Positive Health Online

We’ve been taught to look at pain and illness as an enemy that needs to be defeated at all costs. And that is often what we get – a costly, and sometimes lengthy task of temporarily alleviating symptoms just to get through the day.

But what if pain and illness are informational feedback systems – like a warning light on a car’s dashboard?

Seen this way, pain and illness are opportunities to change direction, heal, and also to grow. They are opportunities for inner reflection, and ideally an inner and outer shift to what is more in alignment with your highest expression of your highest self. 

Common examples include pain in the lower back that is a result of being overly responsible, fatigue as a result of not following our inner guidance, or anxiousness, high blood pressure, or depression as a result of holding in emotions.

Knowing that pain and illness are not the enemy invites curiosity: What is this ailment trying to teach me?

Embracing Pain

Picture Credit: David Markowitz via Canva

The journey and eventual answer(s) to this question can give us a far greater chance of permanent reduction and elimination of symptoms… having learned a lot about ourselves in the process.

Through experience, I have seen that pain and illness are directions home. They tell us where we haven’t been authentic with ourselves and others. If we listen well, symptoms can be the map guiding us on how to reconnect with and then express and live our own truth. This doesn’t make us wrong for not having been ourselves. We’re not wrong or bad if we have symptoms reminding us to alter course. I’d actually say we’re pretty lucky to have such a powerful, built-in system of course correction.

Naturally, we don't want to hear this when we're in excruciating pain. We just want to stop experiencing pain as soon as possible, and, having extreme back pain for two decades many years ago, I can totally relate to that. 20 years of medical doctors, alternative therapists, and so much more proved useless and only added to the frustration. It wasn’t until I discovered and worked with the underlying emotional cause that I got any relief, and I have been pain-free since. So I’ve learned that pain can be a trusted friend.

If we listen to our bodies well, we can catch that unhealed grief for example, when it first begins to show with relatively minor symptoms, such as stomach discomfort or a runny nose. If left unhealed, unhealed grief can flare up into more serious symptoms. Similarly, unhealed anger and fear can create blockages leading to pain and illness. And then there’s a whole other level of absorbed energy from others that can be at the causal root.

Some symptoms are labeled using current medical data by well-meaning medical professionals to help manage the pain, but by not determining and then working with the underlying cause, the real issue remains buried leading to exponential and adverse repercussions.

One of my clients quit his job as a back surgeon after concluding that many of his procedures didn’t make enough of a permanent difference in his patient’s lives. He realized that without working with the lesser-known, emotion-based underlying cause, that symptoms will reoccur –sometimes in different locations and often in increasing intensity, so this Western-trained medical doctor is now promoting awareness of the mind-body connection and how processing our emotions has to be part of a complete program.

Symptoms are designed to get our attention, showing us the need to integrate lower-vibration energies, also known as our shadow. Shadow refers to all the things that are normally kept in the dark– typically our fear, anger, and grief. Shadow work is the illumination and transformation of pain-causing repressed emotions, or lower-vibration energies, into higher-vibration energies.

Pain can be the ultimate reminder of our inherent wholeness. Our wholeness includes shadow energies just as much as it includes the higher-vibration energies, such as joy, laughter, cooperation, and love. Sadly, many of us have been taught to judge, blame, and hate others or the self, unaware that these lower-vibration energies can weaken your energetic fields and lead to poor health.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that poor health is the norm – especially as we age – so we don’t question it. However, ageing does not necessitate more illness. We’ll live a lot longer and with much more vibrancy and joy if we question what we’ve been taught, do our emotional work, and pursue a more whole-istic way of looking at and working with pain and illness.

And know that healing is far far easier when being guided by a neutral and compassionate facilitator. I am available for support, an intuitive reading to determine an underlying cause, and can guide you in living your best, healthiest, most vibrant life possible.