A&A Ep. 88
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Karrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to Awakened and Alive After 40.
Dominique: If you're searching for inspiring and easy to apply Enneagram and Human Design content, then you've come to the right place. We're your hosts, Dominique
Karrie: and Karrie. Two friends and coaches who are passionate about sharing our knowledge and insights on these two powerful self awareness systems to help you step outside the box and into a life that is true to who you really are.
Dominique: We're so grateful to have you here. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey there friends and welcome to Awakened and Alive After 40. If this is your first time here, then thank you for joining us. We are so grateful to have you here. We're going to talk today about messages from our body and specifically why we may experience pain [00:01:00] and this pain being around emotional, physical, and also spiritual pain. And It's one of these areas that as I have been a physical therapist assistant over the years, I've kind of seen this transition throughout the clinic setting where we did things by the book for a really long time and honing in on just strictly how could I help this person physically. And recently, how I've seen a lot of changing in my treatment protocol where I've started to incorporate more of the whole person, which ultimately that's where the true at the root healing happens. And I've had patients come to me with manifestation of pains that were addition to what I was treating them for, and they just were extremely frustrated, like not understanding what is happening to my body. There's either insomnia, anxiety, depression, all of these other things that were coming [00:02:00] up and manifesting, and I think it's important for us to just have conversation around this whole topic of messages from the body. By no means in this topic are we saying this is the reason for your emotional or physical pain and that's it. It's just some things to maybe have you as the listener consider within your own life and get curious about if you're finding that you've been dealing with some sort of chronic ailment for a while and haven't been able to get any answers for it.
Karrie: I think we all know how complicated and complex the human body is on a physical level, and like you said, Dominique, we are really starting to realize, as a society, how interconnected all of those physiological systems are within the body, and that also includes our emotional centers, our hormonal centers, our spiritual center, like we've talked [00:03:00] about. It's great now because I think there are more and more practitioners out there realizing this. And like you said, you've even started bringing some of these ideas into your own physical therapy treatment of your patients, because we are more than just a physical body. We've talked about this on past episodes, and it's so important to remember that when something is hurting us, whether it's a physical pain in the body or an emotional pain, there's typically so many other things that could be connected to that. It's not just a quick and easy answer a lot of the times, especially if it's something chronic that is unexplainable. Obviously, if you just get a surface cut or wound on your skin, that's pretty straightforward and we know what to do. But internally, things get a little bit more complicated.
Dominique: Mm hmm. Yeah, very much so. And then when we talk about emotional pain, we can think of anxiety, panic attacks, depression, hypervigilance, [00:04:00] hopelessness, apathy. Of course, physical pain. I'm sure we're all very familiar with that. It could be back pain, shoulder pain, digestive issues. I've had a lot of that going on the past year, and I've been able to connect the dots and really start treating it at the root. And then chronic pain, autoimmune disorders. And when I mention I'm starting to adjust my treatment a little bit in the clinical setting, I've had a lot of specifically female patients coming to me because they spoke to their doctor about these strange symptoms that they were getting and they presented as autoimmune or strange like vision disturbances, vocal changes, and they did their own research. This is what also kind of gets me is that unfortunately a lot of the times we have to do our own research to get to the root of things because doctors can only spend so much time with us. They're also trained more on that pharmaceutical model to [00:05:00] treat symptoms. But my patients were asking questions about the vagus nerve and their doctors were like, uh, yeah, no, we don't think that's going on. Or they're saying, yeah, we don't really work with that much, so try to find somebody who does. And they've come to my clinic asking about it. The other clinicians. aren't quite as familiar as I am because I've made this so much of my work over the years. So I'm taking on these patients and teaching them about the messages that their body is sending them. Of course, there's so many different reasons why this could be happening, but with a lot of my clients, I'm seeing it be around unresolved trauma. So events that happened in their past, in their childhood that was never addressed and they kept just pushing to the side because they had to care for their family, they had to raise their children, they had to work. And now their bodies are rebelling and starting to really uproar. I saw that in [00:06:00] my own system as well. We can only resist for so long. Our body is going to start speaking loud and clear when it gets to the point where it can no longer have us ignore the signals, because our bodies want us to be safe. They want to protect us. But we have to be aware of what's happening and acknowledge these things. It shows up in so many different ways for all of us. But I think when it comes to emotional and physical pains, that if we can start to take baby steps toward listening more closely to the signals that our bodies are giving off, the little everyday changes, this is where huge growth and healing can happen.
Karrie: That's so true, and like you said, listening to these body signals can really empower us to understand what is happening outside of just our mental processing. Our bodies are very wise. We talk about this a lot. And I think we've [00:07:00] even referenced the work of Gabor Maté before on the podcast, who has written books and has a lot of great information out there about the mind body connection and how the body communicates to us. A lot of the times it is through physical pain or through dis ease within the body, like having an autoimmune disorder, which Dominique and I are both personally familiar with, and for both of us, those disorders popped up in our lives during very stressful times when our brains were just going along with what we thought we should be doing and living up to someone else's expectations, and our bodies were screaming at us, this is not right. This is not the path to be on. We've both done a lot of work in order to get in touch with our bodies and to listen to these cues and to start to heal ourselves from these diseases that we were dealing with on a day to day basis. A lot of this, like Dominique said, can be due to past trauma. It can also just be [00:08:00] due to chronic, unprocessed stress. I think, for me, that was a big thing in my life for a lot of my young adult years, was just living in a state of chronic stress and thinking that was my baseline.
