There’s an old saying in the recovery community:
“The distance between our head and our heart is the longest 18 inches we’ll ever travel.”
Those battling addiction have no doubt extended this journey. Addiction separates us further from our somatic awareness, from our body-based wisdom as we attempt continuous escape from the pain our body holds via substance, behavior, or relationship.
Yes, in a real sense relationships can be addicting, though it’s actually the emotional state, the chemicals, the charge it produces that we get “hooked” on.
But addiction or not, the discernment challenge applies to us all.
Intuition is primarily a “neck down” experience. The wisdom of the body, which is the subconscious mind, as Dr. Candace Pert, PhD, author of Molecules of Emotion eloquently and directly put it, is what we must learn to access for this discernment.
As we say, the body never lies. Now, parts of us—which can be experienced as located within the body— can most certainly be carrying false ideas/limiting beliefs, and old pain that would have us view ourselves, others and the world through a distorted lens. But the body will only/can only provide us truth of what it is we feel or believe.
The head, by which I’m meaning the conscious mind (the “monkey mind” as the Hindu’s named it) on the other hand, is full of programming. And while we need our analytical, rational, fact/knowledge-based mind for various things, the head is hardly the seat of deeper knowing, larger truth, or perennial wisdom. It’s rather like the ever-recycling repository of of all our cultural, societal, familial, religious, compulsory educational, and other institutional rules, ideas, beliefs, taboos and mandates as to who we are, what we should and shouldn’t do, feel, say, etc. Still, the head, the conscious mind, has it’s purpose.
But man shall not live by bread alone.
Living in our masculine head, without the counterbalancing yin-yang of feminine body connection is a recipe for unconscious (not so much mindless, but body-less) repetition of unsatisfying patterns, often resulting to an empty or incomplete life. In this case, depression is usually the first clear indication that we’ve been living on someone else’s terms; by conditioning.
Our discernment challenge ante gets upped further when we realize that the mindbody is exactly that: the MINDBODY.
We are a holistic, interconnected organism of mind, body, spirit and soul, where all components— thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, sensations, emotions and behaviors co-exist, interrelating and informing one another.
Consider another old saying:
“Feelings buried alive never die. they find an organ and make it sick.”
When we really look at and get to know different parts of ourselves, which can be perceived to be, or experienced as, located in either head or body, it can be tricky business to decipher what’s what—what’s outside-in conditioning and what is inside-out personal gnosis / truth.
A breathwork, yoga, mindfulness-based or meditation practice can come in useful of course. Deeper knowing and truth will often emerge the quieter and still-er we become, the more regularly we go there. Yet, any honest devout meditator, yogi or yogini will admit, these practices alone will not solve all our problems. The mind, the ego, our various neurosis; our layers and layers of conditioning are, it seems, as patient as lust, as author Graham Greene put it once.
(Why do you think so many “gurus” eventually fall from grace, and fall hard, with so much collateral damage in tow?).
Back to the challenge of discernment. Kinesiological muscle testing, something I’ve long been familiar but only in the past few years have become adept at, is a marvelous truth vs falsehood discernment tool in this respect. In it’s most simple forms (sway test, arm test), anyone can learn and use it to bypass the conditioned mind and tap the wisdom of the body.
Again, the body never lies. But…not so fast…our ability to correctly perceive its messages is fallible. False positives and paradoxical responses happen. It’s as much art as science. We must sometimes test again and again, or have someone do so by-proxy to eliminate whatever internal factors within us may be contributing to or causing inaccuracies.
In the somatic, energy psychology (ep)-based, trauma-informed gumbo I call my Subconscious Heal and Release® Energy Healing alignment approach, a form of muscle testing is used whereby my own head serves as a kind of pendulum. It provides me involuntary clear YES or NO responses to our questions of what is blocking you, from what age (in the case of trauma) as well as the form of the block (trauma, limiting belief, or trapped emotional energy-ours or generational/ancestral inheritances). It’s truly remarkable.
Having come “online” with a Divinely-granted claircognizant/clairsentient ability as I did recently out of an epically discombobulating Dark Night of the Soul experience, this ability is my direct line to the God Mind/Quantum Field/The Superconscious via the Higher Self, to access the information we need.
In essence, muscle-testing is the pathway, but “Spirit,” if you will, is the mechanism.
In using this with my clients, I am able to not only quickly and reliably bring through otherwise inaccessible information to help heal and release inner barriers, I’m able teach my clients how to sharpen their discernment between their own head and body, between conditioning and true knowing. As well as to recognize more quickly what parts of them are needing attention, what part has a story to tell (via symptoms) and what that specific part is trying to do for them
(See previous post: Wounded Parts, Whole Self for more about this).
If YOU would like to learn how to sharpen your head/heart discernment, get to know the wisdom of your body-based knowing, and the different parts of your inner landscape more clearly AND get into alignment with what you most desire to feel, have, achieve, accomplish. be or become, visit me at Therapy Outside the Box or call me at 615.430.2778 to schedule a FREE 20 Minute Consultation, or email me at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com.
Consultations and sessions available via Secure Video (Zoom)/Telehealth the world over, and on a case bvy case basis during COVID-19 at my home office in Greater Nashville / Franklin, TN.
Peace to you and yours,
Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP
Franklin, TN