The Body has a Memory

​Contrary to what we may have been taught to believe, the memory of traumatic events might never have reached our conscious memory, but instead became lodged in our bodies. Over and over we see that the part of the body that expresses physical symptoms, can mirror something that happened many years earlier. For example, a heavy burden, like guilt, can express itself in shoulder pain, that doesn’t always respond to medical treatment. Talk therapy serves a purpose in allowing a buried emotion to surface and in making sense of why the body is reacting as it is. However, the emotional issue can only be resolved in our bodies and not in our heads. This is where the adage comes into play, ‘that if you don’t feel it you can’t heal it.’ The first stage of healing is always telling as much of the story as we are conscious of. The second is to feel whatever needs to be felt, and to the fullest possible extent. This is not as easy as it sounds, since we are conditioned to reject rather than accept our negative emotions. Yet it is only when we learn to be hospitable towards them, will they transform and leave us in peace. Once these blocked emotions have been acknowledged, the fuller picture of what took place usually becomes much clearer in our our conscious memory.