Dear Friends,
This has been a bit of a hard summer for me for a variety of reasons. Early on this summer, my right hand started bothering me. It was worse when in my office performing my business tasks such as flipping through medical paperwork, faxing, scanning, writing. It then progressed to bother me with other things that I love such as gardening, walking my dogs, cooking and yoga. I thought it was interesting that the main problem centered around where I hold my pen and writing and the fingers I use to punch in numbers for the phone. I am constantly writing in charts when performing my nurse case management work and going through hundreds of pages of medical information.
Then in August, my dear sweet mother took a turn medically for the worse. By the end of August, she had passed on from this earth. During her final weeks, I was very involved in her medical decision making, and communication with family and health care providers and care takers. I was not able to be by her bedside and this was very sad to me. I always thought I would physically be with my mother during her time of transition. After her release, I noticed that my knees became painful and achy.
The reason I am sharing this with you is that I know that our bodies are always speaking to us, giving us messages. Our bodies are like infants in that they do not have a physical voice, so they speak to us in physical sensations, much like a baby who is hungry, or uncomfortable cries out. I thought it was compelling that my hand had never bothered me like this despite many years of doing the work that I do and participating in the same activities. And I found it very intriguing that my hand bothered me mostly when I was in my office performing my nursing work.
This last year, I had been craving to cut back on my day job and move more fully into my healing/intuitive work with others and writing. However, I have been a nurse for 40 years and moving away from this has been challenging for me. I don’t hate my work, but I don’t love it either as it does not afford me the ability to work with people utilizing all my skills and abilities. So, it does not surprise me that my body created a situation to speak to me in the form of the pain in my hand.
I physically cannot work as much as I did and have had to cut back my hours. The discomfort giving me an excuse to do so. I have been desiring to “grasp” something different with my life and I’ve longed to “let go” of holding onto something that was no longer serving me fully and bringing me joy. I do believe that if I could have started to release my nursing job more consciously., I would not have had to endure this physical issue. Since I have cut my hours back, my hand is functioning much better and mostly bothers me within 10 minutes of going into my office.
I have also noticed that if I relax my hands while I am working, this helps a great deal. I never knew how much tension I carried in my hands when working. And because I have felt frustrated about not letting go of some hours, the tension in my hands increased.
Fast forward to my mother’s passing and feeling my knee pain. Over the years, I have realized that when I do not honor my grief, it will show up in physical discomfort. My mom was at peace with dying so this made it emotionally easier overall. And I have felt her spirit being very happy on the other side and with her new life. Because of this, I bypassed the little girl in me who was incredibly sad over the loss of her mommy, the woman she has known all her life. This little girl was expressing herself in my knee pain.
Knees often symbolize a change in direction as they physically help us do that in life. The little girl in me did not want to let go of her mom and change in the direction of living her life without her. I finally honored her sadness and grief and continue to do so, as this is a process. However, since I have acknowledged this grief and allowed it to flow through me the pain has significantly dissipated. I also realize that I have been holding a lot of tension in my knees for fear of moving in this new direction. As I allow them to relax, the pain releases.
If you are experiencing pain anywhere in your body, I encourage you to allow it to speak to you. Take some quiet time and sit with this part of you and ask it what it is trying to tell you. When we are in pain anywhere in our body, most likely we are holding tension there as well. We can hold tension in any part of our body, including our skin, joints, organs, tissues right down to a microscopic level. When we hold tension, then lymph, blood, and energy cannot flow freely to the area that is being compromised. The result of this is stagnation, congestion and inflammation, which leads to infections, tumors, arthritis and a variety of health issues creating pain and suffering.
The part of your body that is in pain will give you a very strong clue as to what might be going on just as my body did. Are you having pain in your legs, then there is a likelihood that moving forward in life might be an issue for you or changing direction. If your upper body hurts, it could be about grasping opportunities or embracing life more fully. If your eyes are affected, what is difficult for you to see in life, or what did you see in life that caused trauma or what is it that you are wanting to envision for your life. If you are having trouble with your hearing, what is difficult for you to hear or did hear in your past, or you are wanting to hear. Are you having neck or throat issues. Perhaps you are wanting to use your voice for singing but have felt that this was something you could not do. If that is the case, then SING! Get that energy moving. Or perhaps you need to speak your truth about something. Do it, don’t wait until things get worse to speak to you even louder like my body did with my hands. Are you having headaches or migraines, then most likely you are holding tension in your head. Are you spending too much time in your head ruminating over your life or work and not enough time in your heart or just enjoying life. Are you having heart issues, perhaps you have not acknowledged long standing sadness or sorrow in some way. Or perhaps, life is calling you to live more fully in your heart feeling the love that life has to offer you.
Wherever you are having pain or a medical issue, consciously feel yourself relaxing that area. You might say I can’t relax my liver, ears, eyes, head etc. But that is not true, you can do it! First start with what you might think is imagining this, but as you practice it, you will literally feel this part of you releasing the tension. You will experience greater warmth and vitality to the area as the circulation, lymph and energy returns. I believe part of the reason why people who are accepting of their conditions and have a strong faith in a higher power, sometimes do better than people who don’t have those belief systems, is that their beliefs allow them to relax more, and they don’t carry as deeply the tension in their bodies that creates the stagnation.
Every time you have a moment of fear of your condition, know you have in your power the ability to change its course. Breathe, relax and listen to your body. When you do this, you are soothing it’s crying and letting it know you are there for it. Try hard not to buy into the belief that your condition is genetic or that aging is the issue. Perhaps those things are playing into it, but it might be more that older people have had more time holding tension and fears in their body or have had more time not listening to the message it was trying to share. But even then, an older person can change their experience by listening and relaxing and being willing to change. And if you are younger, start now to understand this message. You can save yourself many years of discomfort and grow older with much more grace.
I wish for all of you, the wonder that comes from listening to your body talk to you. You will be amazed at how you can turn your life around and feel greater vitality and life force flow through you.
Namaste,
Rosemary