My Body Is Revolting!
By Kristen N. Fox
Seems that my body is no longer going to let me do the things I really don’t want to do anymore. What a pity.
Ahhh, let me explain.
You see, over the last few months I’ve been dealing with, first, lower back pain, and then a pulled muscle/ligament in my groin and leg which is also connected to lower back muscles. During the resulting period of inactivity, I’ve come face to face with many of the judgments I’ve held ever since I can remember. Most of them are about NOT doing chores, and being “lazy”, and others are about not being useful unless I’m either making money or doing ‘useful’ physical activity.
Before I had these ailments, I was also busy uncovering this belief I have that life in physical reality is a burden, my physical body included. With a belief like that, is it any wonder I’ve been carrying around extra weight most of my life?
But how did I get such a belief? I think it was one of those I chose to be born into by choosing my parents, mostly I remember my mother. Mom was actually rather creative and allowing with her own children, but she still carried around the beliefs and vibrations from her OWN childhood, and that’s what I picked up on – I did what she did, not as she said.
During my current ailments, every time I started to feel better I’d automatically think, “Great! Now I can do some stuff!” and then I’d shut down again. My partner John asked me, “What kind of stuff do you think about doing at these times?” I suddenly knew where he was going with this and grinned sheepishly, “The dishes! I can get the kitchen clean, I can sweep the floors! I can wash the car! I can….” He replied, grinning, “Well, it’s no wonder you’re still unable to move around – I wouldn’t want to get better either if THAT’S all I had to look forward to!” And then, “Aren’t there any JOYFUL activities you’d want to do?”
That one really made me think. I have detected that a lot of the problem has to do with energy being held in my back or held ‘back’ and it occurs to me that I’m holding back my JOY in physical activity in SO MANY ways! Each time I’ve relaxed and just gone with the flow I’d feel a release in my back and solar plexus area and suddenly be able to move again, and then it would tighten up as I tried to “do stuff” again.
This morning, while John and I talked, I was making brownies and just slowly playing in the batter with the mixing spoon. I was having fun playing with my food – something not allowed for too long when I was growing up. It felt really fun to just BE THERE with it and not feel like I HAD TO hurry up and get it in the oven to bake. During this time, the pain in my leg lessened considerably as well.
Then it occurred to me – I had hardly ever just sat with myself and felt joy in what I was doing! There are certain activities which are a lot of fun, but my focus was never just in the moment, in many ways it was on gauging how well I was doing, how efficient I was being, how MUCH I was producing or getting done and what ELSE I had yet to do. Most of the time I got a sense of satisfaction out of accomplishing things, but those things usually had NOTHING to do with following my true joyful impulses! In the past, I may have lingered for a moment on the brownie batter, but then rushed ahead to complete and produce again.
But now my body’s revolting and won’t let me do that anymore. The time for “kudos for hard work” is past and the time for “joyful, in the moment, activity” is NOW. When I sit here and think about what would be fun to do next, my energy flows, and when I sit here and think about all the chores that need to be done, my energy freezes. (Sometimes I wonder that with signs as seemingly obvious as this, it took me so long to wake up and catch on!)
The more challenging aspect of this is in saying NO! to all of those SHOULDS I’ve been listening to instead of my impulses and intuition. I SHOULD do the dishes because you need clean dishes. I SHOULD clean the house while John’s at work so that I can be as useful in this partnership as he is (usefulness, again, based on money or physical activity – doing instead of BEING). It’s not that I won’t DO anything ever again <grin> – rather, it’s about following my TRUE energy rather than the overlay of learned behaviors that believe life is hard work (a burden) and that following your joy means goofing off and being lazy instead of “getting things done.”
I’ve read in quite a few places that the energy coming to earth keeps intensifying and old patterns keep coming up in more exaggerated forms to be seen finally and released. This feels very real to me right now as these attitudes I’d been holding brought everything to a screaming halt – “NO MORE WORK! JUST JOY AND FLOWING ENERGY!” It almost feels like my body and physical expression are finally coming into alignment with my inner self – it’s no wonder that back problems, including odd twistings and postures, are a part of this realignment.
As Seth said in many of the books by Jane Roberts, “If it’s not fun, stop doing it!” Sounds somewhat irresponsible, doesn’t it? Well, SO BE IT. It’s a lot easier to let go of old beliefs around responsibility than it is to physically force myself to move when my energy and muscles are fused into a tight, painful ball! I may be dense, but eventually, I DO catch on and start listening to myself. <grin>
[Originally published on Themestream, June 2000.]