When I posted this question on Facebook recently, there were several responses.

“I am needing to exercise. ”

“My body is telling me the days are getting short. Solstice time soon.”

“That I needed a little less wine and a little more sleep last night. ”

“To take it easy for a few more days.”

“Changing the clocks is just not good for me.”

One of my coaching clients recently was having chronic knee pain, and nothing had worked to alleviate it. She asked to work on this in our session. I facilitated her communicating with the pain on an emotional level.

She discovered that there was a 3 year old part of her that was resisting change because she was still trying to hold up the world!

This is such a common thing for people. There’s always some kind of emotional or belief information that ties to how the body is feeling. Always.

And when we go through trauma as children, many of us, as a defense mechanism, simply wall off a small part of our minds. The more traumatic the childhood, the greater the number of splintered aspects of consciousness.

This is a known phenomenon in psychiatric circles, but fortunately you don’t necessarily have to go through psychotherapy to heal such issues. The re-integration approach I use works consistently as long as my client really wants to heal.

(How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?)

In this case, we helped her inner 3-year-old understand that the world will hold itself up, and gave her permission to do what she really wanted to do, which was go play. She said she was going out to play with the fairies.

The knee pain went away and my client felt very peaceful after the session.

If you’re not used to thinking about your body this way, this story could be sort of … unusual. But for me, it’s just a matter-of-fact story. This is the world I inhabit, both with myself and with my clients.

Listening to your body can assist greatly with your healing!

There is a wonderful book on the topic of working with the inner child: “Inner Bonding” by Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

In my world view, souls can’t be murdered. But the consciousness that connects the human awareness with the magnificence of the soul can be deeply disrupted or interfered with, and this disturbance creates the foundation for many limiting belief systems and much pain.

For many of us, those disruptions come very early in life; for me, the earliest I’ve found happened at about 23 months.

This is a very, very common experience, which later becomes buried in the subconscious, but still has the power to shape your world without your knowledge.   To change this, you must empower yourself to discover the buried information, and this requires courage…or seems to, looking at it from your perspective.

What you are preparing to do is to shine the light on *all* parts of yourself, being a detective so that nothing about you is hidden from your conscious mind. Doing this, you’ll learn to find the information, truth and, yes, beauty in even the most difficult and painful experiences. That is how you will learn your own magnificence. It’s a process, and since the mind works in layers, it goes in stages.

Going back into the past can be used to avoid the present, but it can also be used to understand patterns and habits that are so ingrained that they are completely unconscious. Those patterns and habits create present reality, and can be changed only once understood by the conscious mind.

The needed information is always there, and we work together to make it accessible and comprehensible, and then put it to work for your benefit. I have been doing this for myself (sometimes with facilitation and sometimes on my own) for a number of years, and that’s really what the work is about.

If you feel resistance or fear, lassitude or distraction when you contemplate this, that’s very telling! It’s a sign that you’re approaching a very useful and valuable activity.

Our culture teaches us to run away from fear, but in the absence of physical danger, fear actually guards the door to something beautiful that is outside the “box” of our training and indoctrination.

The present timeframe, with its intense astrological and planetary energies, is bringing forward even the smallest, niggling little dust-bunnies of habit and making them really B-I-G so we don’t overlook them. OW! I mean, WOW, THANK YOU!

So if you’re wondering whether I’m someone who can facilitate such discoveries for you, my answer is, that depends on you.  If you feel that way, then yes, I am.

What if everything your body did carried information for you? What if it was constantly talking to you, and all you had to do was learn how to tune in? I’ve seen and experienced amazing, nearly miraculous healing of the physical body when one approaches ailments and injuries this way.

But this blog post is about goosebumps, not things going wrong, so let’s forge ahead!

How were you taught to approach your body? As a child in the 1960’s and 70’s, I was trained (typical of the era) to think of my body as a vehicle for my mind. We were taught maintenance: basic nutrition and personal hygiene, how to use the occasional dose of aspirin, cough syrup, or antiseptic spray, when to call the doctor, and that was considered normal.

The thing is, nothing was said about those unexplained, unexplainable experiences.

You know the ones I mean: Those times when you involuntarily draw away from someone who isn’t showing any obvious outward signs of something unpleasant. Or when you feel a sharp, unexpected sensation somewhere in your body, or perhaps notice a warming, expansive feeling in your heart. Those weird experiences when you go cold, your skin crawls, and you look around you but can’t see why. Or those moments when you feel lighthearted, joyful, and carefree for no particular reason.

