90 per cent of pain is emotional
The Hub’s polarity therapist Jane Seaman recalls how she came to realise just how much her emotions were affecting her physically and had been holding her back in life for years
How does your body tell you that something is not right in your life? Many people walk around with niggly aches and pains and after time some of these may even develop into more serious conditions. The majority of my work as a polarity therapy practitioner and shamanic healer is dealing with pain that has been created by emotional stress or trauma of some kind. Most of the time we are unaware that a headache or painful knee or backache has been caused by something in life has that has been created by an unexpressed emotion from a situation that may at the time have seemed innocuous.
I want to share a bit of my story as it is how I discovered that my body was speaking to me following a traumatic event in my life. We all have a story to tell and mine is not unique but it highlighted to me how stuck emotions can seriously affect our mental, emotional and physical health and is the reason why I do what I do now.
I was 15 years old when I suffered a devastating personal trauma. I kept quiet, my parents knew nothing. As my behaviour and personality had changed my parents did their best to find out what was wrong but I had completely clamped up – in fact, looking back I was in complete denial about my situation.
I changed from being an energetic teenager to withdrawn, uncommunicative and sad. I would disappear into my bedroom and only come out for meals as I didn’t want to face anyone. School was frightful and I avoided going in as much as I could. I developed very bad headaches and I was tearful and sad a lot of the time. This was more than the normal teenage ‘growing’ pains and my parents were at a loss what to do with me. By the time I was 16 I was prescribed antidepressants by the doctor. I hated taking them, but they helped me feel calmer.
I had lost all interest in sports, which until then had been my life. I put on weight and the following years found myself wanting to run away. I had lost my motivation and passion to do anything and when I left school, although it was easy for me to find work, I went from one job to another, getting bored very quickly – always seeking ‘that something’ that wasn’t there and wanting to run away, eventually joining the Army. On the outside you wouldn’t have known anything was wrong as I put on a brave face at work and with friends. Inside I was shy, lacking in confidence, sad and lost.
As time went by I became more and more anxious and ‘lived on my nerves’. My body started to hurt and I developed backache, knee pain, joint pain, muscle tension and suffered with IBS. My body was trying to tell me something and I wasn’t listening.
It was another 15 years after the event that I got real help and it was on my 30th birthday that I realised I did not want to be here. My body hurt, I was depressed and anxious and life was hard work. I went to the doctors again – this time it was a new doctor. Sitting in front of him I felt like a worn-out record as I told the same story yet again describing all my physical symptoms. However, this time it was different, as the doctor asked me what was really going on and for the first time in 15 years I was able to verbalise what had happened all those years earlier.
The relief was palpable inside of me. He got me some professional help where I learned that my physical symptoms were as a result of the emotional trauma I had suffered. Slowly I began to learn how to distinguish between normal fluctuations in my monthly rhythm and the feelings that were related to the trauma.
Understanding the connection between mind and body was liberating. It sparked an interest deep within and I went on to discover alternative therapies and in particular polarity therapy. Polarity therapy helped me release the built-up emotions such as fear, anger and frustration that were manifesting in my body as pain. But it also enabled me to get insights on my thoughts and attitudes and the link between what I was eating and my energy levels. It was life changing. I was able to connect the dots between my mental and emotional state with the pain I was experiencing in my body.
Needless to say, I went on to re-train and develop a new career in polarity therapy and as a spa consultant, and travelled the world. I now help many people discover their emotional triggers, release stuck emotional blocks in the subconscious body to find peace and joy back into their lives.
When your body speaks to you, do you listen?
If you want to clear your emotional blocks, gain clarity of mind and feel more relaxed about life then I would love to hear from you.