.....heal thyself

Yogis,

The body knows.  Mine has been telling me something isn’t quite right, but I haven’t been listening. 

It all began about a month ago with a small pain in my upper back. First it felt like a strained muscle.  I rubbed some healing balm into it and got a massage. It felt better for a while but came right back.  Some days it would sit quietly in the background and other days it had much more to say. I was acknowledging it but honestly not giving it a whole lot of my attention. It will go away.

I would ‘do less’ when I practiced yoga, and didn’t run ‘as far’ in the mornings. Not listening. My typical attitude that I would just work my way through it. Nothing stops me!

Well…..it has finally stopped me.

As you know, I have had a month with emotional highs and lows and what happens in the mind will also be felt in the body.  Interesting how this physical pain began right along with the natural upheaval that occurs with making life decisions.  The ‘dis-ease’. Where life this past week caused me hurt, my body now aches. Something is stuck and I must get quiet to hear. 

Injuries, pain, illness are all symptoms of what is happening within. Signals to let us know that life has gotten stuck inside and our job is to listen.  But often, like I have been doing, we treat the symptoms without attending to the root of the problem.  Indigestion, we pop Tums where the real cure may be found in leaving an unfulfilling job .  A chronic sore throat has us running for antibiotics when saying what needs to be said will set us free.  Nightly sleeping pills for insomnia where a toxic relationship or media overload could be the true culprit.  Catch a bug and run to the doctor to get fixed when all our body is shouting is for us to slow down…………

We all want the quick fix.  Why try a meditation practice when we can so easily begin blood pressure medication.  But treating symptoms and rationalizing them away does not heal us.  They only muffle the inner voice.  But that voice will get louder and louder until eventually we no longer have a choice but to listen. That is where I am right now.  A forced stop. 

Last weekend I thought that by the release of crying I was done with it all.  Being my practical productive self I believed I had let the whole situation pass through over one tidy weekend–ready to move along in the new week.  Not allowing myself to be inconvenienced by the need for longer term self-care.  But perhaps it isn’t as simple as I would like it to be.  Looks like perhaps there is more buried in there and I have to look deeper.  Ouch.

What has your body been telling you?  Are you listening?

The body knows…….and now I am the ready student.

Taking the time to heal inside and out,
SARAH