Have you ever noticed how badly you feel when you’re all backed up?
Stay with me here. This isn’t just “toilet talk”. Think about how you feel when you can’t go. You feel full, bloated, weighed down, cranky and miserable. Luckily, there are remedies for a sluggish bowel, and with the right remedy comes the relief of having gotten rid of all that icky stuff. You feel lighter, slimmer, and happier!
I believe we were designed to be a “through system”, meaning that things are to pass through us and not stay inside us. (Otherwise, we would have come with better storage options that didn’t make us crazy.) Our bodies take in food for its nutritional value, extract what’s needed and necessary, and then discard that which no longer serves a purpose. It’s a beautiful system if you think about it.
Unfortunately, we are a collector society. We fill our homes with stuff and when our homes can’t hold any more, we pay people to hold the rest of it. And what about all that other stuff we hold onto? Emotions, labels, clutter, trauma, drama, dogma.
It takes a lot of energy to hold onto things and hold them in. (If you don’t believe me, just remind yourself what it feels like when you’re still waiting for last night’s fettuccine to come on through. ) So many women come to me storing stress and fatigue in their muscle tissues. When asked what ails them before their massages, a story of what’s happening in their lives always follows the description of where and what hurts.
It’s impossible to live a drama-free, stress-free life. Things happen to us, and they happen, I believe, to shape us and mold us. The hiccup comes when, instead of experiencing something and allowing it to pass through us, we decide to store it. We put on weight. We get depressed. We grow tumors or cancers. We suffer from auto-immune diseases, muscle tension, and fibromyalgia. Books and studies abound on how trauma is stored in our tissues. I’ve met so many women living with daily, wide-spread pain who have experienced grief, trauma, or feel beaten down (by life or a person). They are literally living a big hurt. Now, I’m not making light of this at all. Our tender hearts aren’t the only organs to take on the pain and punishment of our lives.
Like a ship taking on water or an aircraft that has exceeded it’s weight capacity for flight, our emotional density can keep us from sailing or soaring through life. The weight we shoulder is not just physical weight (many times it is) but the weight of an oppressed spirit. How is it that our bodies can correct the back up of things unwanted and unneeded but our minds cannot? The good news is it can if we are willing. We can start by acknowledging what we’re storing. We can say, “I don’t need that. I don’t want it. And it costs too much to keep it.” Dealing with things appropriately and then letting them move through us is the key.
It’s possible that digging deep and dealing with your pain, rather than covering it over and stuffing it down and storing it, will bring about huge changes in your life. In fact, I know it will. You’ll experience a lightness of being. It’s also possible that your physical body will begin to heal as well. Whether you’re letting go of muscle tension, a grudge, or your bowels or bladder, great relief always follows the release.
So what’s it going to be? You can be a colander and allow pain to pass through you like water, or you can be a pot and eventually boil over. No, you really aren’t a better, tougher person for holding onto your garbage, shouldering everything, and storing it in perpetuity. Remember, it’s called waste for a reason…and it’s really a waste of life to hold onto it.
So, ask yourself: “What’s my plan for the stuff that I’m storing?”
DawnLeighDavis 