From Amanda's very early writing (1990s to early 2000s), shared as it was originally written.
Yes! Pain is nature’s warning. It’s your body’s way of saying you have done some damage or you need to pay attention to some aspect of your life that is out of balance.
How do you know when you are about to do damage?
You will feel one or some of the following warning signs your body naturally gives you: burning, tingling, tightness, stiffness, numbness, heaviness, dragging , discomfort or pulling. If you ‘hear’ one of these signs then your body is usually screaming out for movement - it just doesn’t know to to speak english!
These warning signs indicate that some structure or structures in your body is starved of blood , overused, overpressured, out of balance, strained , overstretched or squashed! And they will often go away if you move, stretch, balance your posture, deep breathe, calm down or just relax.
It’s critical that you learn to listen to your body. Most people once they tune into this skill they already have, are able to judge for themselves what they need to do. If you listen to that little ‘doctor’ inside you, he or she has all the answers.
Stop for a minute and think about it. If you sit quietly and just ask yourself what do I need to do right now or soon to stop this discomfort/ feel better, you will hear an answer. It may not be what you want to hear! And sometimes you may not be hearing the ‘right’ voice, but generally you will know what to do - it’s doing it that is often the difficult part.
You see, you can fool your mind, but you can’t fool your body! You can go on for ages saying I’m OK, I’m not stressed etc but it’s all being stored up in your body. And one day your body decides ENOUGH! , and lets you have it. Whether it’s in the form of a heart attack, back pain, neck pain, leg pain, colds, flus etc, etc.
For some people this is a bizarre theory, yet most modern research into humans and their health is demonstrating this link between body and lifestyle more and more strongly.
I sincerely hope we will be teaching this to our children at schools soon to develop this awareness in the years BEFORE they develop bad postural and body (and emotional) habits. I would speak to about 1000 children/ young adults per year and it’s frightening to find out that only a very small percentage of those children don’t experience burning, tingling, tightness, stiffness, heaviness , numbness, dragging, discomfort or pulling.
And exercise is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the curriculum - leading to many disorders - like musculo skeletal injuries and obesity. What will this lead to as they become adults? If parents don’t teach their children this body awareness who will before it’s too late; before some damage is already done; or before the bad habits become too entrenched to eliminate easily.
As a result of this lack of knowledge, we grow up unaware that our bodies are screaming/ yelling/ begging us to move, stretch, so something physical to take the warning signs away.
We often don’t even know we are experiencing the warning signs! We only register when our body says “Right! you’re obviously going ot ignoire these pleas of mine so better bring on the pain and damage and then you’ll have to take notice!”
Think about headaches. We don’t often walk down the street and BANG! we have a headache. (Unless a truck hits us) The discomfort builds up and if we were tuned into our warning signs we could 9 out of 10 times do something to ward off the headache. (Note: lots of headaches are caused by our neck posture and head positions - but more of this another time). As always we need to be sensible. If the headaces are very severe or recurring we should be checked by an appropriate medical professional.
But if we summon our internal doctor and work with the medical professional our recovery is likely to be much faster and longer lasting.
Remember wellness is about self responsibility - helping yourself rather than expecting someone or something else to come and magically ‘fix you’.
THE BODYMIND
One of the newest fields of scientific/ medical research developed in the last few years is psycho - neuro- -immunology. It’s a very long word that’s hard to say and basically research in this area looks at the link between our emotions, our beliefs, our thoughts and our immune system and therefore our wellness.
Some fascinating findings are opening up new areas of treatment for cancer and other immune system disorders or diseases.
