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Listen To Your Body
©2004 Gail Raborn

You know that familiar scratchy, achy feeling in your throat and the heavy tiredness that pervades your body? It’s a cold coming on. Unfortunately, you have no time to rest and recover. You might even feel angry at your body for conking out on you. Maybe you pop an antihistamine and take an aspirin so you can go back to work; after all, you’re not going to let a little cold stop you, are you? The last thing you want to do is admit that this bout of illness is your body’s way of telling you your life is out of balance and that you need to make some changes in your lifestyle, your relationship, or even your job.

I learned years ago to listen to the message an illness can send when I had a problem with laryngitis. My episodes always seemed to occur just before a workshop I was scheduled to lead in hypnotherapy. So without guilt I’d cancel the workshop, lie abed with cayenne tea and my favorite novel, and keep my mouth shut until I healed. Several canceled workshops later, I began to see a pattern and recognized a darker reason for my lost voice than a simple infection. I realized that behind laryngitis lurked the terror of failing, of inadequacy as a workshop leader! For fear, like all negative emotions, weakens the immune system. Resolution of those fears through working with my own personal therapist prevented any further loss of voice. And from this time on, I’ve led workshops with my voice at full throttle, confident and sure of my skills as a workshop leader.

The link between body and mind often emerges in my hypnotherapy practice. For example, there was the client who couldn’t get pregnant. Yet fertility tests showed that she and her husband were both normal. When I regressed her back in time to the source of her infertility problem, a tragic story emerged of grief and remorse over the accidental drowning death, several years prior, of her two-year old son.

At this point, I gently guided her to talk with the image of her dead child. While sobbing deeply, she heard her son’s image tell her that her undeserved grief for the accident had made her sterile, and that it was time to forgive herself. He said he loved her very much, and knew there was nothing she could have done to have prevented his death. Through imagery contact with her spirit of her child, real or imagined, came the self-forgiveness that was years overdue. And with forgiveness came renewed fertility. When I saw her a year later, she was holding her newborn son in her arms.

Hidden emotion is often the source of illness. Sickness and injury can be symbolic of feelings you just can’t verbalize, like developing neck pain when you’ve got a boss or wife who’s “a pain in the neck”, or getting an ulcer when there’s a situation you just can’t stomach. Sometimes illness is just your body’s message to stop and rest, nurture yourself, stop pushing so hard. Or your body may be telling you your life is devoid of meaning. A woman I knew healed her second bout of breast cancer when she realized she needed a radical change to find the joy and meaning her life lacked. Instead of more surgery, she cut her unhappy marriage and her hated job out of her life. She then jumped with both feet into her lifelong fantasy of writing a book while living on a Greek island. Twenty years later, she’s healthily and happily writing away while listening to the pounding surf on her island.

Of course, understanding the message for change that might lie behind your illness or injury does not guarantee physical healing. But the probability is dramatically increased once you’ve looked at the physical, emotional and spiritual imbalances in your life that may be contributing to your illness, and brought them back into harmony. Even if your body doesn’t completely heal, the emotional and spiritual healing that happens when you implement the changes you needed is its own reward.

Years ago in Amsterdam, Holland, a Dutch client proved this to me through her battle with cancer. Her body had lost its ability to heal, but during the year she was ill she made tremendous growth emotionally and spiritually. When I visited her to say goodbye a week before her death, I found her glowing with peace, love and serenity. She told me that during the year of her illness, she’d resolved more of her personal struggles than she’d ever dreamed possible, creating a deep sense of emotional strength and harmony that brought healing to her relationships as well as to her personally. And the connection with Divine Spirit that accompanied this growth was amazing, for it helped her realize that physical death was only a step in her evolution, that death meant simply walking out of the physical plane into the realm of spirit. For months before her death, she was aware of spiritual beings radiating peace and love near her bed, shining light that even I could see when I visited her. She told me they took most of her pain away, so her need for pain medication was minimal. As for me? I learned more from her about the true meaning of healing than from anyone I’ve ever known.

How do you listen to your body, you ask? Guided imagery is my favorite technique. Start with a relaxation exercise, and close your eyes, leaning back in a comfortable chair. Invite an image to come to mind that represents your symptom or body part. Don’t worry if the image isn’t clear; you may also get a feeling or impression of it instead. Just keep going. Then as if talking with a friend, speak to your image and let it know what you need. Ask it why it’s there, what it’s trying to teach you or tell you through this physical problem. And ask it what you need to change in your life to speed healing. Then imagine your image has a voice and can speak to you in words or feelings. You may also simply know the answer spontaneously. The change might be minor, like getting better walking shoes; or it may be major, like changing your job. Later you can muse over the information you got during the imagery, and decide if it seems valid and vital to implement. Journaling afterwards about your imagery can keep ideas and insights coming to you, for many days later.

If you get stuck, find a hypnotherapist, Interactive Imagery practitioner or therapist who knows how to guide you through the process. An excellent book for learning guided imagery is Dr. Martin Rossman’s Healing Yourself.

So the next time you feel a cold coming on, get a headache, or injure your back, talk to your body. Bodies don’t lie. Listen to yours, and you’ll find your health improving and your life healing in amazing ways.

Gail Raborn CHT. is a Transformational Therapist, Hypnotherapist and Interactive Imagery Practitioner with a private practice in Taos, NM. She offers sessions in her office and by telephone. Call her at: (505)751-7310 or visit her website at: www.telehealing.com.