Welcome to the first post in my series on about pain. Thank you to the subscriber who requested this topic. I want to offer content that is meaningful to viewers so I appreciate your input so much. If you would like to join the Intention Circle, visit IntendWell.US.
A word of warning before we dive in. If this content is new to you, it may seem challenge your perceptions. Sometimes when I hear something new, I have a knee jerk response of “Oh, that can’t be right. That doesn’t make any sense!” But I have learned to tap into curiosity and resist the urge to reject it outright. So, I invite you to explore any resistance that arises.
1. Pain is a Gift.
Our bodies speak to us in sensations. Pain is a mechanism to prevent damage to the physical body. We learn as children (at least I did) to immediately withdraw our hand from a hot stove. My mother must have tired of warning me to stay away from the stove because one day she stood by and let me touch it. After that I learned to keep my distance from the stove without constant supervision. Sometimes we have to experience something for ourselves. What does your body say if you put your hand near extreme heat? “Move away from this stove to protect the tissues in your hand.” Otherwise you will get blisters on your fingertips - which is what happened to me. I say pain is a gift because people who have lost the ability to detect pain (such as in the case of advanced diabetes) are at greater risk of physical injury.
If you are suffering with chronic pain, your body is trying to get your attention. The challenge is to figure out what the body is saying because the threat may be more subtle than a hot stove. So take a moment now to thank your body for alerting you that something is amiss. Send love to the areas that hurt because they are trying to protect you.
2. We are Rivers of Energy.
Imagine a river. Notice the powerful, fast-moving water in the middle of the river. The water is churning, energized. Constantly rejuvenating. See a leaf drift down into the river be swiftly carried away by the current.
Now shift your attention to the water along the river bank. This water moves slowly. In some places, it is barely moving at all. This area of the river becomes stagnant, dank, oxygen-deprived. There may be a foul stench. See a leaf settle in this part of the river. It will decay in the water.
Viewed through the lens of energy healing, the perplexing nature of physical pain with no discernible underlying physical abnormality becomes crystal clear. Centuries ago practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine mapped the primary energy flows in the human body, which we call meridians. The energy should move through our body like the water in the middle of the river - constantly rejuvenating. But sometimes energy slows in a part of our body — like the water at the edge of the river - pooling in areas of energetic congestion.
Not only are our bodies made of energy. The emotions we feel are energy. Our beliefs — which are thoughts we think frequently — are energy. Energy vibrates at a frequency that is measured in hertz. Low vibe emotions and beliefs disrupt the flow of energy. The cause of energetic disruption can be physical, emotional, mental or a combination of factors. You have probably experienced all of these.
Physical Factors: We are all intimately familiar with pain from physical injury… or what I like to call - Inappropriate contact with something in the environment. Banging your knee on a table. Sudden contact with a floor or pavement due to a fall. A slip of a knife in the kitchen. Inhaling or ingesting a toxic substance - like chemicals or a virus. Western medicine excels at treating these types of energetic disruptions. We ice bruises, bind sprains, disinfect cuts, and pin broken bones. Pharmacological substances may be prescribed. With these interventions, our body usually heals itself. Damaged tissues are replaced. Broken bones reattach. The immune system dispatches viruses. In most situations, energetic flow is restored.
Emotional Factors: A friend on mine went to his PCP with pain in his upper chest. The doctor looked at my friend…white man in his 50’s…and concluded the symptoms pointed to coronary heart disease. A stress test and bloodwork ordered. Nitro glycerin was prescribed in case he had a heart attack. All the tests came back clear. The doctor was perplexed but with no angioplasty or bypass to be performed, he was done. If the doctor had asked questions, he may have discovered that my friend’s mother had recently passed. Whether death of a loved one or the end of a romantic relationship — Sorrow HURTS. Undiagnosed pain may have an emotional basis but there are no tests (yet) that measure congestion of emotional energy. And because in Western medicine we tend to mental health is a speciality, medical professionals like my friend’s PCP tend to focus on physical causes.
Mental Factors are associated with our beliefs. A belief is anything that we think on a regular basis. I have a friend who is constantly putting herself down. She says things like “My brain is mush” and “I have a mind live a sieve.” Comments like these are dangerous to our health as they impede energy flow.
Decades ago my right hip seized up. The hip is a ball and socket joint designed to rotate in all directions. The orthopedist laughed when I told him that I could not rotate my leg to the side. He had me lie on my back and bend my right knee. He grasped my knee and attempted to rotate my leg to the side. Suddenly serious he realized that my hip joint was locked. An MRI scan revealed no deterioration or damage in my hip joint. The doctor was perplexed but with no hip replacement to perform he was done. When he called with the test results he said, “Good news! Your hip joint is fine.” When I informed him that I didn't feel “fine” he offered to increase my pain medication. I wish I had known back then that physical pain may have a mental component. Because our legs move us forward, pain in the legs (hips, knees, feet) that cannot be attributed to a physical abnormality may result from fears about the future. I cannot recall specifically what was happening in my life at the time but there was a lot. My children were around ages 8 - 10. My husband’s aging mother lived with us - she and I did not get on. Because my husband was home caring for her and the children, I was the sole breadwinner - working full time and going to school at night. I had plenty of reasons to feel apprehensive during that period in my life.
3. All Healing is Self-healing.
Western medicine offers us so much in the way of treatments but it is up to our body to respond to those treatments and heal. Energetic flow is often restored in the process.
Chronic pain may indicate incomplete healing. If a broken bone reconnects, we consider the injury healed even though there is a possibility that energy flow is still disrupted in the affected meridians. As marvelous as Western medicine is, we lack technology to routinely assess energy flow. So if energetic congestion is the source of our pain, the doctor does not have the tools (yet) to find it. Long-term energetic congestion impedes cellular growth and repair eventually leading to physical damage.
Consider my grieving friend. If he had been unable to process his emotions around his mother’s death, eventually his heart could have developed abnormalities that WOULD show up in blood work or during a stress test. The medical community recognizes a condition called Broken Heart Syndrome, which may result in sudden death.
In my situation, thank goodness the source of my apprehension resolved. My right hip regained full range of motion eventually. Otherwise, eventually stagnant energy in my hip could have led to abnormalities that would be discernible in an MRI scan.
In my next post, we will explore interventions to restore the flow of energy in your body so you can live pain-free.
Comments