Our relationship to our body, in part, reflects our relationship to the world.  Do fear, shame & powerlessness overcome us when we think about our body?  Are the messages, cues and symptoms of the body things that need to be numbed or stifled with the latest lotion or potion?  Does science know more than the wisdom of our body?  Is there perhaps another relationship and experience we can have with our body?  Does this relationship alter the way we view the world?  

Despite the current focus on the body mind connection, there still exists a relationship of separation.  It is time to stop separating the body from the mind. The body and the mind are one unit, so says Dr. John Pierrakos.  It is impossible to be stuck in the body without being stuck in the mind.   Many have linked the state of rigidity in the body to the state of rigidity in our thoughts and in our life.  Our body establishes the context of what we experience.  By increasing our range of motion can we increase our range of emotion?    

Somatic awareness, or body awareness, may be the missing link in our current health paradigm.  Do you know that the usual first sign of heart disease is a fatal heart attack?  Is it possible that there were bodily sensations available prior to the heart attack that were not felt or perceived.   There is a condition known as alexithymia which refers to the inability to perceive, process or verbalize a body sense or emotion.   Research has shown that there is a higher incidence of addictions, hemisphericity and significantly higher mortality rate in alexithymic individuals.  In addition, people who suffer gross loss of body sensations, such as spinal cord lesions, report less intense emotional experiences.  Can increasing the awareness of the body also alter our ability to make self-empowered choices in our life?  

People generally know those areas in their body that cause them distress: the achy shoulder, irritable bowel, sore back and arthritic knees.  Are these symptoms perhaps the wisdom of the body attempting to express itself?  Driven by fear and confusion we tend to seek answers outside ourselves to numb and stifle these messages.   We place more faith and belief in lotions and potions rather than our own internal ability to heal.  Sometimes we do need to turn to outside intervention for assistance, though this is often confused with healing.  In the words of psychiatrist Dr. Bendit in his essay “The Spirit in Health and Disease”, “healing is basically the result of putting right our wrong relation to our body, to other people and… to our own complicated minds.  The process is one of reorganization, reintegration of things which have come apart.”  

Our body is a sacred temple of our spirit, says Dr. Donald Epstein.   A study undertaken at the University of California at Irvine on Network Spinal Analysis (NSA) has looked at the effect of increasing the awareness of one’s body and the effect on overall wellness.  What has been found is that people under NSA care report statistically significant improvement in physical and emotional well-being, ability to deal with stress more effectively and increased life enjoyment.  The improvements shown were nearly double that of making constructive lifestyle and health choices alone.  

It appears that by improving our internal state of well-being through the body we become empowered to make healthier choices… from inside out.  Tune into your innate intelligence.  Through changing the experience and relationship of the body people seem to change their mind.