Did you know that your body keeps a physical memory of all of your emotional experiences?
You have many memories stored in your brain that you can recall at any time, names, faces, where the event took place, what it smelled like. But over time, these memories can fade or change as we grow older. However, even when the memory begins to fade from your brain, it lives on in your body in the form of physical sensations and behavior patterns.
The body doesn’t forget.
The events of our lives leave physiological imprints in our bodies, especially when we experience trauma or situations of extreme stress that trigger our Fight, Flight or freeze response
In a perfect world, we would be able to deal with the trauma soon after it was triggered, but since this is rarely the case we’re all walking around with physical imprints of past experiences (good and bad) stored in our bodies. Most of us don’t know how to release them because we don’t even realize they exist!
An example of a physical reaction could be for example that you may feel your face get hot when you’re asked to speak in public. This response is your body remembering a past experience when perhaps you were asked to speak in front of people, maybe read aloud at school, and it didn’t go well, you were embarrassed and went red and hot.This created a ‘pathway’ in your brain that automatically associated speaking in public with the physical response. Repeated again triggered by being asked to speak the body will repeat the physical association.
It is possible to forget or block out the memories stored in our brains, but how do we deal with the memories being stored in the body?
Humans don’t naturally process their traumatic events at the time or close to the experience. Instead we carry stress, anxiety, and trauma around with us every day and often use food and other addictive behaviours to soothe ourselves and quiet the emotional discomfort, mostly subconsciously, not to mention the array of physical symptoms that can eventually manifest as we hold onto our stress for a long period of time. We can be completely oblivious to all of this, we may not know why we have a tendency to over eat or are prone to some kind of addiction, we may think there is only a physical reason for our bad backs, dodgy knees or constant low immune system. Many of my clients have undergone a barrage of tests only to be told there is no medical or physical explanation for their IBS or their migraines. Only when they have decided to take a different approach and address what may be an indirect ( or so it seems ) underlying cause have their problems miraculously vanished or dramatically improved.
There’s nothing wrong with using various methods or behaviours to soothe yourself, but typically habitual behaviours provide a short-term solution, and you’ll continue to feel the discomfort or suffer the symptoms until you actually release the memory from your body.
Occasionally it can happen by accident when a client is having a massage or Reflexology, suddenly I reach a point in their body where the emotional stress is hidden and it releases it. Clients feel a rush of relief and can even feel a dramatic rush of emotions, crying or laughing is a common response.
Intentionally addressing any buried emotional memories is a step in the right direction to proper healing on a holistic level, and allows people to move forwards and achieve all sorts of things they thought were never possible because they had a block in the way.
There are many therapies to choose from that can all stimulate healing and help to release and rebalance the body systems, in particular I find Reiki and Reflexology very successful, when you work with a therapist it isn’t a quick release or a magic healing, it’s a process involving work from both parties, but once the energy is cleared, the blocks are gone and everything is in proper balance, clients move forward at an amazing pace. It is always worth the time and effort to produce great results. The good thing is you don’t even have to know what the traumas are to release them, you certainly don’t have to re-live them, you just need a therapist who can translate what your body is broadcasting and who has the treatments and skills to help you release them. There are entire books based upon the emotional causes of many physical ailments, it’s a huge and emerging field, and well worth looking into should you have any long standing problems.
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