What's Happening -- Newsletter from the Center

We have all had the experience of rubbing a sore muscle or an aching joint after some physical task in hopes of making it feel better. Few of us however have little confidence that paying attention to signals from our physical bodies will bring about healing. We have all been conditioned that paying attention to any physical signal pales small in contrast to the comfort and healing that comes from a tablet, pill or visit to the doctor.

Presently our society views the human body as a machine, an inert lump of matter which obeys the mind mechanically without any intelligence of its own. This distrust of the body as a field of intelligence essentially robs us of our responsibility for our own health.

Yet there is an inner healer in all of us and it is nothing but this:  the witness or watcher who presides over and governs the mindbody and who pays attention to the mindbody’s signals and creates the intention to bring about a return to balance.  The mindbody’s intrinsic desire is to be in balance. This is it’s most profound desire.  Whatever it is that brings about the emotional or physical discomfort relates to a state of lack, an imbalance somewhere in inner space is leading to unarguably physical or psychological symptoms. Ignoring a pain or discomfort imposes a strain because it takes effort to keep awareness from going where it wants to go. Disease and sickness is an expression of imbalance and is a change in our awareness from comfort to discomfort. Sickness is therefore a self correcting cybernetic feedback mechanism to allow us to get back to comfort rather than discomfort.

I have no illusion that listening to the mindbody will open up blocked coronaries or cure cancers because by that time the mindbody has undergone significant tissue disruption. By the time the Western technological approaches are needed the mindbody has undergone oftentimes irreversible changes. But I do believe that being aware of the subtle signals that the mindbody provides is the first step in prevention of more serious disease in future years.

There are some hurdles that must be overcome to be aware of the mindbody’s signals. The first is the most difficult and is simply becoming aware of the signals. As we know distractions in all forms can take our attention away from our mindbodies preventing us from becoming aware of what is being reported to us, the witness. Meditation is the most powerful way of paying more attention to what is happening in the present moment, getting in touch with that inner healer. Secondly we psychologically retract from pain believing that something more serious underlies the signal as indeed there may be. Our fear of pain and desire for pleasure keeps us from getting in touch with where our mindbodies’ signals are headed at any one point in time. Furthermore if carried to an extreme the mindbody can simply deny that a problem exists, ignoring the signal for months or even years (a person claims not to be angry when queried even though everyone observes that the person seems upset all the time).

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