Sitting at a restaurant people-watching and chatting with my husband this past Friday night, we touched on some pretty cool topics, but the one that excited me most had my arms animated, my eyes sparkling, and my voice elevated. As we discussed his job as an Advanced Placement Biology teacher at a prestigious high school on the North Shore of Chicago, I wondered aloud the prospect of teaching the future doctors, medical researchers and everyday citizens of our country beyond mitochondria, photosynthesis and traditional biology fare. What if all students were taught at an early age their true power to initiate and advance the healing of their own body? In short, as I practically yelled across the bar to my husband's embarrassment, "What if we taught children to talk to their own knee!"
Through my years on the spiritual path, time and time again I have been led by holistic healers past the drugs and allopathic remedies offered by the well-meaning medical profession and into the interior of my emotional landscape and beautifully designed body. It is my firm belief that it is not enough simply to listen to another's (not even a medical professional's) take on what has gone awry within our own body, for an outsider is not privy to our emotions, heart's desires, subconscious treasures or deeply hidden wounds that absolutely and unequivocally affect all that manifests within our whole system.
Once a symptom appears, we find ourselves at the tail end of what has been building energetically within our body for days, months and even years. We must not only begin to make all-important connections respecting the body/mind/spirit simpatico, but also to understand how to achieve greater intimacy with our own body and inner world if we are ever to move into preventive medicine and away from the "drugs as bandaids" cycle that leaves many individuals today feeling unempowered emotionally, physically and financially.
The Soul-to-Soul Perspective asserts that inner work is imperative to overall well-being, including vibrant health. If a negative emotion (energy in motion) such as anger, guilt or resentment OR resistance to a soul calling to create change remains unexamined, it will eventually show itself somewhere in our body as dis-ease. Most people today still make no connection that what has shown up as illness within the body has anything to do with thoughts, feelings or subconscious beliefs so they go about healing themselves from the outside in versus the inside out.
Our most sacred and intelligent body is always giving us clues (at first subtle and if unheeded quite loud) regarding what needs to be looked at--in both our interior and exterior world--more closely. It deserves our utmost appreciation and acknowledgment, ALWAYS!! So next time you get laryngitis, caress your throat, thank your throat, and acknowledge gratefully a throat that allows you to speak. Seek to understand what your throat is trying to tell you with this ailment. There is a clear message meant just for you if you will but only listen and appreciate your purposeful throat--a very much alive and vital aspect of who you are rather than simply a separate, disconnected body part.
In other words, if your throat is illin', look to see what it is YOU are unwilling or afraid to communicate. If your knee blows, look to see what you are no longer willing to hold up or hold onto, and if your eye begins to twitch, look to see how you may perceive things differently. Through supreme wisdom, our beloved body is willing to show us the way. You may be surprised at the two-way communication system and outright LOVE FEST with your body that can become the norm. So come on, talk to your sprained wrist, caress your battered lower back and acknowledge the daily gifts offered up from your twisted ankle. It's time to make the body/mind/spirit connection part of daily reality as self-love and self-healing go hand in hand. Imagine a world--politically, economically, medically--where our young were taught to do just that.