I really enjoy working with patients, for a number of reasons. It’s just nice to get to know people. And sometimes patients experience breakthroughs. They’ll have an a-ha moment where they are able to see something that was previously eluding them. And it’s awesome to see them realize it for themselves rather than someone else, myself included, telling them or showing them.
From a neuroscience point of view, when someone has a realization about themselves, their brain is learning and the connections that they’ve been growing are becoming active. It’s so exciting!
Then you know they own it and they feel empowered. This week I was witness to such a happening. Karen was in for her regular visit, although this time she was complaining to me about her right shoulder which is frozen. She shared with me how one part of her really just wants someone to fix it, so she can get back to doing things that need to get done.
She also acknowledged that there’s another part of her that wants to take a closer look because she feels like there’s more to this frozen shoulder than just what’s on the surface.
So first we did a Neuro-Spinal entrainment session. This was meant to help her connect more to herself and to disrupt her nervous system default mode. Afterwards, we chatted about what’s going on in her life.
Karen started off saying that she feels she’s challenged with having enough time for everything she either wants to do or feels she has to do. Her boys are involved in high-level hockey and she’s busy driving them to practices and games sometimes even outside the province.
Then she has work to do at home and she’s also homeschooling her kids. She has a lot on her plate. We kept going. She started to share her concerns about her kids and how she feels burdened by being a parent and doing her best for her kids. And then she said it: “I feel really stuck!” as she started to cry.
The look on her face was priceless as she started to realize the connection. Her body was reflecting this subconscious feeling of stuckness by freezing her shoulder. And then as if by some miracle, she started moving her shoulder and the movement spread into her other shoulder and chest and back and she breathed a big sigh.
Afterwards she felt like her body had let go a lot although her shoulder didn’t feel completely normal.
This was a window of opportunity that Karen was presented with. She was not only able to make a connection in her mind as to what was brewing in her subconscious. She was at the same time able to marry these feelings of stuckness and burden with her body and to shift into a different state.
This different state wasn’t resolution, however she had made headway towards it. When we can learn how to decode what our bodies are trying to express, we gain access to new levels of healing and health.
Too often we regard the body as an opponent, when “it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to”, interrupting our lives. All the while, the body is doing its best to accompany us and to help us get through life.
What if you were to see your symptoms as opportunities to gain a deeper awareness, or to find a solution that will shift you into a new level of healing and living your life?