Your Body is Talking to You
I’ve had back issues since I was a teenager. The pain was once so bad that I flat-out fainted after getting out of bed. I’d barely made it to the bathroom before waking suddenly, my face pressed against the cold tile floor, no memory of how I’d gotten there. On this day, even the slightest movement would trigger a sort of ‘my spine is being ripped out of my body’ sensation that made me wonder if I’d ever be able to move normally again.
After that, I knew I had to start taking this pain seriously. But, because the pain would come and go, I also learned to push through it. (If you’ve ever suffered from chronic pain, you get it.) It’s a fine line.
So, while I have been responsible about managing flare-ups with yoga and mobility stretching, I tend to wait until things get *really* bad before taking action.
And a few weeks ago, things got really bad.
My lower pain started flaring up again last summer. It started as a tightness when I’d wake up in the morning, which generally passed within 30 minutes, but it was annoying because I’d have to bend at the knees like a pregnant lady, hand on her back and everything, in order to reach for anything below waist level.
Then one day in February, I reached down to pick something up from the floor and clipped a nerve, I guess, because it brought me to my knees. The pain was so intense I thought I was going to lose consciousness (again).
Adorable side note: I tried to run a hot bath during that episode, but for some awkward reason our hot water decided not to work at exactly the moment I needed it most, and I wound up sitting in a cold tub, where my husband found me hugging my knees and sobbing.
WHEN IT RAINS, AMIRIGHT? [I should note I’ve never seen Jaren move faster to fix anything in our home and I will forever be grateful for his heroism that day.]
that’s when I decided: it was time to bring out the big guns.
And this time, thankfully, the big guns are covered by my insurance.
So I get to this chiropractor’s office and he does his thing. And for the most part it’s nothing I haven’t heard before: ‘You’ve actually got pretty good mobility. Your spine is in good shape. No major flaws, aside from a slight misalignment of your hips. Still young. Built strong. With some time and adjustments, should feel better.’
So he worked his back cracking juju—and then he hooked me up to this TENS machine, which pulses electrical charges into the muscles on my back. It felt like a magical electric massage.
When I got off that table, I was buzzing.
Something got zapped when I was hooked up to that thing and it wasn’t just my muscles. Because on the way home I noticed my mood was through the roof. My spirits were lifted. My energy was high. I felt inspired, creative. I was able to access an energy that, up to this point, I’d been struggling to connect to.
At first I couldn’t understand it. It was like I had just removed an emotional hailstorm from my system.
And then I connected a few dots and realized that this experience confirmed what the universe (and a few people) had been trying to tell me for months: we all have energy centers in the body (chakras) and the energy center that was housing my back pain (sacral chakra) was in desperate need of attention.
The electrical currents may very well have stimulated an energetic shake-up, which led to an emotional release.
Each chakra is represented by a unique emotional association. For example the throat chakra represents your ability to communicate. When the energy in that chakra is blocked or needs tending to, you may experience an inability to express yourself clearly or honestly.
The sacral chakra, as it turns out, is most strongly associated with these three energies: joy, depression, and creativity. It is ruled by the color orange and the element of water.
These facts become real interesting as we investigate my timeline of MOST PAINFUL lower-back flare-ups:
High school: during one of the most dramatic semesters of my life.
Just out of college: while working my first real job, under a Devil Wears Prada style boss—only meaner and with less clout.
Late 20s: during an emotionally draining job transition that had me, quite literally, pulling my hair out.
Pre-wedding: the pain got so bad leading up to the wedding that I worried I wouldn’t be able to make it down the aisle in one piece.
Last summer: in the midst of dangerously-close-to-rock-bottom phase in both my life and marriage.
The EPIC part of this isn’t simply that my back hurts when I’m stressed. The epic part reveals itself when I connect my stressors to what the sacral chakra is all about.
Allow me to break down what my life has looked like (roughly) over the past 14 months. Tell me if you sense a theme:
Winter, 2018: Started shadow & underworld work.
Spring, 2018: Lots of emotional upheaval as I unearthed old wounds and realized how many of them were still subconsciously controlling me.
Discovered how much repressed anger I’d been harboring. Some of it ancestral, some of it my own.
This brought out phases of depression that would hang over me for weeks, sometimes months, at a time.
Noticed my lower back would get tight on occasion.
Summer, 2018: Emotionally tumultuous as I began to speak up for my needs and attempted to break the habits that were no longer serving me.
Lots of backlash as I was tested to stand in my worth.
I was not yet grounded in my worth, so I would oscillate between trying to stand up for my needs and backtracking into feeling small.
My failed attempts to stand in my worth led to even deeper phases of depression.
My back was still tight on occasion, so I started implementing more yoga and mobility stretching.
Fall, 2018: Began to get the hang of owning my worth. Worked harder to transmute past wounding with empathy and compassion.
Depression starts to fade, but! Start to feel “stuck” creatively. Ideas would flow, but execution felt a lot like sticking my hand in a blender.
Back was now tight daily, upon waking up.
Winter, 2018: Still stuck, but pushing hard against the ‘stuck’ness. I began to get signs to tap into joy.
I pulled the ‘joy’ medicine card in a women’s group meeting, which I semi-ignored because it didn’t make sense.
A friend of mine works her reiki magic on me and tells me I have a lot of stuck energy in my lower back. I’m not surprised, but not entirely sure how to clear it on my own.
Then I went to Patagonia and had a life-changing experience which taught me how I can use emotional discomfort to access freedom. This sparked more interest in the ‘joy‘ card.
Back was still tight daily (but not shockingly: better when I was in Patagonia).
January, 2019: Signs for ‘joy’ start coming in harder and faster.
During a reiki session / akashic reading, I’m told that I’m morphing from crow to eagle—from darkness to light.
