Authenticity and Your Health
At the deepest level, our energy body carries the blueprint for optimal health. However there are frequencies that can disrupt our ability to embody that blueprint. Learn how to approach your health from an energetic perspective, rather than just physical.
As my practice evolves and I learn more about the healing process (both personally and professionally), I am becoming more aware of the overall energetics of health. The more we are distanced from our true authentic self, the more suffering we experience.
Suffering isn’t a bad thing. The physical body uses a variety of signals to alert us when something is out of alignment. Suffering, in any capacity, is an opportunity to go inward and listen to what our body is trying to communicate. It’s an opportunity for growth. So what creates this separation from self?
Identities
People often talk about the “masks” we wear to project a certain version of ourselves. There’s the “professionalism” mask, the “victim” mask, the “hard worker” mask, the “spiritual” mask, the “provider” mask, the list goes on and on. Our experiences result in us choosing which identities feel the safest. And when we’re young, that’s an important strategy for survival. However, if we stay in those limiting identities without addressing the underlying fears, grief, shame, or guilt, then that stagnant energy will manifest as dysfunction in some capacity.
Limiting Beliefs
Other factors that create separation from our authentic selves include limiting beliefs. If you are someone who doubts that you will make enough money to travel abroad once a year, then unfortunately that becomes your reality. People who are stuck in this place of self-doubt will often try to justify their beliefs with the saying “I’m just being realistic”. And ironically, they are correct. That will, indeed, become their reality. Our beliefs, just like our thoughts, create a frequency that can only help but be matched by the universe. The real question is this: what are you protecting yourself from that you cannot allow yourself to dream big? Because the most authentic, complete version of you is worthy of everything you desire. It is your beliefs that keep you small.
Avoidance
Let’s face it. There are truths about ourselves that are really uncomfortable to look at directly. We may not even realize that we’re ignoring them because the instinct to turn away is so automated. But the more we ignore them, the longer they keep us from aligning with our truest selves and ultimately achieving freedom, health, and love.
The body is the gateway to facing these deeper truths. We all have challenges in life that have resulted in fear, guilt, abandonment, shame, anger, isolation, etc. These experiences are stored in the body, expressed as sensations, and the only way to release them is to attend to them with curiosity. Because even if you’re doing absolutely all the right things to heal your body, there are some soul lessons that you simply cannot bypass and the body will be the messenger. This is why some people will not experience complete symptom relief even with a healthy diet, the right supplements, tailored exercise, and regular body work.
Now what I’m not trying to say is that you are the reason you’re sick. This is very old school spiritual messaging, and can create even more isolation and suffering in people who are just trying to figure out how to feel better. Viruses, bacteria, and chemical poisons are all very real factors in creating disease states in the body. But the deeper truth? All of these things have a frequency, and in order for them to be compatible in our bodies, there must be a frequency match. It’s the fundamental rule of quantum physics: your frequency becomes your reality. You are not to blame for those experiences you’ve had that have resulted in limiting beliefs, identities, or avoidance. But you do have a responsibility to yourself to more closely examine them.
So what is the solution to better health, happiness, and ultimately achievement of authentic expression? Explore your depths. Be curious about those parts of yourself that scare you. Familiarize yourself with the process of seeking out your blind spots. Use your body as your guide. And remember that throughout this process, you are removing the layers that block you from your authentic self. The truest, most loving, most liberated version of you already exists at your core.
Masculine and Feminine Imbalance in the Body
Each of us has an imbalance between masculine and feminine in some capacity, and it’s taking a toll on the physical body.
Existence on this planet seems to be dominated by dichotomy and extremes: good vs. bad, light vs. dark, pain vs. pleasure. Gender is no exception. The two polarities of masculine and feminine are not just abstract concepts, but actually exist as energy within the physical body.
This is not the same as biological sex, but rather a way of feeling, being, existing.
Many people have misconceptions around these two energies, and I often find imbalance of these energies as manifesting in the physical body. So today I want to do a deep dive into what makes up these two energies, and how we can approach them with more nuanced understanding in order to bring better balance into our own bodies.
Masculinity is complex, rooted in structure and systems. It’s carried by the left side of the body, and can have various blocks or challenges in different regions. In the left shoulder, it’s represented by fire-like emotions such as anger or frustration (or a lack of safe expression of these emotions). In the left pelvis/hip, it shows up as self-confidence, financial security, and intrinsic ability to care for one’s own physical needs. Paternal ancestral or personal trauma can result in tension, dysfunction, pain, or weakness anywhere along the left side of the body.
Feminine energy represents flow, creativity, being able to safely “color outside the lines”. It’s connected more strongly to the element of water, and the processing of “watery” emotions like sadness and grief. I often find creative self-expression blocks through the right pelvis, or grief blocks around the right shoulder. Feminine energy is also the energy that allows us to expand conscious awareness beyond the 3-dimensional physical realm. This is why more healers, mystics and psychics tend to be women.
