subject: Your Body; The Ultimate Therapist! [print this page] What does the body have to do with your thoughts and emotions? Recent breakthroughs in the worlds of therapy, psychology and personal development seem to be driving us to an unmistakable answer; Everything.
As we live our life on a day to day basis, thoughts and emotions pass through us like clouds in the sky. In the same way that clouds are generated by the environment of the time, so are our thoughts and emotions - they represent our reactions to the world around us. But, where do they go once we have experienced them? Well, back to our cloud analogy; when a cloud causes rain, it might ultimately shed its load and disperse and so it is with our mental reactions. If we "act them out" by reacting on the outside, in which ever way we see fit at the time, then they will dissipate. However, we cannot always do this. Sure, as an infant this is feasible, but in later life, we learn to controle emotional expressions. When we do this, however, we often end up suppressing those emotions.
No one is immune from the process of emotional suppression, and when it takes place, we have to store them somewhere. Well, our body is essentially the archive containing our entire thought/emotional reaction catalogue. Within it lies every reaction we have ever suppressed. Popular culture reflects the fact that we, in fact, all know this, hence the regular use of terms such as, "getting it off your chest", when we choose to vent something we have "kept inside" up to that point.
This is how the body-mind connection operates. The stored emotions, if left to languish, will start to distort the physical processes within the body and cause illness. Plenty of studies attest to this. Stoical personalities, for example - people who operate by storing things inside and not reacting demonstratively - have higher rates of cancer than others.
Alternatively they seep back into our psychological behaviours in subsequent periods of life. This is when we react out of proportion to something - even when we know we are - when someone, so called, "pushes our buttons". This can have profound effects on our future relationships and working lives.
If we want to lead healthy lives, therefore, physically and mentally, we need to find another way. Not that storage is always a bad thing - some degree of it is inevitable in everyone - but if we're vigilant of it, we can keep it to a minimum. How? Well, returning to our childhood modus operandi and exploding with emotion from time to time clearly won't get us very far. There is, however, a third way. This is to actually feel the emotional pain that is building up inside. It takes a bit of practice, but it doesn't take too long to get a hang of. This is, in fact, the main objective of the Sileotherapy personal development program, and it centers around the regular practice of the one exercise we are all capable of; Being still.
When you do this, over time, you will gradually experience yourself on deeper and deeper levels and you will start to realise that this reservoir within is, in fact, a tremendous power source inside you that has the ability to profoundly transform your life...
