Awaken Your Body’s Innate Healing Powers

Many of us experience chronic discomfort in some part of our back or our neck and shoulders. Our discomfort is often the result of all the stress, unresolved issues and unprocessed emotions that we accumulate on a daily basis.

I was riding a commuter train back into New York City one afternoon when I became painfully aware of the tension that I was holding in my neck, upper back and shoulders. I decided to experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I just started breathing into the tension. I felt like I had a thick layer of emotional-muscular armor stretched out across my upper back. The pain intensified for about twenty minutes, but I continued to breathe into the tension. The muscles in my back began to soften and the pain diminished afterwards.

Breathing into the tension brought some unsettling feelings of fear and anxiety to the surface. I felt like I had been struggling so hard just to hold things together in my life. But I could feel myself letting go as I began to process the feelings of anxiety.

I would breathe into the tension in my back for about thirty minutes a day. I continued to breathe with my awareness centered within this part of my body for another six months. Breathing into the physical discomfort brought even more emotions and issues to surface. Processing the emotion then helped me to release the tension held deep within the muscles. The muscles then began to relax and soften. I could feel my body opening up as layer after layer of emotional armor dissolved. Digesting all that tension and fear helped me to become less reactive to certain people and situations. I could feel that something had freed up inside of me. New opportunities began to present themselves. While it may just be a coincidence, I feel that it had something to do with opening myself up to the universe and the creative intelligence within my own body and mind.

I’ve been seeing the same woman for deep tissue massage for years. She noticed a really big difference at the end of the six months. At one point she said, "What did you do here? I normally have to spend an hour just to get this part of your body to open up… and then the muscles tend to contract and everything goes back to the way it was"

"I spent fifteen minutes working on your upper back and shoulders… this part of your body opened right up… and everything’s holding in place… now I have more time to work on all the other parts of your body."

I’ll work with some variation of this practice every day. I usually breathe softly and deeply as I focus my awareness within any part of my body where I feel unresolved emotions, tension or some other form of discomfort. I generally work with this practice for fifteen to ninety minutes at a time. I may continue to work with specific issues or certain parts of my body for days, weeks or even months.

Working with this practice helps to get me much deeper into my body. I can feel different parts of my body becoming more alive. It’s also helped me to become much more aware of myself and my surroundings.

People often look to me for some kind of intellectual or spiritual solution to their problems. They often expect me to work some kind of magic to take their problems away. However, intellect cannot solve all of our problems and transformation cannot take place when parts of our consciousness are frozen. Many of our problems are deeply rooted in the conflicted issues and emotions that we have pushed down within our bodies. Our feelings and emotions provide the most direct means through which we can access the underlying source of our issues. Some of us will find it very difficult to access our feelings and emotions because we have pushed them down within ourselves for so long. Breathing into physical sensations helps to thaw out our emotional-body armor. This helps us to increase our self-awareness by reawaken our feeling sensitivity.

Unresolved issues and emotions can create tremendous stress within our bodies and minds. This stress can overload our systems. Our bodies break down at a more rapid pace and that causes us to age faster. Conflicted issues and emotions may eventually manifest as some form of pathology within the body.

I recently worked with a man who had suffered a heart attack. He told me that he felt a tight constrictive band around his heart. I had the man breathe softly and deeply while focusing his awareness on the tight constrictive feelings that he experienced within the middle of his chest. The discomfort began to subside after twenty minutes. I had the man continue to breathe into the sensations that he felt within his chest. The man said that he could feel his chest relaxing and opening. He told me afterwards that he was feeling much more comfortable.

I’ve worked with many people who have suffered from asthma and various other respiratory disorders. A number of people have told me that they experience a very constricted feeling within their lungs that makes it very difficult for them to breathe. Some have also told me that they experience a suffocating feeling. They feel as if they can’t get enough air into their lungs.

I’ll have people who are suffering some form of respiratory distress focus their attention on the feelings or sensations of constriction or suffocation that they experience within their lungs. I do this by having the person breathe into the feelings and sensations of constriction or of not getting enough oxygen. This helps to release the constriction along with the underlying issues and emotions held within the lungs that are interfering with normal respiratory functions.

Breathing into the feelings of constriction will often bring the old unresolved feelings, issues and memories to the surface. Some people begin to access feelings and memories pertaining to events that took place in their childhood. People have often told me that either one or both parents or other family members were very overbearing and that caused them to feel emotionally suffocated. These individuals internalized the family dynamics, energies and emotions of other family members and the feelings that they experienced in response to what was happening. These energies and emotions of the family dynamic eventually manifested as some form of obstruction that impaired the lungs ability to function properly.

