By Anglea Dunning
One of our most reliable resources of information and clarity, which is available to us at all times, is our own body.
Often our trickster-mind, or turbulent conflicting thought-patterns and emotions can confuse and disorientate us. Making choices, knowing our real truth and behaving congruently can all go out the window when these aspects of ourselves are the ones guiding our decisions and actions.
However, our body, just like the horses I partner with to help people heal, cannot ever lie; to ourselves or others. This is why my approach is heavily somatically-based.
Our body is incapable of covering up its instinctual needs and wisdom, ensuring our vulnerability is laid bare for all to see in a myriad of ways. No matter which words we use to try to convey a different picture, no matter what torrent of thoughts our mind is preoccupied with, no matter what anyone else says to us; our body knows and reveals our truth at all times.
Our physical body often displays our truth in authentic unabashed methods, in a variety of different ways, for example, through our body language, muscular tension, symptoms, illnesses, accidents, and diseases all lay bare what is really going on inside us; regardless of our attempts to cover this up with words.
Those of us who partner with horses are more than aware of how horses give us feedback honestly and without censorship. And so, just like them, our body tries its best to do the very same for us every minute of every day.
However, it’s not just horses who do this either. Anyone who lives or works with animals, including dogs and cats, knows that they have a tendency to manifest behaviors and symptoms that can be perplexing at first glance. Yet, with an increased degree of self-awareness and willingness to accept their uncensored feedback to us, if we can dare to, we can see these symptoms as reflections of our true inner state and needs.
Whilst ploughing relentlessly on with our plans, busy-ness or general lack of presence, our close animal companions will often reveal our true inner needs and feelings through becoming ill, lame, colicky, itchy or diseased. Sometimes even carrying tumors, blockages or persistent immobility which eventually forces us to change the nature of our relationship to them, and, crucially, towards ourselves. More often than not, they are desperately trying to get us to simply slow down our approach to life.
I witnessed this with a friend one day who was facing a very sad move from his beloved home, which held many significant meanings for him, and yet I could sense he was talking about it at the surface level. As we talked, his cat began to cough violently as if he was trying to expel something out of its own body, in an attempt to help his owner reach deeper into his true feelings of sadness and grief about leaving his home. As soon as my friend stopped simply talking and felt more deeply into his body and acknowledged his impending loss, the cat stopped coughing.
Our own body will also play this role and indicate to us when we need to pay attention to our true feelings.
One of my body’s most recognizable symptoms, which is like my own personal truth-detector, concerns my throat. If I cover up my real feelings about something or say something predictable or superficial about something that actually carries much great meaning for me, and has deep emotion attached to it, I start to cough. My throat tightens, I begin to splutter and can frequently lose the ability to speak. It is as if my body, in that moment, completely takes over and reacts quite forcefully to my attempt to swallow back-down my truth. When I try to cover up my heartache, real desires, and dreams or when I try to pretend.
I’m not as powerful as I actually am, my throat closes up and prevents me from getting out my lies. Interestingly, this also happens when I do try to speak my truth. When I finally feel brave enough to unearth my power and wisdom, my words can get stuck in my throat. I cough and I have to take a moment to really assess if I want to reveal this part of myself. In that moment, crucially, it is also vital that I feel deep compassion for myself and my itchy, contracting throat, which has protected me so completely since I was a little girl. Keeping my hidden treasures safely buried inside in order to prevent further humiliation, criticism and ridicule.
Here are a few other familiar examples of body-
honesty:
• Your boss asks you to take on another new project, you nod and say yes but your body remains slumped, lacking in energy due to your already substantial workload, and your eyes don’t glisten with the excitement of a new challenge.
• Your child asks if you are okay, sensing you are unhappy. Yet you smile and say: “Yes I’m fine, nothing for you
to worry about”, as your shoulders droop and you look away from their eyes to conceal your true feelings (sadness, grief, worry, anger, etc.).
• In my work with horses, I frequently see this type of
scenario: A client enters the enclosure to explore their leadership style with a horse, they try with all their might to move the horse through their intention and energy,
but at the same time a voice in their head is telling them that they can’t do it. As result of some unacknowledged feeling or sensation in their body, their muscles remain tense, their facial expression is hard, their energy feels harsh and inevitably the horse refuses to move, sensing the client’s misalignment between mind and body.
• You commit to a social engagement even though you didn’t really like the sound of it and that morning you woke with a clear “no” when you thought about going ahead with it, on arriving you start to feel unwell, this increases to the point that you end up sitting out the entire evening and wishing you’d stayed at home.
• When reaching a turning point in your deep growth, faced with a new uncertain future, maybe following the end of career, redundancy or retirement, you develop an illness, or an immobility stopping you dead in your tracks, forcing you to finally go within now that “being productive” just isn’t possible any longer. Your body begs you to spend some quality time with it and heal what has been so long ignored.
These are just a handful of ways in which our body pulls on the handbrake and forces us to slow down or stop, to maybe rest, reassess, do some further inner-work or change direction completely. With no other choice open to it, your body releases, in anyway it can, through the onset of a sudden skin disorder, immobility, chest infection or depression, you are prevented from carrying on as before; even if just temporarily.
Making friends with our body is one of the most important relationships we will ever cultivate in life. And, if like so many of us, you have spent years or even decades ignoring or punishing your body, maybe now is the time to start loving it as much as your children, partner, horse or dog. Maybe now is the time to welcome yourself back home inside your forever present and most loyal companion in life; “the soft animal of your body”1. Once you begin to do this, you’ll be amazed at the difference in the people and animals in your life, because as you are more present in your body and therefore in touch with your truth, they can be more at ease in theirs too.
References:
The phrase “the soft animal of your body” is lovingly taken from Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese.
Angela Dunning is the author of The Horse Leads the Way: Honoring the True Role of the Horse in Equine Facilitated Practice. You can learn more about Angela; her work helping people and horses reclaim their wildness, and read more of her articles at: www.thehorsestruth.co.uk
You can also connect with Angela on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehorsestruth or www.thehorsestruth.co.uk
