Body Talk - Discovering the Wisdom Within

There are days when I catch myself having variations of the same conversation many times over and I find that hard to ignore. The theme du jour had much to do with how we have learned not to trust ourselves.

I had the opportunity to speak with a delightful woman today who reminded me once again of the futility of trying to shut down the intelligence of our body. In many cases it simply will not be silenced with prescription meds, putting mind over matter or trying to dull it with alcohol. It simply waits for another opportunity to knock on our consciousness. I believe we need to start paying attention to those messages before they go underground only to resurface as physical dis-ease.

Somewhere along the line we have come to believe that our bodies are the enemy. That we are held hostage to the whims of flesh and bone. That we are victims of our physiology, genetics, or -fill in the blank. We also have come to prize our intellect as represented by our "brain", ignoring the incredibly vast and dense network of connection that is our body. The brain in essence is a clearing house and filtration device. It is our body that is equipped with elaborate sensory capacity. It is designed to support our survival and evolution. It is not the enemy but rather our vehicle for living. Without a body we cease to exist on this plane. It makes sense that it would be created to maximize our survival!

There has recently been a bit of media buzz around the discovery of the additional function of the intestinal tract as a sensory device that also affects our immune system. Turns out that the phrase "gut feeling" is more fact than colloquialism. Consider the number of people diagnosed with everything from irritable bowel syndrome to Chrohn's Disease. Is it possible that their gut had some intelligence that was left ignored because we learned not to trust those gut feelings? A courageous young woman, Karina Evangelista, shares her personal journey of full recovery from Chrohn's Disease in chapter one of Sekhmet Rising: The Restlessness of Women's Genius. Because current medicine doesn't hold a belief that Chrohn's is a curable condition, she is simply considered a non-compliant Chrohn's case. Karina is clear about the moment she choose to trust the messages her body was sending and what choices she needed to make to move from dis-ease into ease.

Trusting that what goes on in our body as both intelligent and is a gateway to our evolution is a radical shift away from the silencing that requires progressive pharmaceutical intervention, addictions and the many other possible distractions we create to avoid the message because we fear the messenger. I have heard it said that in a struggle between the body and the intellect - the body always wins. I am inclined to agree.

As a final caveat, I wrestle with whether to dilute my message here but find myself wanting to explain that I don't see any of this as either/or situation. Rather I see the potential and possibility represented by a continuum. Before medicating, whatever our "drug" of choice might be, I urge you to consider what the intelligence is that is seeking expression through the body.

Learning to trust the body's innate wisdom is the essence of what I consider body talk and how I came to name this blog. Thanks for taking this journey with me!