I created Living ROI as a passion, to share my experiences and support others who want to live more authentic, joyful and fulfilling lives.
Dear Friends,
Yesterday I had an amazing healing experience. For real. A teacher/healer took me through a process to address unresolved and unsettled feelings I had about a person, let’s call him Jack, with whom I had a misunderstanding a few months ago. I’m sharing the experience as an example of the power of tapping into the wisdom within our bodies, along with tips for how to do it!
Jack got upset about something that he thought I had done. He must have assumed bad intent on my part because he wouldn’t talk about it, he just cut me off. I couldn’t remember ever having that happen to me, and it hurt, a lot. I’ve been indignantly angry about it ever since, and it has continued to pop up in my mind. Why did he react that way? What could I have done differently? What, if anything, should I do now?
I’ve been studying ancient wisdom on the side (more on that another day) and I had an opportunity to do a session with one of the teachers. This amazing woman asked me to think about some unresolved issue and we could work on it. I thought of Jack.
We started the session with the teacher asking me to think about the situation with Jack and really feel it. She asked me where in my body I felt it and to describe the feeling. It was a big, tangled black ball in my solar plexus, my gut.
She asked me if I could recall the earliest memory I had of that feeling, maybe in my childhood. An image of myself as a 13-year-old girl popped into my mind, and she asked me to describe what I could remember.
I was in a parking lot with my parents and two or three of my sisters. I am the youngest. I remember being upset about something. They didn’t understand me and they weren’t trying to understand me. I was distraught and felt abandoned and unsafe in an emotional and vulnerable moment.
Without going into all the details, the teacher had me go to my 13-year-old self as an adult and help her out in the situation, giving her support, understanding and guidance. We created a new scenario where I no longer felt abandoned, and instead had compassion for whatever was going on with my family at the time. I felt strong and able to handle the situation that had thrown me for a loop as a young teenager.
The teacher then asked me to tap into that dark, tangled ball in my gut and let it unravel. I could really feel it unraveling. It was amazing. I had never had an experience like this. It took about five minutes for it to completely unravel, and it seemed like forever. Finally, that ball and that pain was gone from my body, figuratively and physically. I really couldn’t feel it any more.
Next, she had me imagine talking with Jack. What did I want to say? I felt a deep sense of compassion for him, understanding that something must have been triggered in him for him to have behaved that way. And he really must have thought I meant ill will. I just wanted us to talk it through, and I still do!
I left the session realizing that the pain I was feeling around the situation with Jack was triggering an old memory in me, a time when I felt unsafe. I could also think of a number of other times I had felt that way over the years. And now, light was shining on that dark spot. The gateway to that memory was through my body, where all of our memories and experiences are stored.
“Your body is a field of intelligent wisdom that is speaking to you all the time, and yet if you are like most people, you don’t live in your body so you can’t hear its wisdom. You live in your head.” Mary O’Malley, author, teacher and counselor
Today I helped a friend go through this process with something she is dealing with, and it also had a positive impact for her, which inspired me to share this experience here.
How can you connect with the wisdom in your body?
In one of her blogs, Laura Di Franco, MPT, holistic physical therapist, author and third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, writes, “The secret to hearing your intuition is in your ability to feel your body. Once you get it, you’ll always have a powerful tool to guide your life, from making decisions about your health and wellness to your business or relationships.”
Di Franco offers eight ways to help you learn how to listen to what your body is telling you:
- Get still. Quiet your mind and practice feeling the sensations that are coming from your body.
- Be aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions. Watch them and be curious.
- Step outside of yourself. When you look at what you’re feeling from an outside perspective it can be easier to see. Detach and observe.
- Write down what you feel. Move the experience of what you’re feeling from internal to external by writing it down.
- Feel the difference between a yes and a no in your body. How does it feel when you feel good? How does it feel when you feel bad?
- Start trusting what your body tells you. If your body says, “I don’t want to go to the potluck this weekend,” then don’t go. Honor it. Do what you want to do, what your body says yes to.
- Everything other than feeling is just a story. Realize it’s the feeling you are after, not what you think about the feeling. Your inner critic will quickly talk you out of what might be good for you. That’s not the voice to listen to.
- Find other people who practice this. It really helps to talk with people who are tuning in to their intuition. You’ll get ideas and validation by practicing with others and hearing their stories.
With gratitude for my wise body,
Barbara Fagan-Smith
CEO, ROI Communication
Chief Catalyst, Living ROI
Subscribe here to get my weekly newsletter directly.
Please forward this blog to anyone you think would enjoy it.