It’s very important to remember that each and every person has their own unique balance of feminine and masculine energy. True alignment comes from being able to access the skills and wisdom offered by both energies, and the creativity required to apply them in different situations. For example, some situations are best handled with gentle compassion, while others require firm boundary setting.
Over the past several thousand years, masculine energy has dominated society. But nature always finds a way to return to balance, and this season is the collective debut of feminine energy in a really big way. Each of us are being challenged to dive inward and evaluate how we’ve learned to repress our own internal feminine wisdom. For some, this means making more time for creative endeavors. For others, it means slowing down and allowing the body and mind to rest.
Some common patterns of feminine-disconnect in the body looks like:
Hypermobility of the right hip joint (disconnect from creative self, poor sense of identity, lack of relationship boundaries)
Right shoulder tightness resulting in abnormal shoulder mechanics (suppressed emotional expression of hurt, sadness, or grief)
Dysfunctional breathing through the diaphragm, often in a pattern of tension/restriction (hyper-conforming to societal expectations or demands)
Right ankle pain or hypermobility, possibly resulting in frequent ankle sprains (lack of grounding, lacking empowerment)
Right hip pain/tightness or pelvic floor dysfunction (physical or emotional trauma, fear of full expression of self, maternal-relationship trauma)
Some common patterns of masculine-disconnect in the body includes:
Left shoulder tightness (suppressed anger, frustration)
Left shoulder hypermobility (weakened sense of own healthy boundaries, possible history of social manipulation)
Lower ribcage flare with concurrent low back tension (compensatory expression of control, often with underlying fears of lack of control)
Left hip tightness (fear of financial or household instability, paternal-relationship trauma, lacking sense of self)
Left hip hypermobility (paternal-relationship trauma, adaptive reaction to threat of violence, poor relationship to structure or organization)
Every person comes with their own unique history, both personally and ancestrally. While there are certainly patterns, no two individuals will present exactly the same. This is why it is incredibly important to learn how to connect inward with your own body, with the physical sensations that arise when given the opportunity. Traditionally, we’re taught that medical doctors, physical therapists and chiropractors know more about our own bodies than we do. But the body is specifically designed to communicate with the mind, to provide information and wisdom that no outside person will be able to understand in quite the same way. And when a physical ailment has an underlying energetic driver, it’s even more important to learn how to listen to your own body.
Spiritual Wisdom Through the Physical Body
We know the body will often carry emotional trauma. But what else can the body teach us about how to evolve beyond our suffering?
The COVID-19 pandemic served as a very important moment in the collective awakening process. Within a matter of days, entire lifestyles were shut down. People lost their routines, their convenient comforts, and their distractions all at the same time. Without those distractions, many individuals became aware of the darker aspects of themselves but had no way of knowing how to work with that energy. Depression and anxiety became more common than ever, and intoxicants like alcohol and marijuana became a primary coping mechanism.
That period of time was a rare opportunity for the body to take the center stage without risk of being muted or ignored. And most people had couldn’t handle it.
It’s important to highlight that the body communicates with us through feelings, sensations, and emotion. These signals communicate important messages, and usually when they are ignored, they will get louder with time. So when something like mandatory “shelter in place” orders take effect, everything that you have been ignoring will suddenly be right in your face.
Big emotions or intense sensations like pain can be really challenging energies to work with in real time. Most people find ways of tampering them down so they don’t become all-consuming. But again, I want to highlight that when we ignore the body’s communication, it will only get louder with time.
I have been exploring this concept over the past several years of my physical therapy practice, given that I often work with individuals suffering from chronic pain and illness. Recently, I’ve been studying the specific effects of attention on pain. While working with my patients, I will coach them through a process of identifying regions of their body that is creating any kind of sensation (i.e. pain, discomfort, tightness). I will ask the patient to focus their attention on this region, and to simply observe what happens as a result.
What I have found is that simply attending to these regions of discomfort in the physical body can alleviate the symptoms, much like shining a flashlight into a dark corner. There’s nothing that needs to be done but listen. Oftentimes, important thoughts, emotions or memories will surface in relation to the physical region of discomfort that provide clues into what the body may be trying to communicate. In other words, the physical sensations of the body are like breadcrumbs that lead to a place without ourselves that we’ve been neglecting.
This is a powerful shift in our understanding of pain. Maybe pain isn’t something that needs to be fixed, but rather treated as an important message. I was working with a patient who grew up as a gymnast, and had excessive mobility through her T10-L1 segment of the spine. As I energetically tuned in with her body, I asked “What do you need to communicate today?”. The message that came through was beautiful and empowering.
Her body said that it’s easy to overly rely on things of familiarity and comfort, much like my patient was depending on this one segment of her spine to provide most of her movements. But over time this can create imbalance and dysfunction. We need to learn how to look at the areas of ourselves that aren’t as familiar, maybe areas that are even stiff or awkward. Because simply by looking at them, they become familiar. We learn how to move them, how to work with them. And in this process, we balance ourselves out.
