Understanding Healing: Redefining Symptoms

By Karen Pearle

Stress related symptoms (as opposed to organic illnesses and disease) often do not respond to conventional medical treatments. Here's an alternative: Karen Pearle, longtime OPEN EXCHANGE lister, offers Body Centered Therapy to relieve stress and trauma. See Bodywork Therapies.

Symptoms, those physical manifestations that signal to us that something may be wrong, can be distracting, painful, even debilitating. We naturally worry about what's happening to us. We may have to adjust our lives to cope with our digestive difficulties, headaches, or any of the countless discomforts that interfere with the way we want our lives to be. We strategize how best to get rid of this intrusion on our lives. We want to fix this problem and get better.

But what if there is something positive about having symptoms? With Chi Nei Tsang, we understand that symptoms are not in fact problems to be fixed. Rather, symptoms are important messages from within us, messages that are asking us to pay attention to ourselves, to become more aware.

Symptoms may persist until we pay attention to them, or the same message will be expressed through different symptoms in various places within us, some of which may involve pain, and others which may not. Actually, all our symptoms are related to one another and usually carry the same message, since they are coming from the same person!

Mary was referred to me, seeking relief from several symptoms: blurry vision, lower backache, insomnia, headaches and constipation. She felt blocked in the writing of her book and neglected by her busy husband. She had recently received a new prescription for glasses from her eye doctor, a chiropractic adjustment, and herbs for her liver prescribed by her acupuncturist. But her symptoms persisted.

When Mary came for her first session she was anxious and talked rapidly, expressing her fears and distress. "I do all the right things! I eat a healthy diet, meditate and exercise. This shouldn't be happening to me!" As a Chi Nei Tsang practitioner, I understood that Mary's various symptoms were the expression of an internal pattern of tension trying to release.

I explained to her that in a CNT session we give ourselves permission to feel our emotions and sensations without analyzing them or trying to understand them. This is because emotions are irrational. If they were rational they wouldn't be emotions, they would be thoughts! Emotions don't need to be understood, explained or solved. They only need to be validated.

In her session I helped Mary to relax on the massage table with her eyes closed. I encouraged her to breathe deeply and slowly without forcing. As a wholistic CNT practitioner I am aware of Mary as a whole person and open to sense the connections between all the symptoms she is having. Mary needed safety, support and validation to access her deeper feelings.

Using gentle touch I massaged her abdomen, connecting her with her breathing and large intestine. At one point in the session she said that she was experiencing a strange sensation that she hadn't felt since she was very young. She especially felt it when she was shamed in front of her class. I encouraged her to feel the familiarity of the sensation without trying to understand it.

Since all felt emotions live in the present time, it doesn't matter how long ago this happened to Mary—she still feels the same way right now. And what she feels is important and true in itself, without any explanation or analysis.

Mary's symptoms had messages for her. They led her to connect with emotional pain that she was protecting herself from feeling. Within this pain there was a conflict about feeling the pain. We all have such conflicts: between the parts of us that are in pain and want to feel good and the parts thatprotect us from feeling the pain.

In another session with Mary I massaged the area under her right rib (the liver area) The liver is a great reservoir of deep emotions. So when I massaged this area she went into a deep sleep state. What she was experiencing was far deeper than the conscious mind. After her session Mary felt unusually calm and she noticed that her vision was clearer and her back felt more open.

Over the course of her sessions Mary stopped having insomnia. She was able to sleep deeply and dreamt of new material for her book. Her headaches were gone and her elimination was easier. She became more optimistic and the energy bound up in her conflicts became available to her for her creativity.

Her busy husband said, "Let's go out and do something special; I can get back to my desk later!"

Many chronic health problems result from very old painful experiences that have remained hidden from our conscious mind, resulting in old emotional charges that never had a chance to be "digested." We don't want to get in touch with negative feelings connected with these experiences for many good reasons. We might lose control, and feel weak, emotional or "bad."
If, in a safe and supported situation, attention is given to a part of us that is hidden, the pain may go away. But if no attention is paid, the pain may go, but will come back, often in another and even stronger form, or bring forth another different set of symptoms urging us to pay attention to ourselves.

Every person and every session is different. The constant is that when people connect with themselves in this way and bring awareness to hidden places within them, the result is change, growth and maturity.

Conventional medicine has done wonders in helping us to alleviate our pain, and sometimes pain is unbearable without medicine. At the same time, this approach often hides our symptoms. Real transformation happens when the energy that has been held back within us is released and free to help us recover. Then there is no reason for the symptom to reoccur.

REFERENCE: Healing From Within with Chi Nei Tsang by Gilles Marin © 1999, North Atlantic Books.