When you are on a healing journey your intention may be to get rid of a physical condition such as chronic pain, fatigue or illness; emotional angst such as constant stress, anxiety or depression; and/or unfulfillment with your relationships, job or basically any aspect of your life. What usually sets the process in motion is some sort of final straw or trigger. A catalyst of either a major single event or a series of repeating stressful and unsatisfying circumstances that finally result in you being fed up enough with your life and health that you decide it’s time to make a change.
As you embark on your healing path, part of the inherent process is trying out and discovering different types of healing modalities. Depending on the individual, certain methods may be more effective than others. This is also influenced by the timing and sequencing of your healing journey. For example, a particular approach may not work until later on in your experience or one that used to work no longer does. What you need changes as you do.
However, one of the most essential elements in the healing process, and what is often missed, is your need to feel as you heal.
What exactly does this mean?
As humans, we primarily feel through our physical and emotional domains. You could take this a step further in that we also have a 6th sense, our intuition. In fact, your ability to be in tune with your intuition is actually dependent upon your ability to fully embody and be in flow with your physical, emotional and mental realms. When these are blocked you don’t have complete access to your higher self which will typically limit you from reaching your full potential and ability to be truly You.
The physical dimension of your being is your foundation. If it isn’t secure it will be very difficult for you to function at your best emotionally, mentally and be able to listen to your intuition. This is analogous to how we develop from infancy where the first skills we learn are physical in nature. As these become more rooted and developed, we are then able to evolve our higher level emotional and mental abilities. In a way, this parallels the structural hierarchy of your brain in that your lower level reptilian brainstem primarily supports your physical survival, above it is your limbic system housing your emotional center and your cortex on top directing your mental capacity and higher consciousness.
Being physically grounded means you know where you are relative to the ground and the space around you. This means you are very aware of how your body feels within and what it senses externally. In this state, you are able to best use your physical vehicle to manifest in this world. However, in situations involving chronic stress and/or unresolved trauma ranging anywhere from an ankle sprain to serious life threatening events, parts of you may disassociate from your physical body and thus lose your authentic connection with it creating an ungrounded and uncentered state of being.
When trying to heal the physical dimension of yourself half of the process is doing and the other half is feeling. For example, when certain muscles go offline in situations of disassociation they not only are inhibited but they also aren’t being fully sensed internally. In order to reconnect to these parts that are in the shadows it is necessary to learn how to both engage and feel them. This can be accomplished through specific breathing, posture restoration and motor-sensory techniques specific to your pattern.
Your physical body is the foundation for your emotional body. When you are not physically secure it makes it very difficult to be emotionally secure. That is why within the healing process grounding your physical embodiment is paramount to being able to tackle the higher level elements within the emotional, mental and soul realms.
Now for what is probably one of, if not the hardest, aspect in the healing journey-learning to feel your emotions.
Emotions are really just patterns of energy meant to move through you bringing important messages about how you genuinely feel about yourself, life experiences and situations. Our society has dichotomized emotions into “bad/negative” and “good/positive” categories. One of the issues with this labeling is that “bad/negative” emotions have gotten a reputation as being unhealthy and inherently “bad” in nature. At Resonate Health we prefer to use the terms negative or positive in the context of the charge of the emotion and how it makes you feel vs the idea that emotions that make you feel bad are bad for your health. Emotions that are unpleasant or painful to experience are not inherently bad as they function as important personal signals that require full acknowledgement and processing. What’s “bad” is when these emotions become inappropriately expressed, repressed and trapped in your body unconsciously playing like a broken record and draining your battery. Unfortunately, this has become the case with most of us modern humans in that we have completely lost touch with honoring our emotional nature.
In an ideal scenario, when an emotion arises you would allow yourself to experience it, acknowledge it and move it through you completing its function. This provides you with critical feedback about what may be triggering or stressing you out and needs to be addressed and learned from. Once the emotion has served this purpose you are then able to use your reason and logic to make a decision that best aligns with you. However, what we commonly see in clients is that they skip the emotional processing stage and go straight to the reasoning one as this is where our logical left brained dominant society primarily operates from. Unfortunately, this does not allow for the best decision or choice to be made because the energy from the lingering emotion is still percolating in your body. Until it’s properly felt and channeled it will weigh you down and limit you. You know how it’s impossible to have a rational argument when you are angry? This applies to the presence of any trapped or unprocessed emotion you may be holding in your body.
Therefore, in order for you to let go of any physical or emotional baggage it is essential for you to recapture your innate human ability to feel on all levels of your being. This process often involves digging up and facing some painful sensations within the shadow of your being. Resonate Health’s offerings and membership programs are designed to guide you through this healing journey and teach you the necessary life tools and techniques to safely and effectively reclaim and rewrite your health story.