In the middle of this session, I remember immediately thinking “I have to share this message”. What I realized in that moment was that the physical body can teach us the steps of spiritual growth. By practicing feeling the physical sensations of discomfort, we can learn to feel into the emotional places of discomfort. We can approach challenging aspects of ourselves with less fear, and more curiosity. By simply asking yourself “What do I feel in my body?”, you become the observer of your experience and your truth.
The Many Layers of Pain
Chronic pain often occurs when there are several variables affecting the health of body. But what are those layers, and what do they mean for healing?
We’ve all heard by now that pain is complex, that it doesn’t always accurately reflect tissue damage. So what is it about pain that makes it so hard to treat? Some people will say diet alone healed their pain, while others will eat raw vegan with no shift in their pain symptoms. Some prayers are answered with pilates-based exercise, others with craniosacral therapy or visceral mobilization. So why is there such a variability in response to pain treatment?
There is this curious phenomenon in the body where the brain will “prioritize” different pain signals. Imagine you’ve been experiencing chronic low back pain, but then suddenly stub your toe really hard. In that moment, it’s likely that you won’t be feeling the low back pain. What I often see as a physical therapist is that as one body region heals, another will take over as being the most painful.
To add complexity to this understanding of pain, one must also consider the influence of the emotional state. A person who experiences depression or anxiety is much more likely to report higher pain numbers than an individual who is otherwise content with their life. We know that emotions have an influence on the release of certain hormones in the body, but there is a more mysterious relationship between pain and one’s emotional state. The regions of the brain that process emotional pain also process physical pain, which can result in a more intense perception of pain in the body.
From my experience working with pain, I’ve also found a very strong correlation between regions of pain and the associated chakra (or energy center). Individuals suffering from unprocessed grief will often report pain in regions of the body associated with the heart chakra, such as rib pain, shoulder pain, or chest pain. Hip pain can be represented by challenges of the 1st or 2nd chakras, which are associated with self-worth, authentic self-expression, or physical safety/history of physical trauma to provide a few examples.
Then, of course, we have pain as a result of inflammation. Inflammation is caused by any combination of the following three things: 1) pathogens, such as viruses or bacteria; 2) toxins/chemicals; and 3) physical injury. This inflammation can affect muscles, joints, nerves, fascia, organs, and even bone. Therefore, inflammation in a region of the body may be causing pain for a multitude of tissues, which all need to be accounted for in order to be effectively treated.
So with all these layers to consider, what does this mean for pain treatment? Taking the earlier example into consideration, pain may not actually improve until all the layers are effectively addressed. Many people will try one healing modality for a short period of time, then ditch it if they don’t experience any improvement in pain. But what one may not realize is that any single healing tool is likely only peeling back a single layer of the multi-layered pain experience.
This was perfectly highlighted by a patient I’ve been working with for about 2 years now. He reported unrelenting right hip pain, and had a history of multiple back surgeries, right hip replacement, and radiation therapy for prostate cancer. When I first evaluated him I was drawn immediately into his right lower abdomen. The first thing that presented itself in his body was inflammation of his pelvis, digestion, and liver. He made some changes in his diet and supplement routine, which helped reduce much of this inflammation. The next layer was what appeared to be functional lumbar instability, leading to irritation of the nerves going into his right hip. We improved his core stability and did some deep fascial release around the pelvic compartment, which helped for a few days at a time. Our following sessions focused on the next priority revealed by his body: his energetic relationship to his inner feminine, caused by a history of social trauma. These layers took time to clear, as integration of energy work unfolds slowly. These energy healing sessions would improve my patient’s pain for several days, but still no lasting results. His pain would vary in region or intensity to these various treatments, providing my with valuable information each session. But only recently did his body show me the final layer. This session, he could pinpoint his pain in the very back of the hip. Further assessment revealed the presence of scar tissue very deep in the hip from his joint replacement surgery, adhering to his sciatic nerve. And to his relief, finally, his pain improved long term.
The main takeaway from this experience as a practitioner who works with chronic pain is this: pain is not always an accurate indicator of the healing progress. The body will prioritize and reveal the layers in the order the body needs them healed, and pain does not always reflect this journey until the finish line. A more accurate marker of progress is the change in how the tissues feel, which will show a much more important result: the effectiveness of the treatments. People suffering from chronic pain don’t inheritely trust this process, and can easily become frustrated without much change in their superficial symptoms. Especially when fear is involved. But real healing takes time, a willingness to trust the process, and the ability to listen to the nuance of sensations in the body beyond just “pain”.
The Mechanical role of the Viscera
Organ health may be a bigger contributor to pain than you realize.
