And it is you know…
As humans we have been conditioned to believe that pain must be fixed. And yet we are so disconnected we have no idea what needs fixing, so we fix what we see with our eyes and what our heads tell us to fix. We want to control it, to banish it.
What if we just gave the pain a voice? What if we could just listen to the pain and hear what it is telling us? Is that possible?
Yes it is. We need to feel the pain and believe what it tells us. And more often than not it will tell us a story very different to what our minds were thinking.
Our bodies speak to us constantly and yet we often ignore them. That slight stomach flutter – what are you frightened of? That headache – what are you worried about? That knot in your throat – what are you finding it difficult to say? That muscle cramp – what are you doing that you don’t believe is right? And so on…
Is your body pain something old or something new?
I asked myself a question a while back about why my lower back often ached when walking. I acknowledged the pain and asked it how old it was. I gave it space to be there, in my body and my mind, by not ignoring it, by not telling it to go away with my mind. It took me back further and further to school (schools have a lot to answer for, lol). Standing in line. The earliest memory I have of this clenching tension in my lower back, is when I was caught talking while standing in line, and was told to stand in the corner and wait until everybody had passed and join the end of the line. I think I was about 7. I could sense the emotional feeling again which came right into my lower spine as a clenching. This manifested itself into a learned physical response to standing in line and, over the years, holding that tension in my lower back has become a normal everyday discomfort my body automatically produces when I am standing upright, and has been with me for so long that my body finds it difficult to relax that lower spine unless sitting down. Having understood when the response triggered, I could make peace with that, and slowly now my body is starting to respond. I can sense the tension come up now as something that wants to change, that doesn’t feel right, that is just something physical that can heal itself, rather than something to ignore as normal for my body. Just this morning I sensed the habituated response to walking as I took a stroll along the track, and this time I stopped and relaxed my entire body, grounding with my heels, and could feel it starting to relax into a different walk, a more relaxed back and spine. It will take a bit of time to change as any habituated learned response does.
This morning I wanted to to also try this type of communication out with the horses. I wanted to allow that pain is ok, it is their pain to heal, not mine to fix. All I need to do is love them as they are and hold space for them to tell me about their pain, to help me understand its origins, and to bring it into the present if they are ready.
Querida is often the first to engage in the present moment with me. We connected through the heart first. Bringing the stillness of the present moment to another and receiving their invitation is an amazing feeling in itself, but then to sense into your own heart and the love that is there, communicate that through a feeling, and then receive a deep feeling of love back is awe inspiring. I often wonder what it would be like if humans could share this with each other without thoughts getting in the way.
Once we had that connection I closed my eyes and asked her about her feet. It is a sense of her feet I communicate. I am giving her feet space to talk to me. I don’t know if that makes sense in words. I am not judging her feet. I am not telling her about her feet. I am asking her to tell me.
What came back to me was really interesting. I got a sense of flames, lots of heat and fire under and around each foot. I didn’t judge this at all. It would have been easy at this point to say ‘See, told you your feet were hot and painful!’ Instead I gave the flames more space. Doing this is like imagining a room getting bigger and bigger. The flames expanded and the fire engulfed her entire body. Then I had a vision of her rising up above the fire and letting the fire burn itself out as she watched. Then she floated back into her body and she felt more real, more within her body than I have felt with her. More solid. The flames and fire had gone.
I then got a sense of when I collected her, and the feelings came back around that. My tension, worries, anxieties about her getting into the trailer, worries about upsetting her, sorrow at taking her away from what she knew and a person she trusted. I could also sense her sadness and fear and anger emotions. We gave all these emotions space together. This was a release of emotions to do with our relationship. We found peace with that process and let it go.
There is a link between the physical pain and the historical emotions that came forward. Acknowledgment enables healing of the emotions. Coming to terms with and finding peace with the emotions enables healing of the physical response to the emotion.