Mind Your Body

Which came first?
The thought or the illness?
It’s kind of that chicken and the egg question,
and it really can leave us in a quandary.

Can there still be any argument made as to whether there is a correlation between mind and body? 

“Whatever shall we do?”
We were just about to start that book, 
write that song,
Get to the gym every day,
start that photography assignment, 
commit to that healthy diet,
give that speech,
you get the picture,
and suddenly…the flu!

Or that painful frozen shoulder,
Or the terrible migraines,
Or you blow out your knee on a run,
Or your stomach hurts and no one can figure out why,
Or your back goes into spasms, leaving you walking around like Quasimodo.
Any number of illnesses or injuries occur that keep us from realizing the full potential of our lives.

Because, what I really believe, is that there are thoughts in our heads,
negative, belittling thoughts, that take our brains hostage.
Like the wolf in sheep’s clothing, they are in the disguise of stress, or worry, and we may not even be consciously aware of them, but they are up to no good as they do their dirty work.

Those negative thoughts hour after hour, day after day, chip away at our sense of worth and self esteem, spiraling our energy downward and leaving our immune systems wide open to illness and our bodies to injury.

My friend asked me the other day, “so I brought this injury upon myself”?
and I really believe that we do, without even knowing it.
But we must stop and pay attention to HOW WE FEEL.

When there is something that is eating away at our gut, 
or looming, or hanging over our heads, you know,
like a relationship, either personal or professional that has run
it’s course, or a deadline for an assignment, or a talk we have to give,
that energy is conducive to any form of injury or illness paying us a visit.

And what does that do? It keeps us from achieving our goals.
It gives us more time to stew in our own toxic juices.
So the worse we feel, the longer it will take to get to that thing we’re avoiding, and then we feel like a failure and it just feeds on itself.

I had the most frozen of shoulders when my store started to go downhill.
I could barely move my arm without screaming.
I couldn’t hang any art, or move anything heavy…which was everything.
I could see the writing on the wall, but I just couldn’t face it inside.
I felt like Atlas, with the weight of the world on my shoulders,
Ahhhhhh Haaaaa! pretty transparent now looking back!

I’ve also suffered debilitating anxiety attacks when I had huge decisions to make
in my life that would change its trajectory.
Like leaving my first marriage.
I was 25 and completely paralyzed with fear.
I didn’t trust the stirrings of my soul, so I froze up with anxiety.
Once I did make the decision and moved out, the anxiety moved on too!

My second bout of horrible anxiety came about twenty years ago,
when my soul stirred again, and it was urging me to do this work,
including the writing I’m doing now. But I didn’t have the courage to go public.
It all seemed too big, and I wasn’t ready.
So I suffered.
I was ignoring the call, that feeling in my gut.
I’d rather live a small, safe life of MY choosing,
than something bigger that the Universe has in store for me.

And that’s how it starts, we ignore what would make us happy,
and we stay small and settle for less.
And it makes us sick.
Doesn’t that make sense?

Try it on, if it doesn’t apply to you, 
Cheers! Carry on!
But if you think it might, change those thoughts, do what has to be done,
the energy will change, and you’ll be amazed at how fast your knee, shoulder, stomach, improves!

XoxJanet