Let The Body Show You How To Heal

Photo©KasperRavlo/123rf

It’s not always easy to be in a body. So many things to feel. So many changes to experience. So many unknowns. So many ways we’ve been led to believe how quickly things can go “wrong” so suddenly.

Which is why we can easily slip into trying to micro-manage our own body, or to give the responsibility for it over to another person or system. We have been so conditioned to look outside ourselves for the fix, it seems impossible that our very own bodies are the source of that great wisdom and guidance about how to heal.

With a willingness to shift your perspective, and a little (or a lot) of courage, there is a way to rethink your relationship with your body that opens the door to all that wisdom, guidance and inspiration. It all begins by deciding you can be with this body of yours in a way where you come to trust what it is doing, and therefore, telling you about what it needs.

Your sensations of pain and the symptoms of illness and disease are pieces of information to pay attention to, things your body wants you to know. While most of us have never been formally schooled in attending to or decoding that information, your capacity to understand is already built right into you.

You do have the awareness of how to be more receptive to what your body is asking of you, but to access that awareness means allowing the body to do its thing. It means putting aside your assumptions and fears about symptoms and fixing what is wrong, and instead opening yourself up to not knowing. This is not where most of us want to go. It feels too scary. Too risky. Too much like we’re not doing enough or that if we trust the body in this way, something will go wrong.

Your body knows what it is doing. If it didn’t, humans would not have survived to this point in time. Being open to this reality gives you an inroad into how our bodies actually work, as opposed to believing they are dangerous or something to fear, and need to be controlled.

One very tangible way to give yourself insight into what your body is doing and what it needs is to say to yourself, “Show me, show me. Show me what this is all about and what you need. Show me how to be with you now.”

If you can put aside your fears and the need to already have the answer, you’re in a better position to be receptive to what the body wants you to know, and receive some real guidance that will serve you well, as well as serving those you come in contact with.

For the truth is, you cannot be here without a body, and the more connected you are to your very own body, the more satisfying and connected you will be to your own life and the lives of all life.

Susan McNamara is a woman who cares deeply about how we are living and how it is that we treat ourselves, each other, and the planet. She is the founder of “The Healer Within: A Unique Online Health & Healing Community for Women” and the author of the book, Trusting Your Body: The Embodied Journey of Claiming Sacred Responsibility for Your Health & Well-Being. She can be reached at RememberingWhatMattersMost.com.