Dominique: Yeah, yeah. I love that you brought up Dr. Gabor Maté. The book that I would recommend for anyone who wants to better understand how unprocessed emotions impact our body, it's called, When the Body Says No. And then there's also The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. I'll put those in the show notes down below because those two books really were life changing for me and a lot of people that I know who have read it. But when it comes to the emotional and physical pain that we can oftentimes experience, if you think of it as the more you live outside of your authentic self, outside of your truth, outside of your desires and dreams and beliefs, the more likely your body is going [00:09:00] to rebel because it is trying to keep you on track with your path. I also like to think of it as we sometimes wear masks so that we can fit in and we can feel like we belong. But eventually wearing these masks, it's going to feel really, really heavy. And we're going to have to take them off eventually. And if we're fighting that, and they continue to feel heavy and weigh us down, that's when we eventually hit burnout. And it's burnout that puts things to a stop. Our bodies have no other choice but to become aware of everything that we have been trying to avoid or the ways in which we have been living out of alignment with our truth. What I love about Quantum Human Design is that it shows you that when we live off the chart, off of your energy blueprint, you're expending more energy because you're trying to be something or someone you're not. And then this [00:10:00] is what ultimately leads to burnout. This is what ultimately can lead to manifestation of a lot of the different ailments that we've mentioned just a few. The more we live out of alignment, the more pain we potentially will experience in our lives. The nine centers in the body graph are a great area to gain more awareness of where you may be potentially living off the chart based off of what pain, whether it be emotional or physical, that you are experiencing. And I'll give just a quick rundown of the nine centers. The Head Center, this is biological connection to the pineal gland. This is what regulates sleep. So if you're having a lot of sleep disturbances, visual difficulties, that's connected to the Head Center. You've got the Ajna, which is connected to the anterior and posterior pituitary glands. The Throat's connected to thyroid and parathyroid. I know Karrie, you and I have talked about separately we had our own issues with throat stuff. I had a [00:11:00] parathyroid tumor that was discovered, and I know that connection was because of me being fearful of sharing my voice and speaking about my traumas. And so when we can look at these things, and we can pay attention to like, oh, this is happening in my throat or this is happening within my stomach, which stomach is connected to the Will Center, and that's where if you're trying to prove your value, your worth by pushing and doing and hitting burnout, then that could potentially start creating disturbances within your digestive system and your stomach. Each of these centers has a connection, a biological connection. And I just love that by paying attention to these areas, Human Design offers us a way to become more clear about where we're living off of our chart and how we can go about changing that and living more in alignment with our truth.
Karrie: Yeah. And I think it's important to remember that these centers [00:12:00] are part of the chakra system, so they are energy centers, and we all have all the centers, but according to our Human Design charts, some of those centers have definition and some are undefined or are more susceptible to outside energies because we don't have constant energy there ourselves. And so it's really interesting when you look at your own chart to start to make these connections that, oh man, maybe some of my more open centers are where I experience a little bit more discomfort or body signals telling me things that I haven't been listening to. It can be really empowering.
Dominique: Very, very empowering, and those open centers, like you said, that's where we take on other people's energy, we absorb and amplify, and so this is where we can be more prone to conditioning. That's a lot of what is creating the manifestation of different ailments, is the conditioned beliefs, behaviors, that we continue to live out. [00:13:00]
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Karrie: An important piece when we're looking at the Enneagram framework to understand, and I've talked about it a lot, has to do with the Centers of Intelligence, which within that system are the Heart Center, the Head Center, and the Body Center. And there are three types, according to their Hornevian Triad, or what's called the Stance, that are repressed in the Body Center. So, it's really important when we're talking about the body to have that connection to be able to read basic body signals. The three types are in the [00:14:00] Withdrawn Stance, and those are Types 4, 5, and 9. So Dominique, you're familiar with being a Type 9 with this. And these types can definitely experience lower energy than the other six types. They tend to process things a lot more slowly just because of their lower energy, and maybe they need more time to make decisions, to take action, because the body center is where we take action from within the Enneagram framework. They can be really avoidant of other people's obligations or expectations, because they more heavily feel that burden on them when others are pressuring them to make a decision or to do something or to take action, especially when they don't feel ready. I think knowing this about yourself from the Enneagram lens, and then also having the knowledge of your Human Design chart can be even more impactful because this is like one little piece that says, Oh, wow. If I'm in the Withdrawn [00:15:00] Stance, what now? Why is this happening? Why don't I have this ability to take action or to make decisions in the way I want to? And usually by looking at your Human Design chart and understanding how the energy is flowing with you and how you can optimize it is really beneficial.
