or you get access to it, even if it has gone into the physical, because it wasn't dealt with. Now, this is how depression can be, anxiety can be, it goes into the depths and it's very dense, and you can't you don't experience it anymore. So, you know, how am I supposed to get there? Well, first of all, we'd have to start with the underlying assumption that potentially if you have a chronic symptom where they can't find any other underlying cause in your body for that there's potentially another source that you can't see. We have to consider it first, and and this is why it's so important. It's like you can't just say I have depression because my mother had depression and her mother had depression. That's relevant, that is in the biology. But what about the psychology of all of everybody? What about the invalidation that happens over and over again that still perpetuates because each woman invalidated their daughter because they knew no different? They didn't do it purposely, they didn't do it because they wanted to do it, they did it because they did it. But it ends up in your body, your ancestry ends up in your body. We were gonna go into even more esoteric understandings of that, it's even more direct the way the the way that the ancestry connects into the mind-body complex. It's like their thoughts could be your thoughts, their conflicts are your conflicts, their diseases are your diseases. It's it's it's just infinite if you walk in this door. And when we look at it from that perspective, there's infinite ways to heal. But what I will say before I conclude is this is hard. What I'm talking about here, it's hard. It's hard to face your fears, it's hard to face what terrorized your ancestry, it's hard to face it. And so people prefer other avenues, they prefer to take a pill. Now I say prefer, and maybe that's not really reasonable, because if you say prefer and um someone doesn't know that they're making a preference, it doesn't it's that's not fair, right? So I think um saying um that sorry for my final delay here. So it's just like lots of birds, like lots of things I'm noticing today. Um so I'm distracted by nature and people and my nervous system. Um so if we conclude with the understanding that we don't have to have the answers, we can ask the questions, and maybe a simple pill won't help us, but there still are answers to the questions. So there's I'm gonna say always hope, even when there's a space that we can't always feel like um we can navigate on our own or that we understand. Okay, so again, I'm being distracted by some friends that are coming up, and um and so I'm gonna leave you. Um thanks for walking with me today, and we'll walk and talk again soon. Good morning. Hi. Walk with me again. Thanks for coming.

unknown 34:51

Bye.