“you cannot heal what you cannot feel”

A master in the chiropractic profession, Dr. Lou Corleto, dropped this hell of a one liner in his book Healing vs. Curing.

so now what?

I don’t have time for my back to hurt.

I really want to get that workout in, I’ll just push through the chest cold.

I don’t have time to deal with that old trauma that decided to resurface today. I’ll just dive into my work instead, distract myself.

How often do we opt to suppress the things that we are feeling, or even thinking? Whether it is an old nagging ache and pain that’s “been there for years”, anxiety from an emotional trauma, or an awareness that we are not being served by our current model of living.

Do we believe that redwoods, some of the tallest trees in the world, have acquired their awe-inspiring height by suppressing their needs for sunlight, oxygen, water, and minerals?

What if, what if , we chose to pay attention, and to honor the feelings that arise from the inside. How much energy could be freed in the future if we address these feelings as they show up, as opposed to spending extensive amounts of energy and time to shove them back down to where the very feelings arose? Deep, deep, deep down. Which is where?

The pelvis?

The low back?

The rib cage?

The heart?

The throat?

Gravity has a funny way of helping us push these lurking feelings deep, deep down. Combine gravity with the innate intelligence of the body, and old emotional traumas are stored in the low back, and brought to the surface when we “lift that heavy box during the move with poor form”, attributing the origin of this bothersome pain and trauma to a singular, mechanistic event.

But here is the thing — it is never just a singular event. It is a process. Everything is a process. Growing, learning, coming into ourselves. Even the very act of suppression is a process. Dis-ease is a process. It does not just happen overnight. Innately there is something in us that wants us to express. To create. To expand. We are told along the way to

-sit down

-be quiet

-stop doodling

-don’t climb on that

-it’s not masculine to cry

-be strong for your family

What if, instead, we were not only taught, but encouraged, to really feel what we are feeling, notice what we notice. If this were the case, we could learn the vocabulary of emotions and feelings from a young age, creating an opportunity for greater expression.

Perhaps we would not be walking around attributing aches and pains to “aging” and “getting old”. What if this were the end of focusing on all of the things that are “wrong” or “broken”, and the beginning of stepping into a place of allowance, acceptance, and surrender to the things we are feeling in each fleeting moment?

If we allow ourselves to feel, we allow ourselves to heal.