In-Shape
Health
Club Outdoor Spa, Napa, California, USA
January 19, 2021
This essay,
Detective In My Own Body,
is the one thousand six hundredth in this Conversations For
Transformation internet series. That doesn't mean anything. It's just
what's so.
I am indebted to Joan "Joani" Culver who inspired this conversation.
Transformation ongoingly makes itself known as
Life itself
unabated. Just when I think it's run its course and that there can't
possibly be any more coming, I notice there's more, that it's
relentless,
that it keeps on
inexorably.
With transformation comes responsibility for
my life.
With responsibility for
my life
(ie with responsibility for all aspects of
my life)
comes a new way of being responsible for my body. And my body, like
everyone's I suppose, from time to time develops unwelcome physical
symptoms. Without agreement, I've begun considering newly that maybe
I'm causing those unwanted physical symptoms to develop in my body
(until now, I would have ascribed the cause of any unwanted physical
symptoms to something else: illness, aging, viruses and germs, and / or
unhealthy eating habits for example).
As I proceed with and mature into this inquiry, I've begun noticing
where there are messes (read:
inauthenticities,
dishonesties, withholds) to clean up in my mental / emotional state,
there are corresponding symptoms to clear up in my physical state / my
body. And as I explore and experience the symptoms in my physical
state, my body urges me to consider that in a very real sense, my
mental and emotional states are manifesting in (and even "as") physical
symptoms in my body. My body is urging me to consider that for each
mental / emotional mess there's a corresponding physical symptom, and
that the two are causally related / completely inseparable.
I recently consulted with a doctor, a warm, attentive man, to discuss a
new symptom I'm experiencing in my body. Look: I'm seventy. At seventy,
there are symptoms which occasionally appear in our bodies newly. It
happens. Most of them are benign and clear up by themselves. Even so, I
keep a close eye on them, not taking any of them lightly. The doctor
prescribed a
medication
which he said was the antidote for the symptom. I asked him if we could
first explore the likelihood that I was causing the symptom myself by
manifesting some mental / emotional mess in my body. He said there was
no such thing, and that there was only a physical cause, and with it, a
prescribed
medicinal
cure. I thanked him, left, and (as nice a man as he was) looked for a
another doctor who would be receptive to the mind / body connection,
and to my idea that physical symptoms may be manifestations of
mis-managed mental / emotional messes, or would at least be open to
that possibility.
I did find another doctor who was thoroughly specialized in the area of
mental / emotional causes of physical symptoms. When I proposed my
theory to her that I cause my own physical symptoms by mis-managing
stress and
fear
for example, she said "Of course you do" (read: "Well
duh!?"), which prompted a long discussion not only about how
this idea is often dismissed out of hand, but also what mental /
emotional actions I could pro-actively take which would alleviate the
manifested physical symptom. I would have to develop a new relationship
with my body, one I had not had before. I would have to
listen
my body in ways I had not
listened
it before. I would have to become a detective in my own
body (if you will), exploring its symptoms, relating them to
where I wasn't handling the messes in my mental / emotional state, and
then get those mental / emotional issues handled - oh, and all without
the need for or reliance on prescriptions and / or
medication.
Putting my theory to the test soon afterwards, I began noticing (it's
becoming ever more and more unavoidable) that when I pay
attention
to those mental / emotional messes and clean up whatever I've got going
on there, my body experiences new waves of
health,
vitality, and wellness in the corresponding areas in which they
manifested. And that's not to mention there are also improvements which
spontaneously show up in my posture. Mental / emotional issues in which
I've played small, have manifested in stooped, unassertive postures.
Cleaning up those messes have spontaneously resulted in upright, bold
postures. It would appear / I'm clear that indications of undealt-with
and incomplete mental and emotional messes manifest as physical
symptoms in the body. They're clues for a good detective to follow.