Your Body Speaks Your Mind
by Deb Shapiro and Ed Shapiro (Dharmavati and Mitra)
In Woody Allen’s movie, Annie Hall, his girlfriend Diane Keaton is leaving him and wants to know why he isn’t angry. “I don’t get angry,” Allen replies, “I grow a tumor instead.”
Deb recently had a burst appendix and we are immensely grateful for the operation and antibiotics that saved her life. She would not be here without them. As such, we want to make something clear. Illness is real. Accidents happen. Medicine can help. We are not writing this to try and convince you that the sole reason for your illness is in your mind and that you must have done something wrong or are to blame for being ill. And, we are not saying that simply by understanding how the mind and body work together that you will then be able to miraculously cure yourself of whatever it is that ails you.
What we are saying is: When something goes wrong it is invariably a combination of both physical and psycho-emotional causes. The role of our minds and emotions in our state of health, however, is the part that is invariably overlooked. Ed remembers having an upset stomach when he was a child and his grandmother asking him if he was having a problem at school. What she knew instinctively we are, at last, beginning to prove scientifically: There is an intimate and dynamic relationship between what is happening in our lives - in particular with our feelings and thoughts - and what is happening in our bodies. During the past ten years there has been a growing amount of research showing how the mind and body respond to each other. This has clearly demonstrated how emotional and psychological states translate into altered responses in the chemical balance of the body, which in turn affects the immune, neural, endocrine, digestive and circulatory systems.
We now know how a sad feeling becomes a chemical that influences the cells of the tear ducts to make them produce tears, or how a scary feeling gives us goose bumps or makes our hair stand on end. But what happens when we have a more serious physical difficulty, an illness or disease, when we break a leg or have an accident? By learning the body-mind language of symptoms and illness, we can find what is being repressed, denied or ignored in our psyche and the effect such repression is having on our physical body. And, by understanding this relationship,we can understand ourselves more deeply and can claim a greater role in our own wellbeing.
Emotions that are repressed, denied or ignored are ones that never found expression or were never fully acknowledged. Perhaps you were taught to put other people’s feelings first and feel you must make them happy; or you feel unworthy of love; or you believe you must appear perfect; or you have learned how to do this from your own parents - for instance, watching your mother withdraw or repress her own emotions at times of conflict.
Many different emotions get repressed such as hurt, anger and betrayal, to name but a few. Every time we “swallow” our feelings we are potentially dooming them to repression or denial. Rage is the most obvious of the emotions to be repressed - whether arising from childhood trauma, from the way we have been treated, from the losses we have incurred or the difficulties we have had to deal with. Rage is repressed because it is rarely appropriate to release it at the time and, after a while, we are hardly even aware it is there, buried in the unconscious. With rage comes denial that anything was ever wrong, or self-blame because surely we must have been the ones at fault. Repressed rage also gives rise to irrational fear, hate and bitterness or depression, all of which detrimentally influence our health.
Elizabeth was forty-six years old and suffering from a large amount of excess weight extending from her waist to her knees. We determined that this had started twenty-three years earlier and asked her what had happened at that time, but she could not recal anything of real significance. Unable to control herself, Elizabeth’s mother butted in, explaining that something certainly had happened then. That was when Elizabeth found out that her husband of only six months, the first (and only) man she had ever loved, was gay. What had this meant to her? Even though her husband loved her as a person, it meant a complete rejection of her as a woman and especial y of her sexuality. Elizabeth had completely buried this memory. That act of denial contributed directly to her excess weight, which was acting as padding around her sexual organs, enabling her to continue avoiding the feelings locked inside.
There is no major section of the physical system that is not influenced by our thoughts and feelings, as these are turned into neuropeptides or information messengers and taken throughout our body. “A basic emotion such as fear can be described as an abstract feeling or as a tangible molecule of the hormone adrenaline,” writes Deepak Chopra in Ageless Body, Timeless Mind. “Without the feeling there is no hormone; without the hormone there is no feeling. The revolution we call mind-body medicine was based on this simple discovery: "Wherever thought goes, a chemical goes with it.”
Thoughts have energy; emotions have energy. They make us do and say things or act in certain ways, they make us jump up and down or lie prone in bed, and they determine what we eat and whom we love. The energy behind what we think and feel does not just disappear if it is held back or repressed. When we cannot, or do not, express what is happening on an emotional or psychological level, that feeling becomes embodied (we take it deeper within) until it manifests through our physical body.
The word invalid means both someone who is unwell and a state of not being valid—of being void or unacceptable. But which comes first, the sick person in bed who feels helpless, useless and unimportant or the person who feels unacknowledged, dismissed as incompetent and who then becomes sick?
Through illness our bodies give us a message that something is out of balance. This is not a punishment for bad behavior; rather it is nature’s way of creating equilibrium. Our bodies are actually a source of great wisdom. By listening and paying attention to them, we have a chance to contribute to our own health, to participate in coming back to a state of wholeness and balance. So, rather than blaming yourself by saying, “Why did I choose to have this illness?” you can ask, “How am I choosing to grow with this illness?” In this way, we can use whatever difficulties we have in order to learn and grow, to release old patterns of negativity, to deepen compassion, forgiveness, and insight.
If we only look at what is wrong and try to get rid of it, we are ignoring both the original cause of the illness - why it is there, what it can teach us, and how it is of benefit - for the il ness or difficulty we want to be rid of may be the very thing we need to learn from. Our difficulties can then become stepping-stones along the way rather than stumbling blocks. Instead of being overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and guilt that we are responsible for everything that is happening to us, which simply adds to the negativity, we can see il ness as an invitation and an opportunity for awakening. In this way, illness becomes a great gift and your body a wonderful source of information. It is there to help you, not to hinder you.
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Deb Shapiro (Dharmavati) has trained extensively in bodywork systems and Buddhist meditation. She is author of the 2007 Visionary Book Award winner Your Body Speaks Your Mind: Decoding the Emotional, Psychological and Spiritual Messages that Underlie Illness.
Ed Shapiro (Mitra) trained with Swami Satchidananda and Swami Satyananda. Together they have been teaching body-mind therapy and meditation for many years. They are featured contributors to the HuffingtonPost.com/living; the authors of 15 books, including Voices From the Heart, Unconditional Love and Meditation: Four Steps to Calmness and Clarity.
Reprinted with permission from the Integral Yoga Teachers Association Newsletter
