I remind my clients that our body is not a meat care we’re driving around in. It’s an integral part of this embodied life (hence the word em-bodi-ed) and therefore is involved in the spiritual side of our lives. In the reverse, our soul is interconnected with the body and thereby experiencing the physicalness of this life. So physical things are spiritual and spiritual things have physical presence.
The body has a knowing. One way we experience this is through muscle memory which we experience through two general categories. The most commonly discussed is that used by athletes, dancers, performers, and martial artists which is gained through repetition of an action or set of actions. Everyone uses this to some extent for activities such as driving a car or even walking. You don’t have to think about the action, you just do it on “auto pilot” because your body knows what to do, which leaves your brain free to do other things. The spiritual part is known to healers in various disciplines and therapists/life coaches.
The body can act as a storehouse for emotions, memories, or reactions that at the time we are not able to handle or it is not safe to express. The body shunts these into a space which is symbolically related to the event, then waits for a time when they can be released. Most of the time this happens naturally such as in a non-fatal car crash. The person in the car sustains injuries of some sort and if they are egregious enough, if the event was overwhelming enough, the body will step up to deal with the situation. First shock will set in to turn off the emotions and put the mind into healing stasis, then the body seeks to shunt what can’t be dealt with into holding and deal with what is necessary to maintain life. When the person is able to cope with the events in a healthy(ish) way then the memories and emotions will start coming back, being processed in real time and everything merges back into the whole again.
But what happens if the return doesn’t happen organically? What if the memories get stuck? Sometimes we do something that jars the memories loose. We go somewhere that reminds us of something, we smell something that triggers memory, we hear someone say something and they association gets made. Sometimes we go for a massage or for Reiki and the practitioner finds a knot or a hot spot and their working on it releases the memories. And remembering can be gentle and pleasant or rather dramatic, I find. High on the dramatic scale are events where bones are being manipulated. Whether that’s through massage or PT or chiropractic, bones are our foundation. What we store at the bone level is foundational stuff and if its trauma, it’s usually from long ago. Releasing it, healing it, reintegrating it, dealing with it from an adult perspective can be arduous, even Oprah level stuff, but it’s fantastic. Because with all of that out, in the open, and healed, the person then has a better functioning body as well as an improved life.
Where is your body holding onto things?
