How do our emotions affect our bodies?
We all know that when we are anxious we get a sick feeling in our stomachs, when stressed we can get headaches, that our muscles tense up due to the flight and fight response, our breathing is affected and our cortisol levels increase.
So what about a sore knee? Can that be caused by emotions and stress as well?
Well let’s look into that a bit further shall we…
Let’s say you fell over and hurt your knee. How can falling over and hurting your knee have anything to do with your emotions? It was caused simply by an accident and falling over…right?
But…..What if?
What if somewhere deep inside you were feeling guilty for something you said or done, maybe even a while ago and that guilt makes you feel on a subconscious level that you need to be punished, therefor your mind creates a situation for you to fall and hurt your knee…
What if past trauma and negative emotions were stored in your unconscious from an event that happened a long time ago and because the emotions and trauma have not been healed yet, it is now manifesting into a physical symptom and a sore knee?
Both of these scenarios could be possible, there have been many studies into the relationship between our emotions and physical pain.
I have read and heard that a sore lower back can be related to having financial difficulty, a sore throat from not speaking up on issues that are bothering you.
Susanne Babbel, Ph.D., M.F.T., a psychologist specializing in trauma and depression, says on her Psychology Today website,
“Studies have shown that chronic pain might not only be caused by physical injury but also by stress and emotional issues. In particular, people who have experienced trauma and suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are often at a higher risk to develop chronic pain.”
Chronic pain can be defined as pain that lasts a long time, 3 months or longer.
We all know that dealing with physical pain also reduces our quality of life. It affects our sleeping, our moods, limits our movements, drains our energy and also affects our concentration as we spend alot time focused on the pain and getting some pain relief.
Physical Pain Doesn’t Have To Limit Your Life Any More….
It is because of the link between emotional and physical pain that enables EFT (Tapping) to work very effectively, not only reducing and in many cases eliminating the physical pain altogether but it addresses the emotions that lay underneath and are contributing factors to the pain.
Dr. Murray Grossan of the Grossan Institute writes, “The first thing about healing an illness is to stop the stress and anxiety chemicals that impair normal healing.”
“The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system” and these negative emotions can manifest into physical pain, EFT is a prefect tool to use to address the physical pain as a way to get to the root cause (the emotions underneath), in turn eliminating any further pain and or disease.
For those who have suffered from physical pain for a long time, you may be thinking this is too good to be true, but it isn’t. There have been countless amounts of times I have helped people with physical pain and have seen the pain completely gone within minutes.
In our Western part of the world it is very common for us to go along the more traditional ways to treat pain, we go to see a doctor and get some medications, injections or even have surgery, yet none of these really have lasting results.
The reason for this is because traditional methods for pain relief miss the underlying causes of physical pain. Many doctors have a lack in their understanding of physical pain and how to effectively get lasting pain relief. They miss the importance of the relationship between our emotions and our pain. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in America has said,
“There’s an emotional component in 85% of all illnesses.”
Our negative emotions are a result form the stressors in our lives. When these emotions build and accumulate over time with no release they manifest into physical symptoms and or pain.
Negative emotions linked to your physical pain can be from different traumatic events in your past, accumulated over time, stored in your unconscious and in your cells. You maybe holding onto negative emotions from childhood, from relationships, for work related issues, accidents, injuries and other events that have caused you stress and emotional pain in your past, If we have not healed the negative emotions around these events, they are stored in our unconscious and the cells in our bodies and over time result in physical pain.
I am sure you have experienced your muscles tensing when you are stressed and this muscle tension over time could lead to shoulder pain, back pain or pain in other parts of your body. As you can see it was the stress and negative emotions that caused the muscles to tense, resulting in physical pain.
Most people when I explain how emotions are linked to physical pain, say “But I had an accident that caused the physical pain, how is that related to my emotions?”
It is because we often overlook the emotions and feelings around the accident or event itself, the fear, the anger, hurt, shock, even embarrassment of what happened, then there is the emotions around the pain itself, how long before it goes away, the limitations, the feelings of hopelessness, anxiety or even depression along with the possible feelings of being a burden on our loved ones.
All of these emotions play a huge part in locking in the physical pain from an accident, no matter how “physical” you may believe the accident to be.
How EFT works to release negative emotions locked in your unconscious mind, and therefore releases the physical pain from the body…
There has been a lot of research on the topic of how EFT works with releasing physical pain.
Dawson Church, PhD, conducted a double-blind study, where EFT was shown to produce, on average, a 24 percent drop in cortisol after just one hour of Tapping. During that same hour of talk therapy without Tapping, participants showed a much smaller drop in cortisol levels.
Cortisol is is a steroid hormone, which is produced in humans by adrenal cortex within the adrenal gland and is released in response to stress and low blood-glucose concentration. It functions to increase blood sugar through gluconeogenesis, to suppress the immune system, and to aid in the metabolism of fat, protein, and carbohydrates. It also decreases bone formation. (Wikipedia).
Research into acupuncture found that acupuncture as well as acupressure provides pain relief by increasing endorphin levels in the body. Since EFT accesses the acupuncture points along the energy system (meridians) that run through our bodies and it also lowers the cortisol, it’s likely that EFT, like acupuncture, allows the body to release the endorphins that then relieve pain.
The incredible results that EFT has on relieving physical pain is because of its ability to access what are called the meridian network.
The meridian network that runs through the body are undetectable to the naked eye, and yet we couldn’t live without them. Every organ and physiological system in the body are influenced by the meridians. Much in the same way arteries carry blood, the meridians carry energy through the body, This energy is often referred to as chi, qi, or prana in Chinese medicine.
Meridians are responsible for all the body’s major organ systems: endocrine, nervous, circulatory, immune, respiratory, skeletal, muscular, digestive, and the lymphatic systems. If the energy flowing through a meridian is imbalanced in any way, the system it supports will be in jeopardy and disease follows.
Meridians bring balance to the body, they remove energetic blocks, excesses and imbalances, regulate metabolism, and support cellular health. It is important to keep the energy flow of the meridians unblocked and balanced to experience good health.
By accessing these meridians, while focused on physical pain, emotions, thoughts and memories, EFT is able to get to the root cause of chronic pain.
EFT sends calming and relaxing signals to the amygdala. We use EFT to neutralize any threat the brain perceives and to reprogram it to support more positive emotions and experiences such as pain relief and relaxation.
If you would like to know more on How to Use EFT (Tapping) for Physical Pain, then click here to download my eBook that will go into further detail and outline the steps of how to apply EFT.
Keep Tapping!
Robyn Lemsing
4th February 2018