By Barbara Brennan
It is often difficult for people to accept that physical illnesses are invariably connected to their emotional issues, that changing how we see life will also change what is happening in the body.
Of course, disease tendencies are inherited through the genes but that doesn’t mean we have to take on the physical problems of our lineage. By meeting particular needs, we can ensure that these tendencies do not manifest in our bodies.
For example, a person with diabetic genes will need to eat foods that have a low glycemic index. Yet if she has also experienced a lack of sweetness in life in early childhood, there will inevitably be cravings for sweet things in adulthood. Not knowing true sweetness, such a person will seek the sweetness elsewhere. To deal with these sugar cravings, it is very important that she allows herself to feel the inherited pain.
The same is true of alcohol. Alcoholism runs in families so many people are born with a predisposition toward it. Resolving the pain helps one handle the tendency. This can be a long road, because significant lifestyle changes are required. The support of a healer is extremely useful in such cases.
Thankfully, many more people these days are beginning to understand that, from the holistic perspective, the physical cannot remain healthy unless the emotional does too.
They are realizing that the body, mind, and emotion are completely interrelated. Yet ignorance of this is still widespread. Most clients consult healers to resolve physical problems and, sad to say, often stop treatment when the symptoms disappear. Unfortunately, without personal change, symptoms tend to reappear.
For healing to be really effective, there has to be a willingness on the client’s part to look beyond the quick fix to the root cause. That can be a little scary for people who have spent their lives defending against their emotional wounds.
Every healing I have given has included all the levels of our being as well as our intentionality or purpose, spirituality, higher mind, higher will, relational issues with others as well as ourselves, and how we take care of our bodies. Energy healing works directly on our energetic pathways to open them through all the levels of our being, including our emotions and physical bodies. Through it we learn to meet our true needs.
Physical illness invariably relates to an unmet need that usually goes back to the very early years when the child was not sufficiently nurtured, loved, or acknowledged. Once the child is taught neglect and self-rejection in this way, it repeats the habit throughout adulthood. Repeated emotional injury eventually becomes physical.
So all children need good models of happy, well-balanced parents but how many have had them? The successful adults in a child’s life do not have to be the parents. Any positive adult model can make a huge difference, such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The Big Brother and Big Sister programs also serve this need, as do teachers and sports coaches.
Lack of nurturing of a young child doesn’t mean that the mother was “bad,” just that she too was not fully nourished in infancy and didn’t understand how to meet her child’s needs. An example of this is Pamela, who suffered from weakness in the legs and who, in every sense, needed to learn to stand on her own two feet.
As a child, she had been expected to be the “little mother” to her four much younger siblings. Pamela remembers her father as being strict with her while allowing the younger children infinitely greater latitude. She had to cook for him when he arrived home from work every night.
As an adult, she married a man very similar to her father. Not being received for what she was but for what others—parents, husband, relatives, friends—wanted her to be became particularly painful.
She was never able to stand her ground and claim what was hers. So, Pamela’s way of dealing with this was to fall back into smoldering resentment and passive-aggressive anger.
After several healings, a gradual change took place. Pamela spoke to her husband about all the issues that concerned her—and he listened. She began working hard on being present, on dealing with problems as they arose, and on manifesting outlets for her attention on creative energies. She is infinitely happier and, incidentally, her legs are much, much stronger.
But if we are going to feel and be well, to enjoy optimum health, we must be willing to explore, discover, and work to satisfy our needs in all regions of the inner self—psychologically, spiritually, physically, relationally, and even professionally. It’s a tall order, but anyone can do it.
We all make up for our childhood insufficiencies in unhealthy ways and our bodies suffer. Consider what a healthy world would look like, one in which the majority of people had their needs met. So how can you meet yours? How is holding yourself back from your heart’s desire affecting your life? What is it that you came here to do? Now would be a good time to start looking.