Ow, This Thing Happened…

Just two days after recording this introduction video for my last post, I went into another contraction in my life. I use this word to describe a challenging time but also an opportunity for transformation or a death of something old to allow a rebirth of something new.

An old injury from 2018 flared up so that my shoulder ended up in complete spasm.  I was in a great deal of pain and there was some initial resistance and frustration but I also trusted that this was only happening at this time,  because there was something that I was needing to shift in my life.

This is one of the major learnings that I received from my own journey through Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome.  My turnaround point in my healing journey happened when I realised that my adrenal fatigue and chronic exhaustion was a message from my body because I was not living in alignment with my truth and not listening to the true needs of my body and my soul.

When I stopped judging and resisting and started reconnecting and listening I was able to start healing.  Body symptoms don’t ‘just’ happen. They don’t exist in a vacuum. They are the way that the body communicates and if you choose to listen you can open the way for transformation to happen.

Let me share with you the lessons I’ve been reminded of and gained from this incident with my shoulder (which is slowly improving every day):

ONE, my shoulder pain was communicating the importance of facing blocks to trusting life.

Through sitting with the pain and through a BodyTalk session I received from a colleague the theme of feeling unsupported by life surfaced. When we feel unsupported and don’t trust life we become self-reliant  and we shoulder everything all on our own.  This very quickly leads to burden and exhaustion (and lots of nervous system activation).

Also, when we’re feeling self-reliant and unsupported we’re usually heavily focussed on survival. To survive we will often fit ourselves into the box we feel we need to be in to stay safe. This is the way we unconsciously choose to be to not rock the boat and to feel in control.

My own protective box was very tight for a very long time. Slowly over the years it has begun to widen and open.  But, lately I have been on the very brink of taking my next really big step in the direction of opting for more than the box and another big layer of transformation is unfolding. With that has been lots of shifting around the idea that it’s not that I’m not supported by life, but rather that I haven’t allowed myself to be – something I’ve known but still not been able to fully integrate in my body.

So my body is helping me to shift the old and integrate the new!

Now is one of those times in my life where I just need to jump but I guess I’ve been really afraid to do that.  This, injury has been an opportunity to work with some of those blocks to receiving whatever life has in store for me and the opportunity to hand over more of the holding on and controlling that I keep insisting on doing.  

TWO: There are just so many layers of fear in relation to receiving and this is a big theme for all of my clients struggling with chronic exhaustion and burnout. For me, as with many others, a huge part of this is trusting that if I take that leap and surrender my own self agenda and my need to control how it turns out, that it will all work out EVEN IF I HAVE NO IDEA HOW. Another layer is the fear that if I step more fully into my power, I will not be shot down, rejected or whatever that fear is that comes with shining our lights really brightly.

So we waste so much energy keeping ourselves small and safe until we learn to trust that…….

THREE: We’re never alone when we go through these challenges.  Many of my clients feel that we’re engineering our lives all by ourselves. Or, if we do believe in something greater then when we reach the edge of the mountain we’re still not willing to believe that if we jump we will be safe.

The truth is, our lives are constantly being guided and supported by a driving force  that you may call God, Source, the divine, the universe etc.  It is the same guiding force that that makes a seed become a tree and we’re all being called to be the tall trees we are here to be.
It doesn’t matter how much energy we put into doing it all on our own – this guiding force will always be present.  In fact, what does matter is that when we try and do it all on our own and forget to flow with and to  rest into this unfolding and guiding force,  that is when we’re likely to feel pretty darn exhausted. It’s often at these times of resisting and not allowing that our bodies talk to us the most loudly.

Or a shoulder freezes up.

FOUR: We’re always going to have contractions and expansions in our life.
We have moments of death and rebirth, darkness and light. Our lives are never all ‘good’.  If we can shift and reframe to understand that every contraction, every challenge is an opportunity to process and release something and to allow something new this gives us the strength and courage and the resilience to move through. With this reframe we also stop wasting so much precious life force resisting and controlling what we think is ‘bad’.

FIVE: There is no point of completion or ultimate achievement where we’ve finally ‘done it’ on this journey. It’s a constant journey of contractions and expansions. And that is what enables the growth and transformation that our souls call for. It’s when we allow and become more conscious of that process that it happens far easier and we move through with grace and ease  and use far less energy doing so. And, to top it off, the expansions become more and more joyful, blissful, longer-lasting and totally worth it!

SIX: Whenever I think that I’m resting, I can always rest more. Whenever I think that I’ve softened, I can always soften more. My nervous system template is still healing and even now rest and softening doesn’t come naturally but, instead, I have to consciously choose to put them in place. But it is easier than it was and I do see the results a lot faster than I used to!   

SEVEN: Part of receiving is to reach out for support. This is not the support where we hand over all our power to someone else to fix us but the support where we allow our process to be witnessed and to be held as we trust our own bodies and that self-guiding force that is supporting this next level of transformation and growth.

BodyTalk is an incredible modality to support this process as it supports us to become conscious of what it is that is transforming and also supports our own innate self-healing capacity to do this.

I reached out to my colleague, Conor McElduff, a physiotherapist, craniosacral therapist and BodyTalk practitioner who constantly blows me away with the accuracy of his sessions and the results that follow. While he’s based in Ireland I receive remote sessions from him as this is a modality that can happen across time/space within the energetic field. I literally felt my pain finally begin to ease on Friday morning and not much later received the feedback from the session he’d done which I was only expecting to happen a couple of hours later!


WHERE TO FROM HERE:
If you’ve got chronic pain or chronic symptoms, I’d like to encourage you to try and actually sit with them.  Imagine you’re having a conversation with them. Be curious. Set aside any pre-conceived ideas about why you’re having this experience or any feelings about it.  Then ask that symptom/experience/that body part, ” What is it that you are telling me today?”

See what happens, see what comes. It may be feelings, images or thoughts. There’s no right or wrong. This is such a powerful gift to give yourself and an important step in the very necessary healing of the relationship to your body that needs to happen to heal from chronic fatigue or burnout.

Comment below with what your body is telling you,…..