One of the main challenges that comes with medical specialization is the tendency for healthcare providers to become hyper-focused on their speciality rather than looking at the patient as a whole. This can lead to diagnostic blind spots, which often hold important clues about one’s overall health.
Physical therapists are traditionally taught to look only at the musculoskeletal system. If symptoms do not appear to be movement-related, then the therapist should refer the patient to a medical doctor for further workup. However symptoms, especially chronic symptoms, are rarely this cut-and-dry.
Let’s take the liver, for example. It’s a huge, dense organ that sits just beneath the right lower ribcage. In an overburdened liver, restrictions or internal resistance can develop within or around it’s tissues. Because the liver is so huge, it can have a massive impact on the mobility of the ribcage. The ribcage will then dictate the posture of the shoulder blades, neck, and even pelvis. This means that if a patient presents with shoulder pain, it’s very possible that the breadcrumb trail of mechanical and postural shifts leads back to the liver.
The stomach is another organ that can have powerful mechanical influences on the body. Any inflammation of the stomach or lower esophagus tends to create a downward force that can pull the neck into a forward posture. Over time, this prolonged neck posture can lead to degenerative joint disease, cervical stenosis, cervical radiculopathy, and more. This means that individuals with acid reflux, stomach ulcers, or weak stomach acid are likely also experiencing some amount of compression of the cervical spine.
This approach is invaluable for individuals experiencing chronic pain or illness because it bridges the gap between the mechanical body and the physiological body. Liver enzyme tests may not always reveal the full picture of liver health, whereas the tissues of the body never lie. Restrictions within tissues always indicate some level of inflammation, whether that’s mechanical damage, inflammation from toxins, or inflammation from viruses or bacteria.
Sometimes the mechanical presentation is the only symptom that indicates something is wrong. I find this often with inflammation of the nervous system. One patient I worked with in the past came to me with relentless right shoulder pain. We started with the typical PT approach, addressing scapular posture, movement re-education, strengthening and mobility. His pain would improve temporarily, but always return over the next couple days. I found consistent restrictions in his right brachial plexus, the bundle of nerves that branch off the side of the neck. But direct neural mobilization only helped short term. We began discussing his health history in more detal, and he revealed a history of shingles. With some dietary changes, introduction of the Heavy Metal Detox smoothie, and addition of some immune boosting supplements, this patient was able to overcome a long history of shoulder pain that was never truly mechanical.
Staying healthy is becoming harder and harder these days, as our world becomes more toxic and polluted. Treating chronic health issues is ever more complex, and requires a multi-faceted approach that is sorely missing in the traditional medical model. Physical therapists trained in visceral mobilization have a unique ability to provide insight into the physiological health of the body that isn’t always captured by modern medial testing. Deciphering pain is rarely straightforward, but the right assessment can provide a vast amount of information that links together the musculoskeletal system, the visceral system and the neurological system in ways that modern healthcare often fails.
What does Lyme disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and POTS all have in common?
The reason why many chronic illnesses are poorly understood.
As chronic illness continues to surge in the United States (and really all over the world), it’s left healthcare providers scratching their heads. Even Lyme disease continues to exist as a controversial diagnosis, as it’s often confused with other conditions and a there’s a very real lack of definitive diagnostic tests.
But here’s what the modern medical community is missing, and Lyme disease is the perfect guinea pig: viruses are the cause. There are upwards of 60 varieties of Epstein-Barr virus alone, which are yet to be discovered by current medical research. This leads to lack of testing and inconsistent diagnoses (for example “autoimmune” diseases, in which medicine has just conveniently landed on the explanation that the body’s immune system is suddenly turning against itself).
So for all those mystery symptoms like vagus nerve inflammation, POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, brain fog, mystery heart palpitations, and general nerve pain, you’ve got some kind of virus at the root. And because our understanding of viral function is limited at best, most medical doctors don’t know how to treat these conditions.
Herpetic viruses are especially problematic in creating chronic illness. This includes viruses like Epstein-Barr, herpes simplex 1 and 2, cytomegalovirus, and HHV-6 or HHV-7. These viruses love to hang out in toxic, acidic environments in our bodies such as the liver, the brain, and the digestive system. They produce toxic waste byproducts and neurotoxins that are incredibly irritating to the nerves in the body. Over time this constant exposure leads to nerve damage, and depending on which nerves are affected you can experience a variety of symptoms.
One symptom that highlights this neural inflammation is chest pain. Chest pain can be really scary, and it’s absolutely necessary to get a full medical workup to rule out other conditions. But more and more these days, people are experiencing chest pain with no obvious cause. It is often in these cases that viral inflammation of the vagus nerve (which innervates the heart) is at play.
Right now, modern medicine doesn’t understand that viruses must eat to stay alive (just like bacteria). There are certain foods that viruses prefer over others. These foods include dairy, gluten, eggs, corn and soy. And in order for a virus to be killed off from the human body, it must be starved out while simultaneously boosting the immune system with fruits, vegetables and supplementation.