Undigested feelings and emotions create a heavy congestive residue that collects within the cells and organs of the body. This congestive residue impairs the functions of the various organs and systems. This residue also causes the chakras and the layers of the aura to break down. Much of the residue of our undigested issues and emotions accumulates within the abdomen.

I often have the people I work focus their attention within the middle of their intestines and then describe any feelings or sensations that they experience. Some people tell me that their intestines feel very warm and alive. Intestines that feel alive are usually healthier.

Other people tell me that their intestines feel very heavy, congestive, inert, deadened and toxic. They often say that they feel very disconnected from this part of their body. Some also tell me that they don’t want to go into their abdomen because it feels dark and scary. The abdomen becomes very toxic when it is forced to hold so many of the feelings and issues that people try to avoid.

We are taught to resist any kind of pain or discomfort and many of us have done it for so long that it happens automatically without any thought or awareness on our part. We end up disconnecting from parts of ourselves. The parts of our awareness and our physical body that we disconnect from become encapsulated. The life force cannot flow to and nurture these parts of our mind and body. These parts of our body and mind become very toxic. We have to reconnect or associate back into these parts of ourselves in order for them to heal.

I have people associate their consciousness into the abdomen by breathing into all the feelings and physical sensations that they experience within this part of their body. Breathing into the feelings and sensations awakens the innate healing intelligence that resides within our body and mind. This practice will help to alleviate the symptoms of constipation and digestive disorders such as colitis and crone’s disease.

Breathing into abdomen helps to release stress in other parts of our bodies. I can sometimes feel the stress releasing in my upper back and shoulders. People who tend to grind their teeth at night often tell me that they can feel the tension releasing in their jaw.

People experience a whole range of feelings and sensations such as such as rumbling, churning, burning, pulsing, tingling and warmth as they breathe consciousness back into the abdomen. Congestion usually dissipates, digestion improves and this part of the body begins to feel more and more alive.

Breathing into feelings and sensations will make it possible for us to experience deeper levels of our body-mind consciousness. A form of sustenance begins to flow from within that nourishes and sustains us. We begin to feel more at home within our bodies as we find a source of strength and comfort within. Our body then becomes a place of refuge.

Our bodies’ and mind’s innate healing powers begin to repair the damage anytime we get a cut or bruise or suffer some other kind of injury. Breathing into the feelings or sensations of discomfort will initiate these same healing powers. Our body’s innate healing power can help us to heal from injuries or illnesses.

Our bodies are like a computer hard drive in some ways. They hold on to the memories, emotions, thoughts, traumas, heartaches, losses and other stresses. Parts of our consciousness freeze up and many of our issues and emotions are never processed. Accumulated stress narrows our intellectual and emotional range. The residue of these stresses also disconnects us from the higher power.

Breathing into the abdomen or other parts of our body can bring anxiety and other unsettling feelings up to the surface. These feelings may have been held within our body for years. Unpleasant feelings will dissipate as we continue to breathe into them. The feelings need to be digested so that we can continue to increase our awareness and be more present within our bodies.

Our frozen body armor will begin to thaw out and dissolve as we breathe into our feelings and the tension that we hold within our bodies. Frozen emotions will begin to flow and this will make it easier for us to process them. Daily practice will enable us to dissolve stress, process our emotions and clear stagnant energies before they can damage our bodies. Processing the stresses and emotions initiates our minds creative and adaptive problem solving capabilities. Our minds become more agile and this will make it easier for us to resolve the issues and it allows us to experience greater clarity.

This process takes time and we will experience more powerful changes as we continue to focus within a specific organs or part of our bodies for days, weeks or months. We may initially experience some physical or emotional discomfort, but those sensations will eventually diminish. The discomforts are often replaced by pleasant sensations such as pulsing, tingling and warmth. There are also times when we will experience a flatness or lack of sensations.

Many people mistakenly assume that nothing is happening if they are not experiencing some kind of dramatic feeling or sensation. Experiencing flatness or a lack of sensation is also a normal part of the process. Feelings and sensations can also be very subtle. Our internal experience can vary greatly from one day to the next. It’s important for us to learn to be fully present to whatever we experience within our body at any given moment.

The practice I’m sharing is one of the most powerful self healing tools in existence. This process allows us to consciously engage our body and mind’s innate healing powers. We can facilitate a tremendous amount of healing as we work with this practice.

I see all kinds of damage within the physical and subtle bodies resulting from injuries, surgeries, sexual and emotional traumas as well as the residue of all the stress and undigested emotions that we internalize. This damage needs to be repaired. However, we do not possess the resources to completely heal on our own. It’s important for us to combine self-healing practices with consistent body work and healing sessions.

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