Your body will tell you everything you need to heal. It is giving you subtle signals all the time about what it needs – how you need to move and how you need to relax. The problem is you have gotten just as many signals from outside – what others think you should be doing and other feedback, including the experiences that have become your “trauma.” Your body contains all the information it needs to effectively process everything that happens outside you, including the trauma. There is no need to draw a distinction between focusing on “the inner” and “the outer.” Your eyes and the rest of your sensing and nervous systems are the pathway between what is inside and outside, always taking in all the information you need. The internal information will guide you as you respond.
As I have written before, your nervous system is perfect. It is taking in the exact right amount of information you need and outputting the signals you need to respond in just the right way. It is just that there are some complications that prevent you from responding in a way that feels clean, efficient and loving (keeping intact the well-being of yourself, others and your environment). The complications are too numerous to name, but they could be the expectations placed on you by others or society, the internal view you have of yourself, the “rules” you have accepted as “what you are supposed to do,” and/or what you believe about the universe. That is the work – to be regularly untying the knots that bind those complications to the processes your body knows how to do and longs to complete.
Most of us need to practice more inner awareness. We have taken in enough information from the environment to last a lifetime. We have learned not to trust what is inside ourselves because we are constantly told what to do and what we should be feeling, instead of tuning into what we are feeling. Your emotions, impulses, and pains are constantly telling you what needs to be happening. It will take time, but slowly, over time, you will learn to heal yourself.
Pay attention to this little pang and see what it needs. Pay attention to that feeling and let it complete itself. There is something each is trying to do; each has a function. Every impulse is there to keep you safe. Don’t worry – you also have impulses that keep you from injuring others. It is this careful nurturance of the nervous system that will allow you to navigate your environment with ease and beauty. You might be surprised how a subtle allowing of this impulse or that emotion will change your life. Your goal is to become fully aware and present to what is happening inside and out. Then you will feel more grounded and seated in yourself and in the world, not getting too spread out beyond yourself, and knowing how to protect yourself when the world seems to come against you.
Photo by Dmytro Koplyk on Unsplash