As a physical therapist working with complex patient cases, I learned quickly in my career that exercise, body work, and the average healthy diet is not enough to address the inflammation I was finding in my patients. This is when I was introduced to the Medical Medium and began applying this information to my own healing journey. Many individuals can be triggered by how the Medical Medium sources this information, and I was doubtful until I started experiencing the profound healing first hand. As I grew more confident in the information, I began educating my own patients to expedite their healing processes too. My own intuitive abilities and sensitive palpation skills allowed me to intimately monitor the rapid changes happening in my patients’ bodies.
We are at a critical junction in human history, where the systems we have in place no longer give us the safety and protection that they should. This unfortunately extends to medical research, where so many studies are influenced by corporate biases, pharmaceutical interest groups, and hidden agendas. Expert information can’t always be taken at face value, so instead individuals are having to relearn what it means to truly listen to the body.
In order to heal, we must reconnect to the planet, the deeply healing foods grown in the Earth, and to our own bodies.
The Role of Frequency in Your Health
How our tissues respond to sound, emotion and thoughts.
The human body is about 60% of water. The brain alone is composed of 75% water, the liver is 85% water, and our blood is 95% water. Water is an incredible molecule because of its ability to respond to the frequency of sound, light and electricity. It is the medium in which all cellular communication occurs in the body.
Quantum biology is the fascinating new field of study that explores these relationships of light, sound and frequency of fields (electric, magnetic, electromagnetic, and quantum fields) on the cells and tissues of the body. Frequency is the language of all the tissues in our body, stimulating the release of hormones, guiding cellular functions, DNA repair and more.
Each person’s body will be made up of various frequencies depending on their health, emotional state, and even their spiritual state. Toxins, chemicals and pathogens can disrupt these frequencies, as can lower vibrational emotions such as fear or grief. This is one of the ways that our environment can impact our health, and even turn on/off different genes (meaning genetic-linked health issues are very modifiable).
What does this mean for you? Are your emotions to blame for your poor health? Absolutely not.
While emotional frequency healing plays a big role in healing the physical body, it is not the CAUSE of your health issues. Our physical health is influenced by emotions, but it is not the cause of digestive issues, “autoimmune” issues, POTS, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Lyme disease, or any other chronic illness that one can be labeled with. The simple answer here is that viruses, bacteria and toxins (e.g. heavy metals) cause health issues. The role that emotions play (or any frequency for that matter) is that these pathoges/toxins can be held in our body by the exact frequency match.
For example, cadmium is a toxic heavy metal found in all chocolates. It has been a major player in my own personal bladder issues, and has a perfect frequency match to my own limiting belief that “life is just hard”. This belief has been imbued in me since I was very little, watching my parents caught up in the never-ending eddy of financial, emotional and spiritual struggle. Over the past several years, I’ve been able to heal many chronic symptoms in my body with major dietary changes, but my bladder symptoms continued to linger. Until I started working with the frequencies at play.
All kinds of exciting research is being done around these principles. A 2021 study revealed that sound frequencies can effectively treat plantar fasciitis, a painful condition of inflammation in the fascia along the bottom of the foot. Individuals with plantar fasciitis that were treated with acoustic shock therapy reported decreased pain and stiffness as compared to controls. Because fascia is a network of collagen and water molecules, it responds strongly to sound frequencies which can alter it’s orientation.
There are many modalities one can learn about when it comes to frequency healing. Tuning forks, breath work, sound baths, and Reiki are all examples. But the critical piece is intention. You have to radiate your own frequency of intention in order for these modalities to work how you need them to. Passively listening to classical music is not going to stimulate the major frequency shifts that will come with meditating and working with classical music to move energy in your body.
An energy healer can be a powerful tool to help you along this journey. And while it’s not always easy to confront the various frequencies that our keeping our bodies in a lower vibrational state, it is a journey of remembering our own power in creating our realities.
Fibromyalgia, Inflammation and Fear
There are layers to these pain-syndromes that often go unaddressed.
There’s this lesson I learned early in PT school about how to best support a patient with fibromyalgia. At the time, research strongly suggested that progressive exercise instruction was the most effective treatment strategy, and that manual therapy interventions were unlikely to show significant progress in patient symptoms. As I’ve gained experience over the years, I’ve begun to see the deeper process at play with these individuals. It has less to do with the type of intervention, and more to do with balancing the emotional and inflammatory factors at play.
Contrary to the research, exercise is not always the most appropriate intervention for fibromyalgia. I’ve had patients experience a sympathetic response just from taking them through basic core activation exercises. The reason? Such exercises require the patient to really “tune into” their body. If someone has unresolved trauma, listening to the sensations of the body can be incredibly triggering.
