Are you listening to the waves within you?
That pain in your lower back when you sneeze or twist the “wrong way” or woken up with a feeling that you can’t explain, it sits on your chest front or back like a weighted energy without explanation; this feeling hits it can often bring up feelings of freeze, fight or flight. Making what may used to seem like a simple task at hand in fact be the hardest forward motion you face that very day.
Do you know what these feelings are saying to you?
Every single sensation is a manifestation in the body formed by suppressed thoughts and emotions.
So you wake up, you go through the motions of the day, doing the tasks and checking off the list of priorities small and large. The non-negotiable things like brushing our teeth, going to the bathroom, cleansing the body, nourishing the body, for some people getting kids ready for school, going to work, this pattern is unique to each person on their own.
This daily pattern is very important, it defines it all.
The body is like a buddy system to each corresponding function to make it sustain itself and move forward to the next step or moment.
Can you pinpoint sensations in your body to begin with?
It all begins with the breath into your body.
How you breathe into your body can affect your entire day, the driver of the mind if you will. Think of it this way…the body is run by the mind and the mind is running on a reel, your thought and emotional patterns. The way that it comes through in the brain and the state that you run on. The brain is where your experiences are modulated and formed and sends the signals to the body that pain is present through the nerves highlighting the sensations to where the pain has manifested.
For some people it’s the things they study that fills their minds, for others it is the nature of their work, their families, what happened yesterday, a year ago, 5-10 years ago that still makes us angry, sad, frustrated, resentful, shameful, there are so many emotions that bring up the sensations in the body.
There is a family physician out of Vancouver British Columbia, Dr. Gabor Maté has made it a part of his life’s work and mission to find the root cause of trauma and addiction and the manifestations it brings out in the body strongly highlighting over and over how our emotions make us sick when we suppress them and don’t process them in ways that release the energy before its manifested into something.
This can show up like muscle aches, jaw pain (from not speaking the inner truths), dis-ease within the body and depending on how rooted the emotion is can eventually lead to actual disease.
Traditionally in our society, the expression of emotions has often been viewed as less mature than reason, and negative emotion as pathological and needing rational control. When it’s the thought itself that is either negative or positive, not the actual emotion itself.
Most of us were taught to put the energy into productive action without intention attached to it so it can move through and out of our bodies creating a sense of freedom within.
There is a lot of research happening regarding emotions and what some medical journals are showing is that there are two distinguishable types of emotion.
Emotional state and emotional process.
Emotional state reflects on our transition moods and the effects of the moods and roots to emotional disorders like anxiety.
Emotional Process refers to the mechanisms in which emotions are generated, experienced, and used; this includes emotional awareness, labeling, expression, processing, and integration of said emotion. Emotional processes strongly influence emotional states as well as mental, behavioral, and physical health more generally. Research on such emotional processes is more recent than that on emotional states is new and it is great that it is being studied.
Studies show that both fear and anxiety influence pain and the intensity of it. Anxiety is fed from fear- the anticipation of threat; which has a lot to do with your Central nervous system, para sympathetic nervous system and how the body is regulated.
There is so much distraction or disassociation in our world today that is easily accessed that creates an addiction, which feeds the release of dopamine in the body, some caused by food, water, sexual interaction, and drugs of abuse. The activation of a part of our brain called the amygdala, which when in high states of stress suppresses emotional reactions to pain and focuses on the “quick fix” to temporarily ease the sensation of pain.
This makes it difficult for people to actually get into their feeling body before the body gets into a state where it becomes unbearable and the pain consistently repeats itself. When the Amygdala is in the driver’s seat, the body is in a consistent state of fight, flight or fawning and acting from an unconscious or “survival mode”.
So we have activities like mindfulness practice, yoga, different sports, weight lifting, and other forms of competitive actions which can also then just add fuel to the things we are attempting to off load the suppression, like outside and internal expectations.
That is why there are spaces of safety to figure this out like talk therapy, somatic therapy, body work therapists (massage therapy, Osteopathic Manual therapy, Lymphatic Drainage therapy, physical therapy, acupuncture), personal training, art therapy.
When we begin by accepting ourselves just as we are, we are taking accountability for everything that is happening inside of us, it takes work to reflect, review, process and take action steps that move us from those spaces and if you are really committed to your overall health and wellbeing, it is worth it.