When I finished school, I went to dance college. There was a mix of builds and body types both in dancers, teachers and examiners. I often wondered when everyone is doing so much movement, why do many hold a lot of weight, when they eat so little, and why is there so much chronic pain and sickness in the arts?
Thirty plus years on, I learnt from Paul Chek how the body is affected by many stressors. These include:
- Physical
- Chemical
- Electromagnetic
- Psychic
- Nutrition
- Thermal
As you can see form Paul Chek’s diagram below, if there is no drainage in the bathtub, this will eventually lead to hormone disruption and long term dis-ease and discomfort in the body. Many of the foods we are told to eat actually stress the organs and they have to work harder; by this, we also put on weight. Everyone’s physiological load is different, and one size does not fit all. This is why everyone should be assessed individually.
Science tells us that long term stress in the body is living in survival mode. Our primitive side of the nervous system which is sympathetic switches on. The body will always tap into what it needs to do in order to survive. In a state of fight or flight, the body will:
- Dilate pupils to see better
- Heart and respiratory rate will increase to produce more energy
- Blood flow is sent away from the organs to the extremities
- More glucose goes into the blood stream
The immune system dials right up, but then lowers and dials down as adrenaline and cortisol flood to the muscles, providing a rush of energy to escape the problem internally.
Circulation moves out of rational forebrain to our hind brain. We have less capacity to think creatively and instead go on instinct and react. In the short term the body organs can survive, when the stress is over, the body will return to balance and homeostasis within hours restoring its vital resources.
No organism in nature could endure living in emergency mode for extended periods of time. Yet that is what is happening with so many of us. Because of the size of our human brain, we keep delving into the past problems, catastrophize and forecast the future. We can turn on a cascade of stress chemicals by thought alone.
We change our brains and bodies physiology by thinking about a familiar past and a unpredictable future. Every day reliving the traumas of the past in the present moment. The body cannot tell the difference between the original trauma and the repeated trauma.
The brain rewires this fight, flight and freeze moment into its memory bank. Unintentionally this leads to pain as the chemical consequences feed into the body. The brain freezes this pattern of neurons into a network of wiring. The brain recalls the event as an emotion and sends those feelings to the rest of the body. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the change in our external chemistry.
The memory of the event becomes frozen in the brain, imprinted in the neural network and the holographic image embodies the person, becomes part of the persona or personality. In other words, the past becomes our biology.
We think neurologically within circumstances of that experience, as we feed more chemical stressors our entire state of being becomes sicker and a breeding ground for pathogens. Emotions experienced are:
- Powerless
- Disbelief
- Betrayal
- Fear
- Overwhelm
- Anxiety
- Hate
- Shock
- Sadness
- Pain
- Despair
- Guilt
- Frustration
- Anger
- Victim
- Anxiety
These emotions need to be dispersed or dissipated. The trauma takes on a new identity in the body. Reliving our pain produces anguish which in turn produces the same circuits in the brain and body to stay in the experience. How we think, act and feel is our personality. Our personality can be created from the past and so the downward spiral begins.
The motor control of the body keeps us in fight or flight and keeps the body stressed. Repeated inner conflict manifests in the body. Not moving forwards in life and staying stuck in the emotional, mental and physical leaves us in a physical wreck.
We unknowingly become the victim of our circumstances rather than the architect of our futures. The best doctors and medicine will not help long term until we tackle our inner conflict.
“You have the power to heal your life, and you need to know that. We think so often that we are helpless, but we’re not. We always have the power of our minds…Claim and consciously use your power.” Louise Hay
Bibliography
Joe De Spenza
Paul Chek