This can also happen with body work. Tight muscles might be holding on to more than we realize, and forceful release of such muscles can cause our nervous system to panic. Our bodies communicate with us through emotions and sensations. If someone is not feeling safe in their body, then no intervention will help them without first addressing this basic need.
Nervous system regulation is a powerful tool in addressing the fear-based components of chronic pain, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Inflammation plays a major role, especially when combined with emotional charge. If our nervous system is battling a chronic, low grade viral infection (i.e. Epstein Barr, Herpes, etc.) then nervous system regulation will already be a challenge. Add any layer of trauma, fear or emotional holding on top of that, and you have the perfect storm for fibromyalgia, body pain, and any other pain syndrome poorly understood by modern medicine.
The benefit of an energetic assessment is that each physical, emotional, and spiritual layer can be evaluated and prioritized as needed. When I’m working on a patient, the body will show me which layers need to be addressed first. For individuals with chronic pain, sometimes I will “see” the physical body as the primary system needing support. This can look like specific regions of inflammation in joints, nerves or organs. Other times the physical body doesn’t come into my awareness at all, and instead I’m shown the emotional layers that need support first. And other times, a region of chronic pain may be related to ancestral or past life trauma, which rarely gets addressed with conventional practitioners.
There are many paths to accomplishing the emotional and physical healing required for relief from chronic pain. Each person suffering from chronic pain is unique in their underlying causes, and deserves to be evaluated accordingly. If exercise-training or manual therapy interventions don’t seem to be moving the dial on your symptoms, know that there are other modalities out there that can shed light on the deeper processes at play.
Deep Emotions and the Gut
There is a pathway of deep emotional expression in the body, and it begins in your gut.
There is a rising collective awareness of how our emotions can get stored in the body. This has led to a sizable increase in various in somatic healing techniques available, from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to breath work classes. While many forms of somatic healing have been around for thousands of years, the rise in chronic health and digestive issues indicates an even greater need for refocus on our energetic bodies.
Anxiety has a very strong association with digestive dysfunction, but often the root emotions are much deeper in nature. For example, our duodenum (which connects directly from the stomach) sits just below the angle of ribcage. This is the location for that “pit of the stomach” feeling that someone may experience with shock. The duodenum often carries recent grief in its various forms.
The pancreas sits even deeper to the duodenum, and will also carry grief. This form of grief is often much older, and often more repressed.
Nearby is the spleen, which is a personal favorite of mine for treatment. The spleen is associated with shame and guilt, two incredibly deep seated emotions that many people co-exist with throughout their entire lives without proper acknowledgment.
Many of us can identify with the weight that these emotions hold. And often drawing awareness to these emotions is only the beginning of being able to move them through the body. These delicate tissues are not meant to function under such weight, and many curious forms of digestive disruption can arise from the blocks created by these emotions.
In my time exploring these layers of the body, I have learned many patterns amongst my various patients. The liver plays a major role in the expression of these deep emotions. In the same way the liver is responsible for filtering and processing all the toxins from our blood, it also has a major hand in filtering and processing emotions (see previous liver post). But it’s only a step in the pathway of deep emotional expression. As emotion comes up out of the spleen, pancreas, and duodenum, it moves into the liver for processing. If the liver is not already overburdened, it can move these emotions through with ease.
The next stage is the diaphragm, which is a voluntarily controlled muscle that enables us to breath. It is incredibly common for me to find that tightness in this muscle prevents emotions from surfacing. This also corresponds to the third chakra, known for willpower, independence, and sense of control.
If an emotion is able to make it past the diaphragm, it then moves into the lung to be exhaled out of the body. Individuals with lung issues, inflammation from a recent viral infection, or history of asthma can have difficulty expressing emotions. This often feels like an emotion is bubbling up but is somehow still trapped in the body.
Hands-on visceral mobilization techniques can be incredibly powerful in supporting the physical body to release these types of energetic and emotional blocks, however I’ve found that the additional support of energy healing can be incredibly transformative. Not only are your physical tissues being encouraged to release through the use of manual therapy, they are also being supported in recovering their innate vibration and frequency for optimal function through energetic work.
We have to keep in mind that many digestive symptoms onset slowly, and correspond to an accumulation of factors. Emotional blocks can make tissues more vulnerable to outside invaders or inflammation from toxic exposure, but in no way does this mean that you are to blame for your health. We all come into this world with challenges, some can even be ancestral. But part of deep healing means we must address the emotional implications, which can often be a barrier to full recovery.
Nerve and Brain Health
What may feel like muscle tightness can actually be an important indicator of deeper neural health issues.
Alzheimer’s, dementia, multiple sclerosis, migraines, restless leg syndrome, peripheral neuropathy, brain fog, and other neurological diseases are on the rise. And yet medical treatments for these conditions are band-aid effects at best. We’re told a wide array of explanations, from “your immune system is attacking your body” to “it’s in your genetics”.
