Pain
Pain is made of what we don't let go of.
We have all heard that letting go is how we survive moral pain.
We all know that relaxing our body softens physical pain.
We all have experienced relief when our body purges.
We know of the liberation of venting or crying.
We have learnt to regard release as the remedy to pain.
And it is... because not releasing is what caused pain in the first place.
We are free from pain when we let things flow, pass, change.
Buddhists call this detachment.
Control
Most of what our body does to survive happens without our consent.
Our body knows what to do with food, air, bacteria, unexpected events around us.
Or it does most of the time, when we cooperate and give it what it agrees with.
Still, often enough we find our body does things we don't want it to do.
It twitches, farts, gets tired, and wants us to oblige in many ways.
It wants so much indeed that we tend to look at our body as our lower reality, the bane of the human condition, what makes us animals.
Our body knows what to do, but we don't let it, we teach it.
Civilised people do not twitch and fart.
Civilised people sit still and eat sophisticated foods at sociable times.
From a young age we learn to control our body's processes, there is a time and a place for each bodily function.
Some bodily things shall preferably never happen.
We teach our body so consistently and so collectively that we believe our mind is the intelligence of our body, that we believe exerting constant control is ideal, that we believe lack of control is failure, that mastery of the body is a condition of well-being.
Our body knows what to do, but we don't let it.
The mind, the knowledge we acquire about the body, how we understand our physical experience, our fear of pain, and above all else, our judgement of bodily events interfere with our health.
Shame
All the natural processes of the body to eliminate emotional overload and toxins are frowned upon socially.
Burping, farting, scratching and fidgeting are just unnecessary and a sign of bad health and lack of self-control.
Urinating and defecating, sexual activity, and to a large extent crying, shall happen privately, silently and within given intervals.
Sweating is tolerated in the course of physical exertion but demands an immediate shower and, along with shaking, is regarded as weakness and a sign of poor self-control as an emotional reaction.
Vomiting, snotting, and generally all purging secretions shall spare the eye and nose of an audience.
And laughing, the last man standing, shall happen on cue and not all that loudly.
Civilisation has taught us to interfere with our body's means of keeping clean and healthy.
Ironically, those shaming views on bodily affairs are likely derived from purification practices developed in all spiritual traditions... purification implies impurity.
In a swift and ignorant short-cut, the outcome of release -serene cleanliness and joy- has become a standard we hold ourselves to, while condemning the means to get there.
Body consciousness
What the mind interferes with is our body consciousness, the intelligence of the body.
The body knows what to do to release pain. All kinds of it.
The body consciousness knows to shake to release excess cortisol after a stressful experience.
The body knows to strike a fever to push toxins through the pores of the body and kill those bacterias that enjoy our regular body temperature.
The body knows to purge toxic foods.
Our body knows how to move to ease our digestive process, to transition from one posture to another without creating strain, to liberate tension in one muscle by engaging another, to move our breath to massage inner organs, to open our joints for maximum strength, speed, flexibility and fluidity...
The body knows how to heal and with all the control, we have unlearnt how to let it.
Flow
Each organ system in our body has a natural flow, input and output, and ways to cleanse and purge to maintain and restore flow.
When the flow is interrupted or impeded, illness occurs.
Granted, when purging is required, it is already sickness, but within the realm of what the body knows how to manage.
Flow is life. Only what is dead stagnates.
Everything that is alive pulses, grows, moves, contracts, expands, breathes, cleanses and purges.
Flow has cycles, short ones and long ones. Flow is in nature changing.
Flow is not boring.
Flow is present, pleasant, and reassuring.
Flow requires fluidity, movement, unclogged passages, purity.
The body is a system of intertwined flows.
Each cell in the body participates in supporting the holistic flow, one pulsation, one contraction, one expansion at a time.
When a part of the body is not doing it's job, it increases the strain on other parts of the body, makes it harder to maintain general flow.
Health means flow.
Healing means restoring flow.
Release
Output, cleansing and purging are release mechanisms.
They effect, maintain and restore flow.
All organ systems must flow.
The organ systems support and compensate for each other.
But if one fails completely, all shut down.
The body release mechanisms prevent and cure illness & neurosis, because they maintain and restore flow.
Supporting release is the core of effective healthcare.