Dominique: Yeah, absolutely is, and when we look at, okay, this is all great. We better understand why and how things might be occurring, then what is it that we can do? That's something whether you follow Human Design or the Enneagram, these tips that we're going to share, you can begin to apply today. The first one that I'm going to offer up is one that I use to get in touch with my body because I dealt with dissociation, and I had very little connection to understanding the messages of my body. So what I started to do, I would set aside two minutes because that was [00:16:00] plenty for me when I went from no connection to trying to get a little bit, I started with two minutes of just sitting without any distractions and doing what's called a body scan. And so you're starting from the top of your head and you're making your way down your body. So from your head to your facial musculature, the upper shoulders, the arms, the chest, and you're just checking in and asking yourself, where might I feel some tingling sensation or pressure or tightness? Where do I feel myself tensing? A lot of the times, most of us it's gonna be in our shoulders, the neck, like shrugging up towards our ears, and just bringing your attention to the different areas, starting from the top of your head down to your toes. Not questioning or asking or trying to fix, just simply paying attention and noticing what it is that you feel. And I started doing this for myself every single day, just two minutes to start to [00:17:00] recognize and develop that connection. It's a muscle. It is a muscle to get that connection from your mind and body. They're not separate, but oftentimes we create this separation because of how we live our lives on autopilot. And so if you can just start to strengthen this muscle again, then that creates so much more connection so you can tune in more easily when things are starting to show up in your body instead of at the last minute recognizing when it's speaking loud and clear in ways that you may not like.
Karrie: Yeah, finding a supportive way to connect with your body is probably the best way to start building up this ability to read your body signals and body scanning is amazing. Body scanning is also a great way to sort of lead into meditation because once you do that scan, and really feel into the relaxation, it's a great time to just maybe take another five minutes beyond that if you have the [00:18:00] capacity to drop into your body and allow your mind to do what it's going to do and you just witness it and acknowledge it and let it flow, which I think is one of the best ways to meditate. Even doing a guided meditation can be really great, especially when you're starting out to sort of have your mind be occupied by something and allowing that to occupy your space while you drop into your body. I think for me, yoga was my entryway into all of this, so if doing a body scan or a meditation just doesn't feel good or aligned, then maybe yoga would feel better because it's a little bit more movement oriented and learning the poses can be a really great way to understand your body better and how it may move. And during a yoga class, a lot of times you may feel certain things or things that feel stuck in your body, your tightness in a certain area, and that can be a great cue to look more deeply into that area.
Dominique: Yeah. I love that you bring up yoga [00:19:00] because that was my next step once I could develop this connection, yoga really moves me forward in a tremendous way so that I could connect with the difference between also feeling pain versus soreness versus tightness. And this is something I do a lot with my patients in the clinic is educating them on the differences, and it's not anything to fear. If you're feeling discomfort, if you are doing yoga or some sort of stretching, just say, Oh, okay, maybe that's a little bit too much. Let me ease back a little bit. My body prefers that. So just getting in that habit of recognizing, not fearing anything that's coming up, just allowing it to be and adjusting it however feels good for you, starts to create this connection with your body where you're also creating more trust with your body and trust within your own inner knowing of what is right and best for [00:20:00] you.
Karrie: And speaking of that, an easy way to start noticing body sensations is just noticing everyday sensations that we all experience within our bodies, like hunger, thirst, tiredness, temperature changes. These are all things that we all experience on a day to day basis, and it's a natural part of the human experience of having all of these different sensations. Getting in touch with, do I feel hungry, or am I just eating because the clock says a certain time? Or, I know for a lot of us, hydration is a big problem and a lot of us wait until we feel thirsty to drink and that's when we know our body is already starting to head towards dehydration because the body is giving that signal like, I need some water, I need something to drink. So it's like understanding these signals and how incredibly intelligent our body is to be able to give us these signals and being able to honor them and really appreciate them for what they're giving us can be also a really great way to give [00:21:00] your body that love and attention and thanking it for what it's doing for you on a daily basis.
Dominique: Yeah, and it's one of those things where, like I said, as myself being so disconnected from my body for so long and now being in a place where I get to help my patients create this connection. And some of my patients are in their mid 70s and 80s, and they are creating connections with their bodies and the wisdom within their bodies. And they are just thrilled to finally have this that they had been missing for so much of their life. It's never too late. It's never too late to start listening to these messages that every one of us experiences within our bodies. Because like you said, it is a beautiful mechanism that we get to experience life through this system, this skin that we all have and it simply just wants to carry us through the best life possible and to love us and we need to really step up to the [00:22:00] plate at times and say, okay, I'm going to love you back, because I'm going to start paying attention to you and I'm going to start going with the flow instead of against you. And it all starts with these baby steps. Hopefully you can take some piece of wisdom that we've maybe offered you today and start to apply it to your own life so that you can strengthen this connection that is going to lead to a beautiful relationship with your body.
Karrie: Thank you for listening to this episode. Your support is so appreciated.
Dominique: If you'd like to have a question answered about your Human Design or Enneagram type in a future episode, you can submit it through the link in the show notes. We'd love to hear from [00:23:00] you.
