When You’ve Done the Inner Work but the Body Still Hurts: Acupuncture to go beyond symptom management.

Why symptoms persist even after emotional and spiritual healing.

You have done the work. Past experiences and past hurt no longer represent an emotional or psychological trigger. if you look back, you no longer see those experiences as a negative, in fact you are no longer looking back!

And even if you do still feel triggered by certain events, it no longer feels like a real threat. You feel you have managed to make sense of it and make peace as far as possible. Perhaps you have learnt to accept your feelings and moved on.

And yet, you still feel anxious, or your body still shows symptoms.  

This anxiety is different from what you used to experience. It is more like a vague feeling felt on the somatic (body) level, something that no amount of self-talk or mental work shifts. 

And things worsen when we experience physical symptoms, autoimmune or chronic conditions that leave us feeling confused. Why is this happening?

And here we begin to wonder: what is wrong with me? Perhaps I haven't done enough work?

The answer is most definitely NO! 

From Energy to Matter

The past year has really changed things for me, offering lived insights into how working through the mind alone (and in my experience even through energy and healing) can only take us so far.  I of, course didn’t get there completely on my own, and, once more, I have my amazing osteopath to thank, as well as Acupuncture and...the greatest master of all: Life! 

After leaving corporate and as I embarked on my life-long dream of studying Chinese Medicine and becoming an acupuncturist, I also began to experience a wide variety of symptoms ranging from musculoskeletal issues to a come back of digestive complaints and anxiety.

After many years of working on myself, using a variety of modalities from psychotherapy to start with, and as I returned to my spiritual Self, energy work, subconscious reprogramming and more, I felt lost.

What is happening and why am I experiencing this?

The frustration levels became quite high, and at some point, I found myself thinking: perhaps this is it, I am just going to have to live like this.

But this is when things changed.  

Up until this point, I had delved deep into the psycho-spiritual aspect.

This journey helped me to find deep connection with my Self, strengthening my spiritual connection and knowing. Yes, I experienced some pretty difficult times in my life, but these served as a catalyst on this 'search' and fuelled the joy of connecting with Spirit. Perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that they served as the magnet that led be back to myself and where my very own inner compass points North.

This helped me to profoundly heal so many aspects of my life. And when I say heal, I mean return peace, harmony, understanding and love to parts that, to start with, felt without hope. I healed my relationship with important family members, and, most importantly, the relationship with myself.

However, even though, on the spiritual and psychological level I felt better and better, there was still something missing, some sort of a 'wall' I could perceive but not see. Something I could not name, but was one hundred percent afraid of: my body.

The Missing Piece: A Return to The Body

Going back to the ailments I was experiencing, I always love to quote the torticollis story: at the height of my acupuncture studies, with the sharpness and aggression of a snowstorm, one morning I woke up completely unable to move my head and neck. The neck pain was so intense that I was forced to reach out to my osteopath. I say forced to because, I won't easily reach out for help, unless the situation is truly at its limit. Something to work on of course, but best to be honest rather than trying to convince myself and you that I have it all under control!

And this was the beginning of the end.

Allowing my osteopath to work on me was not easy. The level of fear was through the roof, however the pain was greater, and my desire to get rid of it exceeded the feelings of resistance towards asking for help and dealing with my body.

As well as this, as you may already know for yourself, once we set an intention through the Soul, there is not much we can do to oppose it. In my case, the decision to feel good, to live to the fullest had been made. And my Soul, excited about the perspective, keenly made plans for this to happen.

Looking back, I now know why I felt so afraid: I knew that working with the body felt like the equivalent of opening Pandora's box.

What will I find inside? And...will I be able to deal with it?

What happened as a result of this journey was not easy, but it certainly is part of what I consider amongst the most life-changing experiences of my life.

It liberated me, it created clarity, it allowed to finally return to myself, connecting Spirit with matter and understanding that the two are one and the same, only different manifestations of the same 'Stuff'. And, despite in the past I used to operate under the conviction that the body is only a 'shell', I became aware this is only partly true.

As I worked through this, I became aware that the body itself is energy, a living matrix that co-operates with the finer aspects of ourselves, like our Soul.

And working with my osteopath allowed me to understand all this in a very lived way. And as I translate this understanding into my acupuncture practice, I am left with no doubts: the body can be the key to resolving problems and overcoming obstacles that may feel insurmountable.

This is what working with the body did for me.

The Body as an Archive

As I got to know my own body, I began to become aware of something I had not considered up until this point: the body and its language, the way it operates beyond our conscious thought and how it is capable of storing emotions, memories, feelings and states. 

