Everyone Has a Body

Everyone has a body.

Many people are terrified when their body starts to act up. As life has become more complicated in the last one hundred years, we have gotten further and further away from being in touch with our bodies. We have made doctors the high priests of the temples of our bodies thinking they can help us be in touch with what is going on inside ourselves.
We have given them our power regarding what to do with our bodies and how to live with them. As knowledge has increased, we have drifted away from understanding what is happening with the body at any given moment. It seems that things have gotten more complicated and more frightening. We want someone else to take responsibility for what is wrong with us, and fix it for us.
Dick was so afraid to feel his body that he got a ruptured appendix. One day he felt a little ill. After that he was constipated for about eight days. Each day he called me to discuss it but couldn’t tell me any specific symptoms. Finally he developed a fever. I suggested he go to the Emergency room and get a diagnosis. After emergency surgery and a month on antibiotics, he felt better. A year later the problem started to occur again. This time I was able to help him be in touch with what was really going on inside. The anger and fear he was experiencing were connected to his physical problem.
Joe is thirty one years old. He has been a fireman for 10 years. About three years ago, he began having pain in his knees. Slowly it began to interfere with his ability to do physical things, including his job. He saw several doctors who did lots of tests, including normal X-rays, MRI, and physical exam. He came for acupuncture as a last resort. I discussed the emotional connection with his pain and he said, no way. “Nothing wrong with my life. I’m married and have two kids and my wife is a jerk sometimes but she’s getting therapy. I have no problems with my parents.” I questioned him more deeply and he continued to say that everything was fine. He mentioned that his dad was an alcoholic, just as an aside. I asked him to read a book about adult children of alcoholics. The next week he came and admitted that about 80% of what was in the book could be applied to him. After he read the book, the pain in his knees was better. He and his wife went to therapy to understand their relationship better.
Learn to be in tune with your body. You can use what it is telling you to fine tune your awareness. Your body is inseparable from your soul. People are often afraid that something bad in their body is bad. By learning to listen closely to, you can learn to listen to your soul. We often say there is a significance to everything that happens in a person’s life. There is also significance to everything that happens in the body. The body is your very own school. Sometimes it is hard to see things happening in life and connect them to yourself. But with your body, there is no other option. When it is giving you a hard time, it is helping you learn. Try to use it as a gentle guide to looking deep within yourself.