Your Experience, Your Truth
A lot has been said throughout history about the Mind Body Experience. Many talented healers, researchers, mental and medical health practitioners, and spiritual teachers have put their unique touches on the now well-worn, but still heavily doubted experience . With each day, new cutting edge research showcases the truth of non-structural origins of pain, fatigue, and sickness symptoms. However, rarely has it been the case that a sufferer is able to fully take in this information and move through their experience. Sure, every so often there is the person who can pick up a book by Dr. John Sarno or many others, learn about the connection between mind and body, and say, “Oh yea, that makes sense,” and move through their mind body experience with conviction and ease. For you, a well-written book or accessible podcast may have opened your eyes to the possibility that your mind body experience is not a chronic, structural, or medical issue, but it may not have transformed your life in the way you are hoping for, and you likely continue to experience debilitating doubts about the true nature of the opportunity presenting itself.
This is because you have a truth that is true only for you and it must be discovered by you. Yes, research has granted us access to some universal principles about the Mind Body Experience, such as the nature of physical or emotional trauma in the body passed down over generations, the learned neural pathways in the brain in response to stressors, and the nervous system’s vigilant scanning for perceived threat or danger. However, the way that your particular mind is shaped requires an access code based on an experience all your own in order to realize your truth. You must come to see with your own eyes that you are not broken and do not need to be fixed. The Mind Body Experience performs very successfully in hiding the true nature of your suffering. It draws your attention to all sorts of body sensations, which are then colluded with by the traditional medical system to send you on searches far outside yourself. It takes the willingness and courage - all that you can muster - to chart your own path of discovery in order to access the lockbox of your mind and begin to understand your self, not from the perspective of others no matter how good their intentions may be, but from a deep place within you.
We all need guides on this path, I certainly did, but the guides, whether they be therapists or doctors or shamans (I have met with them all), can only show you glimpses into the potential you possess. It will ultimately be up to you to find conviction that your experience can change. My father shared a story with me about his own search for spiritual freedom. On a retreat with a famous spiritual teacher, one fellow seeker asked why they should continue seeking if enlightenment came from acceptance of your experience.
The spiritual teacher responded, “Why would you stop seeking until you find what you are looking for?”
If you continue to have doubts, do not despair. The path to discovery is always open to you in each moment. The Mind Body Experience will continue to present itself as an opportunity to make space for your limiting beliefs, your emotional stuckness, and your doubts to be presented and transformed. It may not be a pleasant experience, but it is a vital and life changing one. For all of you out there who have not yet found healing from the numerous books and media you have digested, all preaching the path of mind body medicine, you must be willing to learn from your own experience and to discover your own truth as it relates to these ideas. You will inevitably have doubts, lots of them in fact, but keep going. Do not stop seeking until you find what you are looking for.