In Chinese Medicine we are very clear on the fact that every part of our Self is a manifestation of Qi (vital energy). This applies to all tissues, organs, vital substances, as well as our subtle Self such as our Mind and Soul.

In view of this, it makes perfect sense to ask:

1. What does this mean and what is the role of the body based on this energetic understanding?

2. What role does the body itself play in helping us deal with difficult situations in our lives?

And so, both in my own life and my practice, I have come to realise that, the body is a highly intelligent form of energy. Its main and foremost goal is to keep us alive and safe, to preserve our vital functions, but this is by no means its only function.

The body is also highly interconnected with the Soul and Her desires: when we feel inspired, we desire something for ourselves, wish to live to the fullest, this is our Soul speaking. The part of us that feels capable of anything.

However, when we have worked with our minds towards moving from surviving to thriving, we may forget to ask: is my body on board?

When we experience a traumatic situation in our lives, our body is very much part of the events. We now know a lot about the nervous system and somatic, implicit memory, and understand how when something happens, in that very moment, our nervous system reacts, with a cascade of chain reactions that leave an imprint. This imprint manifests in subconscious reactions to triggers that can activate years after the event.

However, when looking at the body from an energetic perspective, we can also ask: what does the body do to help us survive and continue to function in such situations? The best thing the body can do to help us is shield us from what we cannot deal with in the moment. To do this, it takes the material and hides it away where it cannot harm us. Where? The first port of call is often the joints. In doing this, it limits conscious access to what cannot yet be processed.

What cannot be read, digested, assimilated or processed, is stored away for 'safe-keeping' and 'future review'. Like a CCTV camera constantly switched on, the body records everything that happens in our lives. And if at some point we have felt scared, lost, hurt and were unable to process the situation, this memory is 'frozen' like a photograph, and held within.

But what happens when we load a shelf with too many photo albums? The screws start to come loose, and the shelf is likely to come off the wall.

We are very familiar with the body buffer system: in wester terms, our body is constantly working to maintain homeostasis and the right acid-base balance. When the body becomes overloaded with toxins and excess material, these substances are stored in our tissues. In the long run, the system is burdened and biochemical processes are impaired. This is when dis-ease processes set it. The system is bogged down and unable to function correctly.

The same is valid for our energetic system. When life's adversities have taken a toll on us, the body must do what it can to ensure the effects do not impair our ability to survive.

And so, emotions, memories, and states are stored, not as pathology, but as an intelligent act of preservation.

This, over time, burdens the system, and our body's Qi stops flowing as it should. When this happens, it can manifest as chronic fatigue, digestive disorders, or autoimmune flares, even after emotional healing has taken place. This is by no means proof you have not done enough work on yourself, it just proves the body works at its own pace, and by its own systems and intelligence.

And so, in the same way when the body becomes overloaded with toxins we must find a way to release them, the same goes for what has been stored energetically. How? By understanding the body itself as energy.

The Body's Original Qi: Our Inner Rescue Team

What we often fail to ask is: yes, I have experienced trauma, disease, adversity. What can my body to do help me?

In today's world, shelves are filled with books on pathology, diagnostics and in short...what's wrong with the body? Even self help books that on the cover say 'find the path to your Heart', often disguise a deeper message: the reason things are not going well is you (i.e. you must battle with yourself and change yourself in order to achieve any results).

But what if the body already had the solution imprinted inside?

And this is what I love about Chinese Medicine, and how it recognises this innate ability.

Deep within ourselves there lies an energy - something that remains untouched by trauma and adversities. Some might call it the Soul, the Inner Light. I call it Original Self. The Chinese call it Yuan Qi (Original Qi), the most precious substance available to us and our Body.

And the complex network of meridians, the different types of Qi our body is made of can grant us access to this Original Self, the self that lies deep within, and that is capable of dealing with any issues in our lives, granted we choose to connect with it.

From this perspective, we can engage this network to help the body release what it held onto to protect us, re-establish harmony in the meridian's system and Qi flow, but, most importantly, we can contact this energy, the energy that can help return peace to the system, from the inside out.

I often do not ask my patients to tell me what happened in their lives (unless they choose to share of course!). All I do is acknowledge the suffering, whilst also acknowledging the existence of this part that can deal with every and any issue, from chronic disease to psycho-emotional and spiritual pain.

This is often enough, for all this energy wants is acknowledgment.

This perspective also helped me to turn things around in my own life. As I acknowledged the body as a perfect energetic system that contains both the pain and the solution to it, I was able to release things that felt unchangeable, unsurmountable, chronic and simply out my control.

And this is how Acupuncture can help release stored adversity in the body, going beyond simple symptom management and reconnecting us to the part that knows how this is done.

Want to know how acupuncture could help with a chronic or autoimmune condition?

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