I’m also told, straight-up, to work on my sacral chakra to tap into my creativity. And to start following ‘joy‘ (actual word used) in order to do that. I leave feeling inspired and simultaneously like, “I don’t even know what joy looks like.”
I start taking a year-long course with a woman I admire for her work in Non-Violent Communication. I am introduced to the concept of ‘hakomi,’ somatic mindfulness. After the very first session, I am lit up with joy. It’s a start.
I start researching chiropractors and acupuncturists.
February, 2019: A transformative month.
After a tough day, I have a healing session with a friend. She said, “I’m seeing you wearing an orange cloak. Your higher self is standing over you; you’re not alone. But you’re being guided toward orange as part of the healing agent.”
Thanks to the class I’m taking, I learn to ‘drop into my body’ and tap into my physical sensations more frequently.
I begin to feel what happens in my body when I feel joy. I learn how to access the ‘felt sensation’ of joy on-demand. And can recognize when it activates in my daily life.
Bursts of creativity start to come through. But I am still pushing it too hard, so I’m still ‘stuck.’
After the pain in my back brings me to my knees, I start taking more frequent baths.
I notice that being in water helps me access my creative flow. While in the bath, I reflect on how learning my body’s queues have helped stop me from spiraling into depression when things got hard, or when I felt stuck. I get the impulse to teach other people how to access joy in their bodies.
March, 2019: It all comes full circle.
I’m now taking at least 2 baths per week.
More creative ideas are coming up. I begin building a meditation series that I feel really excited about, to help other people tap into this felt sensation of joy and worthiness that I’ve been successfully using for myself.
In therapy, we discuss how creativity is a lot like giving birth: there are contractions, phases of insight, then long pauses, and a lot of impatience. I’m inspired to surrender to the flow.
I go to the chiropractor. He targets SO MUCH of the built up tension in my lower back.
I drive home feeling light, completely inspired, and tapped into the sensations of joy, creativity, and freedom.
Do you see all those threads??
Over the past year+ I have been actively working on (1) disrupting the pattern of depression (2) learning what joy means to me (3) honing creativity. These are the tenets of the sacral chakra. Is it any wonder that the energy there would feel stuck while I was emotionally feeling stuck in these areas??
Within the sacral chakra, the joy / depression dynamic balances the scale. A balanced (or clear) chakra is not tipped too far in either direction.
It’s like, “oh, you want to learn how to disrupt this consistent pattern of depression in your life? Maybe it’s time to start exploring these ‘joy’ receptors you’ve been ignoring for god knows how long.” And once the joy / depression dynamic begins to find balance, creativity can flow.
A balanced chakra (like a balanced mind) allows us to hold space for BOTH joy and sadness. When the scale is tipped too far to either side, we lose perspective. We get stuck.
Take this as a sign:
your body is talking to you.
For the sake of disclaimers: I am not trying assert that ALL of your physical ailments are a result of emotional duress. There are so many variables to illness. But we all store emotional baggage in our bodies in some way. And when that baggage gets too heavy, our body will let us know… quietly at first. And then louder. And louder. And louder.
And it’s not always cut-and-dry. I can only see my experience with clarity in hindsight. In the midst of it, it was all very messy and I was entirely unaware that my back pain was my body telling me to “LISTEN UP, KID!” because I am extremely heady and I wouldn’t have even known what to do with it—just like I didn’t really know what to do with it when my friend told me that ‘orange’ was the answer or when my reiki practitioner verbatim told me to open my sacral chakra by following joy.
Like, I LEGIT had someone lay it out for me and I was still unsure.
So my point is: identifying what your body is telling you is hard. But it IS telling you something.
The only way to learn what your body is telling you is to learn its language.
You can do this by listening to it.
How does it react when you feel loved? How does it react when you feel slighted? What sensations arise when you see someone you’re excited to see? Simply paying attention to these physical queues can help guide you toward balance.
I firmly believe that the only reason I was able to have the experience I had after the chiropractor is because I had ALREADY been working very consistently on ‘dropping into my body.’ I’d been learning my body’s queues for when it is hurt, angry, joyful, excited, and intrigued. I’ve started learning how to listen to it as a guide—so that I know what interests to pursue and where to set up boundaries. I had already begun to understand its language. So by the time I had somebody physically releasing the tension in my back, my body was READY to let. it. go.
And by the way, this isn’t a one-and-done scenario, either. I’ll have to keep doing this work to fully transmute what needs to be transmuted, and release what needs to be released, and invite in whatever needs to be invited in. Balancing our energies is a maintenance exercise!
But all of the work you’re doing—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—it works in tandem, do you see??
You can’t just go to a chiropractor and expect all your emotional baggage to clear. Just like you can’t just go to a therapist and expect to heal your physical body. The ‘mind, body, spirit’ paradigm is MIND + BODY + SPIRIT for a reason. You cannot master one and ignore the others while expecting them to fall into alignment.
Your wholeness is an amalgamation of all three.
Lucky for you, you’re already working on all three. We all are, naturally. If you work on one aspect of the self, the other two are that much MORE available and ready to be addressed. It’s just that if we full-on ignore one of our aspects of self, it will never progress beyond sitting at-the-ready. And that can leave us feeling like stunted versions of our whole selves.
From what I’ve noticed, most of us focus more on MIND + SPIRIT than we do the body. And I’m not talking fitness and food—we focus on that part to excess. In fact, we focus on that part so much we forget the body is a VITAL COMMUNICATION TOOL that can guide us through our mind + spirit work in extraordinarily powerful ways.
If we could just learn to listen.
So those aches and pains you feel here and there—listen to them.
The way your body wants to move when you feel joy—listen to that.
The more heightened your awareness, the more guided you’ll feel.
Because your body is talking to you, take it from me.