Your Body Is Brilliant

Your body is completely intelligent. Deep down, it naturally knows how to move towards healing and growth. The cells of your body hold the magic and knowledge of ancient instinctual wisdom – it knows what to do without you even thinking about it.

Have you ever seen a tree in the city, where the roots are grasping and shooting out of the most unlikely areas – practically sprouting out of a pipe or layers of concrete?

It is in your true nature to insist on growth, just as the tree insists that it will grow. (See the Note About Trauma Below for cases where this is stuck.)

This means that healing is always happening.

But there’s one simple action that can completely upgrade your ability to heal: paying attention inward.

Your Super Power: Your Awareness

Your awareness inward, paying attention without any effort, is the body’s strongest superpower. Witnessing the body’s sensations, emotions, spontaneous images, and movements boosts our innate and instinctual healing. This is an overlapping wisdom from many ancient and scientific traditions including Somatic Experiencing, Family Constellations, and Yoga.

When you are conscious of what you are experiencing inside, and your nervous system has built the capacity (see the Note About Trauma below), your body will naturally digest what’s happening and/or move towards healing.

Your awareness of small healing steps can boost your healing and build your capacity. When you notice the spontaneous breath that your body took or even a tiny part of your body feeling more released, the healing usually spreads and continues, your capacity to feel more grows. It’s contagious.

What Does This Matter?

You can advance your healing and build your resilience in the most effortless way. By just witnessing.

You don’t need to force something to change. You don’t have to put in extra effort or push healing to happen. (In fact, that can sometimes go against the flow of healing.)

So, when you’re in a yoga class and you’re experiencing something inside your body, or when you’re telling your friend an upsetting story, all you need to do to enhance your healing in that moment is to pay attention to your inner story.

Pay attention to what emotions, sensations, feelings, movements, colors, smells, sounds, and images you sense. Even if they don’t make sense. Stay with what’s happening. If you feel overwhelmed, take a break. Come back to the feeling when you’re ready.

Try it out and see what happens! I recommend being kind and patient with yourself as it take some patience if you are not accustomed to paying attention inward with pure witness.

Note About Trauma

When someone has had traumatic or overwhelming experiences, they can become stuck in a protective state of fight or flight. This is a complete state of being in the nervous system where someone does not feel truly safe in their bodies, even if their mind knows they are safe. Somatic Experiencing and trauma therapies provide helpful understanding and tools for healing and returning back to safety.

Stay tuned for more blog posts about trauma and healing coming up.