Energy Healing: All in the Body?

Hello there! Over the last few days, I have been reminded of the way the body sometimes quite literally speaks to us. We can see this in our everyday language: "He's a pain in the neck." "I knew it - I had a gut feeling about him." Or " I put it all behind me."

I remember the first time I became aware of this, it was like a big penny dropping - an "aha" moment. It was the first time I went to see an energy healer, and I suppose my first exposure to these kinds of ideas. She worked very intuitively and picked up information about my throat chakra and my sacral chakra - telling me the age I was when these had been negatively affected by events in my life. It turned out that the ages she told me about were when I had a tonsillectomy (obviously linked with the throat chakra) and an operation to remove a small ovarian cyst (linked with the sacral chakra.)

At first, I assumed the effect on the chakra was caused by the operations themselves. Nowadays, I see it as the chakra and related organs being affected by life circumstances: when the pain of what is happening in our lives is too intense to process completely, the unresolved emotions are held in the body, and can block the chakras. In retrospect, I think my childhood episodes of frequent sore throats were to do with being unable to find a voice for myself, or to stand up vocally to the strong critical energy coming from my father. My body gave me the clue to this in a throat chakra illness. Similarly, the ovarian cyst came about at a time when I was deeply unhappy with my life, including with my marriage, and feeling disconnected from myself, and from my (then) husband. This manifested as an illness in an organ governed by the sacral chakra, which is to do with sexuality.

Currently, in my own life, I often ask myself why I might be experiencing certain symptoms. For example, a couple of years ago, I would get a lot of nausea. And I think it was because there were certain things in my life that weren't serving me any more, and were quite literally making me "sick." I also sometimes get that fuzzy feeling in my head (foggy brain) which immediately tells me I need to come out of my thinking, analytical mind and back into my body (time for some dancing or some chi kung shaking!)

So, often, in energy healing or EFT sessions with clients, I will ask people to think about why they may have developed certain symptoms or illnesses. Often, a bit of quiet reflection, or even dialoguing in meditation with the body part that is affected, can give an answer. This can often indicate a certain course of action that needs to be taken to begin to heal the symptom or illness.

Having said all this, we are all unique individuals: a pain in the knee may mean one thing to one person, and quite something else to someone else. On the other hand, I find reflecting on this model is often very illuminating - and there seems to me a certain beauty in the literalness of the body finding a way to talk to us through symptoms!