But here’s the thing. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent, and they are always working to heal our tissues. And our genetics are greatly influenced by environmental factors, to the point where genes can turn on or off depending on what the body is being exposed to.
The conversations around health rarely focus on environment, because 1) we would have to admit that the world we live in is progressively more toxic than it’s ever been, and 2) it’s easier to just take a medication to quell the symptoms.
So those with a family history of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, etc, are left just waiting in fear for things to show up or (if you already have it) progressively worsen. But what if it was possible to intervene before things got worse? What if there were signs that you could look for that indicated some deeper inflammatory process at play?
Early signs of nerve inflammation can be subtle or not-so-subtle. Nerve pain can even be hard to distinguish from muscle pain or tension. The symptoms are often very similar, and it’s possible to be experiencing nerve pain/tightness without the familiar numbness, burning, tingling, or pins and needles feeling that we’re taught is associated with “nervy” sensations.
One of my favorite examples of not-so-subtle nerve inflammation came from a phone call I had with my mother. She had turned her head to check her blind spot while driving, and immediately developed a painful kink in her neck. What really concerned her, however, was that she immediately began experiencing vertigo whenever she tried to turn her head to the right. She went to see her doctor, who prescribed her a muscle relaxer and some anti-inflammatories and sent her on her way.
Feeling frustrated by the general dismissal from her doctor, she called me while I was on my lunch break and explained her symptoms. We did a quick remote healing session, in which I energetically tuned into her body to see what was going on. Immediately I found inflammation around her right brachial plexus, vagus nerve, and temporal lobe of the brain. We worked to help support her immune system in these regions, I gave her a few healing foods to incorporate to help manage the inflammation, and told her I’d check back in.
When we spoke again the next day, her vertigo was 80% improved, her neck was much less sore, and she was feeling up to doing some yard work. She did note new symptoms of feeling “cloudy” in her head, which was more evidence of this deeper pattern of inflammation.
This is a great example of how nerve inflammation can manifest as something more musculoskeletal. In my mother’s case, inflammation in parts of her brain and nervous system created a pattern of nerve tension that was not agreeable to sudden movements of the neck. If she had worked with a more traditional physical therapist, her symptoms still would have improved over time but the deeper inflammatory process would have remained and probably manifested as something worse down the road.
The nervous system is like the “software” of the body, and the body will do what it needs to in order to protect it. For my mother, that meant significant muscle spasms of the neck to prevent any further tensioning of neural tissue that was already inflamed. These are the types of symptoms that most people will disregard as simple musculoskeletal issues, but with a deeper assessment, these symptoms can indicate a much slower process at play.
This is currently a major issue in health care. Subtle symptoms are dismissed or ignored by healthcare professionals from a lack of understanding. Too many things are regarded as psychosomatic. And this leaves people feeling very, very frustrated.
There are options for intervention, however. Regardless of where you may be at on your health journey, it’s never too late to start incorporating more healing foods to support your immune system and organ function. Energetic healing techniques are also very powerful tools for managing pain, tightness, and other symptoms that more traditional practitioners may not be equipped to address. Just because Western Medicine doesn’t have all the answers right now doesn’t mean that you have to wait 20-30 years to start healing your body.
Your Liver and Your Mood
The liver not only filters toxins from the body, but also plays a large role in processing emotions.
This is a topic I was requested to write about from a friend and coworker. The opening conversation was around how challenging it can be to shift away from drinking alcohol. Many people during the pandemic turned toward alcohol as a way to manage the fear and anxiety of our uncertain futures, but slowly realized it became a bigger habit than intended.
Emotions and alcohol have long been woven together within our society. But here’s the interesting part: your liver has a big role in that exact emotional relationship to alcohol (and drugs). By now most people understand that the liver does a lot of “cleaning house” for the body. But what is overlooked in Western Medicine is the emotional filtering that also occurs in this organ.
Eastern medicine has long referred to the liver as “the emotional liver”. In my practice, I’ve found the liver to be a major part of this deep pathway of emotional expression. Heavy or challenging emotions can get stored in our spleen, pancreas, or duodenum. As they surface, they must travel into the liver for processing then move past the diaphragm into the lungs for exhale and release.
If your liver is overburdened or sluggish from years of toxin exposure, a high fat diet, and the unfortunate inheritance of ancestral toxins, emotions are the least of it’s concern. A toxic liver does not have the capacity to process your grief, your shame, your anger, or your fear.
Drugs and alcohol add to this liver burden, which is why they are the perfect tools for emotional avoidance. That craving for a drink “to take the edge off” is a sign that your body is desperately trying to release a deeper pain. And alcohol only temporarily stifles this.
There is a flip side to this, however. Maybe you are someone who has already started a deep dive into your healing journey. Maybe you’ve already been going to therapy and are in the process of turning up your childhood trauma. But you still feel stuck, like things aren’t shifting for you as you’d hoped.
