The Body Knows
(If you prefer to watch, check out my video on YouTube on the same topic!)
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but our brain can’t tell the difference between reality and imagination.
It can’t tell between physical and emotional pain.
And, in that way, we really are in the Matrix: a simulation the brain directs and produces all on its own, without any input from us. Perceived reality has just as real an effect on us as objective reality, if there even is such a thing as objective reality. And that effect manifests in our body through a process called somatization.
Photo provided by Markus Spiske on Pexels
See, when we don’t like something – when we find it threatening or dangerous – our instinct is to push it away, which is all well and good. It’s only natural and it’s done a good job of protecting us and keeping us alive so far. But, although that may work with some things, it doesn’t work with emotions. Because emotions aren’t physically dangerous or threatening. Quite the opposite.
So what are emotions? Because, even though we all experience them every second of the day, most of us don’t seem to understand them and they tend to confuse us.
You can think of emotions as messengers meant to help us navigate through life. As such, they’re composed of two things and two things only: a message (or messages) and energy.
Like all forms of energy, emotions have to stay in motion, which is why they were named emotions in the first place. When everything is working as it should, this doesn’t pose a problem and is in fact a good thing because it ensures that our emotions don’t stay lodged in our bodies.
The issue arises when we treat emotions as threats.
Your first instinct, smartly, might be to ask: “why do we find emotions so threatening?”
The answer to this lies in our evolution. Like I’ve said before, we as humans have evolved to focus on the bad. So when there isn’t any bad present – in other words when our basic needs like food, water and shelter are met – we fabricate it for ourselves, or rather our mind does.
You see, the mind serves only one purpose: to solve problems. So it gets restless when there aren’t any to solve. It needs something to work on and figure out. And therefore, because they can be uncomfortable, a bored, restless mind learns to view emotions as threatening.
Photo provided by Pixabay on Pexels
But emotions aren’t meant to be figured out and understood on an intellectual level. This is maladaptive.
Don’t get me wrong, emotions can be understood on an intellectual level, but instead of helping the situation, it makes it a lot worse. In fact, that’s actually a really common trap: people think, “well, I understand what this emotion is, where it came from and what it’s trying to tell me, so why won’t it just go away already?”
Why? Well, because the mind is a tool best applied to rational things. So letting it try to help you work out your emotions is like using a saw to assemble a desk. It’s never going to happen.
The tool to use is your body, not your mind.
Your body has its own sort of intelligence and it is really helpful in processing your emotions and assimilating the messages held within them.
Michael Singer, in his book The Untethered Soul, explains that when we resist, suppress or ignore our emotions, they don’t just go away – they remain stuck in the body, which, since they have to stay in motion, they do by cycling around themselves.
These cycles are called Samskaras in Buddhist traditions and, through personal experience and observation, I’ve come to find that they physically manifest as knots, tension and general dis-ease held within the body.
Photo provided by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
And, even though Western science doesn’t purport to know what knots are or their cause, this view of Samskaras as knots and tension in the body holds under scientific scrutiny, too. Because any time energy is concentrated in a small area (condensed), it’s brought from the energetic plane into the physical plane. Put simply, it becomes matter.
That’s what somatization is: the physical expression of dis-ease purely due to a prolonged maladaptive emotional response.
Throwing up from anxiety, nervous tics, ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), having a headache due to stress, and fainting can all be symptomatic of somatization. A few weeks ago, I had a stye and this was what gave me the idea to do a mini series on somatization. Out of curiosity, I looked up the symbolism behind styes and I found that they’re a sign that you don’t like what you see when you look at your life, that you’re not on the right path and that you need to let some things go (like, for example, people, perspectives, thoughts, patterns, and habits). This message couldn’t be any more appropriate to what I was experiencing at that time. Even my body was telling me to Surrender.
In the end, somatization is proof that there is an undeniable link between the mind, body, and emotions. And this blog only scratched the surface, so make sure to read the next one in the series here.