Is your body trying to tell you something?

Some years ago, I was going on a trip which involved seeing someone I didn’t really want to see, but for various reasons was obligated to. This wasn’t weighing heavily on my mind, but evidently it was weighing on my subconscious, because a few days before my departure I developed a cold sore around my mouth. You might be wondering how those two things are related; stay with me.

I get a cold sore about once every two or three years, generally following a period of illness. When my immune system is under the pump, a cold sore will often appear, thanks to lowered immunity giving rise to the virus that lies dormant in my body. People who also get cold sores – and there are a heck of a lot of us! – can probably relate. I was confused about why a cold sore had appeared when I wasn’t sick nor particularly stressed.

“What is this cold sore going to stop you from doing?” my spiritual healer asked me.

“Hugging and being close to people.”

“Is that something your body might not want you to do?”

“No… well, kinda.”

Bingo.

The body, it turns out, is very responsive to fear and very much wants to protect you. If you are sending it messages – whether spoken or unspoken – about a situation that invokes fear, it will listen, and sometimes it will create a way to keep you safe. A cold sore to keep you away from getting close to someone you don’t want to be close to. An injury to force you to rest and stay out of the high-stress work environment that your body is now perceiving as a threat. Once, I read about a woman who theorised that she’d gained weight as a teenager to make her less visible to men, having experienced abuse as a child. Of course, this is a complicated situation and there are many contributing factors, but the emotional issues could play some part.

Back in the 1980s New Age pioneer Louise L Hay wrote a book called You Can Heal Your Life which promoted the idea that your physical health is related to your emotional health. She believed certain parts of the body or health complaints could be directly related to an underlying issue, that could be healed through affirmations. Personally, I’ve found that the connection between emotions and the body is not as prescriptive as her book asserts. I have experienced some minor physical symptom relief through addressing an emotional issue, but it’s not a cause-and-effect relationship, and it’s rarely the full picture.

Take my shoulder, for example. Late last year it started to become stiff and limited in its range of motion. I wondered if there was something in my psyche about shouldering burdens or feeling weighed down, so I explored this with my healer, but that approach just didn’t feel quite right. I sensed that I didn’t have all the puzzle pieces. When the pain had increased and the range of motion become even more restricted an MRI revealed I had adhesive capsulitis, otherwise known as frozen shoulder. The most likely factor: hormonal shifts. (There’s a reason this issue is common in women aged 40 to 60.)

Sometimes a physical issue really is just a physical issue. But sometimes emotional issues can exacerbate or contribute to it, so it’s always worth checking in with your intuition with some body talk.

When I’m working with clients and they mention a physical issue they think might be related to what they’re going through emotionally, I do a form of ‘body talk’. It involves a routine where we tune into the body and ask it questions like:

• What are you trying to protect me from?

• Is this a recent issue or related to historical events?

• What support do you need from me to heal?

You can do this after, or during, a meditation. Or you could simply sit quietly and tune in. Try not to judge the responses that come up – especially if they don’t make sense right away.

Of course, this is not a replacement for care from qualified healthcare professionals. It’s simply an exercise you can do to support yourself emotionally, which may have a positive impact on your body’s physical healing. We know stress has an impact on our physical health, so it makes sense (to me, at least) that other emotional states would show up in the body too.

From a spiritual angle, the body contains infinite wisdom and can be a talisman for what’s going on in the subconscious, and if we’re able to tune in and listen, we may be able to help support the body by approaching healing from an emotional, as well as physical, angle.

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