Here’s the thing about toxins and emotions. Our mind will strongly associate an emotion to the chemical status of our body during any particular time. If you’ve experienced a trauma, your state of health at that time leaves a chemical imprint that is matched with your emotional experience. So as your liver is able to work through those old layers of toxins, the emotions that are connected to them are allowed to surface and ultimately purge from the body. This is the kind of emotional release that I was desperately searching for after doing year’s of talk therapy, I just didn’t know it at the time.
“Stuckness” is almost always a sign of liver burden. As I slowly learned more about the liver, I began to consider my own lifestyle and how the choices I made were not in line with where I was trying to grow. I’ve been healing my liver for the past two years now, and not only have I experienced a major improvement in my acne, brain fog, bladder discomfort, ear itchiness/pain, swollen lymph nodes, restless leg syndrome, congestion, and allergies, but I’ve also grown immensely in my mental health and sense of self.
It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that depression, anxiety, fatigue or procrastination is from our own doing. That we’re somehow responsible for our own suffering. But we aren’t given the guidance around how our inner health is complex and interwoven. Nobody is talking about liver health. Because if our liver was identified as the problem, then people would start looking at our world differently. We’d be more concerned about the chemical use on fruits/vegetables, the frequent prescription of pharmaceuticals, the quality of the air we breath and the water we drink. The liver is responsible for cleaning our bodies of all these chemicals we come into contact with and don’t even realize it.
Your mental health is incredibly important, and it cannot be fully addressed without considering your liver.
How does one get into energy work?
My journey into a realm of healing work that continuously leaves me wondering “what is even possible?”
People don’t generally think of physical therapists as being into “energy healing” or all that woo-woo stuff. While I was in PT school, I was taught to revere evidence-based practice as the highest good. And I bought into that for awhile, that is, until I started feeling into my patients’ cranium.
In school we were taught that even experienced PTs were unable to reliably detect movement at the sacroiliac joint, a joint located at the back of the pelvis between your hip bone and sacrum. This joint has been shown to move between 2-6mm on average, which is admittedly quite a small amount of motion. Logically one would think that our hands can’t possibly feel such minute motion. As a student, I was certainly convinced.
Then, a few years after graduation, I took my first Craniosacral Therapy course. For those who are unfamiliar, Craniosacral Therapy is a hands-on technique that tunes into the rhythm of fluid dynamics around the nervous system. It requires the utmost sensitivity to develop, because it also involves being able to "decompress” the joints between the cranial bones. This is highly controversial in the realm of research, as you might imagine. But as my skillset developed, I began to feel this subtle motion between the cranial bones. And it was undoubtedly smaller than the 2-6mm of motion at the SI joint.
So this is where my questioning of “what we think we know” all began. Every day in the clinic I was tuning into my patients’ bodies through my palpation, feeling for as many subtleties as possible in hopes that it might offer insight into their pain. I began thinking 3-dimensionally, constantly practicing envisioning what tissues could be under my hands and how they might be changing based on my tactile input. Before long, I began feeling all kinds of responses in the body and was often unsure of what they were or what they meant. I slowly had to map out how muscles felt different from organs, how blood vessels felt different from nerves. What different patterns of tension indicated.
Then one day I was working with a female patient who had been experiencing chronic pain in her low back that didn’t seem to respond to the usual exercises. I remember being drawn to her hip and pelvis, again ready to investigate the different types of tensions I was surely to feel. But rather than finding the typical stiffness or spasm, it felt as if a bubble was moving under her skin. As I focused harder to steady my hands, a large wave of sadness overtook me. I looked up, and my patient was weeping. She told me that she had recently lost her sister, and was deep in grief. As she continued to express her struggles, the bubble I was feeling in her pelvis slowly dissipated and the tissues softened. She got off the table at the end of the session, and was surprised to have zero low back pain.
From that point forward, I became familiar with emotional holding in the body. I began to detect “densities” in the body that wasn’t specifically a muscle or tissue, but challenging to describe nonetheless. Then I began to notice “densities” outside of the body, like when someone might feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. Slowly, I learned that what I was picking up on was various forms of energy, and it frequently came with an emotional narrative that I was somehow able to sense as well. And patients would corroborate my findings.
It took a long time for me to trust this intuition. I didn’t want to startle anyone, but it was clear that energy had an influence on the physical body. My curiosity about the nature of our existence had never been so strongly ignited, and every day I was trying to learn as much as I could about what I was experiencing during my patient appointments.
Over the past couple years, I have gained so much insight about different energetic patterns, the chakra system, ancestral relationships, and even quantum healing for the physical tissues of the body. My brain is being constantly stimulated, and my understanding of the world is continuously challenged. My patients have taught me immensely, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to help the body heal itself. I have learned to become comfortable in the space between scientific knowledge and the impossible unknown. This gift of wonder and curiosity is unlike any other, and I can only hope to share that experience with others who have struggled amidst their own pain and suffering.