And then there are goosebumps. Not the ones that signify a threat, but the ones that appear when the positive energy rushing through your body is so intense that you can hardly contain it! Those goosebumps are accompanied by a rush of joy or love, a simultaneous strengthening and softening in your body.  They may even make you want to move or dance or shout or leap, perhaps even bring you to tears!

You may never have been aware of this before, but now you can start to notice it.

Your body carries awareness, knowledge, memories and, even wisdom of which your conscious mind knows little or nothing. This is reality, but it is a reality that our culture encourages us to ignore.

The astounding, liberating truth is that there is actually information in everything you experience in your body, including maladies, cuts and scrapes, broken bones, and interesting physical sensations.

For now, let’s start with goosebumps.

You say, ”I think this or that.” But is that true?
Do you think a thought, or does a thought think you?
What tells you something is actually “you”?

Goosebumps!

When was the last time you felt those good goosebumps? Really stop and remember. You may want to start with your childhood – find early memories, and let them carry you to awareness of your present life. When you find the most recent instance, make a note of the experience, because it’s a key to YOU!

Experiencing goosebumps is a sign that you have expressed your heart, fulfilled your purpose, and touched your own soul. How often does that happen in your current life pattern?

Did you just think, fleetingly, “What nonsense,” or, “I can’t read this now”?

Congratulations! You’ve just experienced your mind trying to take you out. The mind is all about patterns and doesn’t like change! I invite you to tell the voice to be quiet, continue for another minute, tolerate the discomfort, and consider this.

Suppose your goosebumps meant that you had managed to touch your own soul…what then?

If you never feel goosebumps these days, chances are that you are dissatisfied, suppressed, trapped, even depressed. It’s likely that you have suppressed aspects of yourself that are now demanding to be lived and expressed, and you may feel much anxiety because of this.

If this is so, start by giving yourself permission to seek and create experiences that give you goosebumps!

Do this daily. Pay attention and keep a journal – not just of what you did, but how it felt.  Teach yourself to take inventory:

• emotions
• breathing
• heart rate
• skin
• sounds
• colors
• words
• songs or melodies
• tastes
• smells
• sensations in the body

Write it all down!

What did you feel as you were getting ready? What did you feel immediately before you spoke or acted, if you did. Did that feeling stop you?  Did you persist anyway?  What did you feel in the goosebumps moment itself? What about afterward?  What do you notice?  How did – or does – the world around you seem different afterward?  Have you had any surprising experiences?

This exploration can be the work of a lifetime, or simply a key you can use to open a door to a larger truth about yourself.  You may be surprised what you can learn from it!

I invite you to share your experiences with us as a comment below.

Knowing that my audience here could be anyone makes it an interesting exercise.  Through many years of stage and speaking experience, I learned how to play to an audience without even thinking about it.  Here, in contrast, my own voice will have to sound out on its own.

Therefore, my commitment to myself as a writer, and to you, my unknown reader, is to remember to take things in stages so that what I say makes some sense.  Hopefully!

So, let’s begin.

You: Did you say “Body Wisdom?”

Me: Yes.  It’s one of the key themes in my coaching practice and the equine-facilitated PlayShops.

You: I don’t get it.  What is it, and how does it play a part in coaching?  And what the heck is a PlayShop?

Me: A PlayShop is a workshop, but its intent is to bring things forward in a joyful and playful manner.

Years ago, I lived in Silicon Valley, where I worked and worked and worked, and then shopped for recreation.  Work – shop.  Work – shop.  Work – shop…you get the idea.

“Playshop” has a completely different connotation.  I promise to blog about this, also, but it isn’t the central theme here.

Body Wisdom is the name I use for something that Candace Pert, Ph.D. has written about extensively.  In The Molecules of Emotion, she says, “the body is the unconscious mind.” I agree completely.

The body stores an enormous amount of information in many forms, and we can tap into it easily in a coaching context using focus and intention, curiosity and breath.

You: Sounds pretty woo-woo.

Me: Yes, I imagine it does.  The first time I experienced this, it blew me away.  It’s a powerful thing to realize how much information is available.

You: Like what?

Me: Well, let’s say that something happens that scares you.  Bring up the feeling of being scared for a moment, and feel what happens.

Notice how your body wants to kind of curl up.  Muscles get tense, read for fight-or-flight, heart beats faster, breathing is shallow, yes?  What did you experience?

You: ______________________________________(fill in the blank)

Me: Good!  Now you have a feeling of your own body experience of fear.  Emotions can create a very strong physiological response.

If the emotion isn’t dealt with completely, then a residue of it is left behind in the physiology of the body, usually lodging in some specific place, the location of which depends on the emotion and what is happening at the time.

One of the interesting traits of the human mind is that it tends to hold onto negative experiences and forget about positive ones, so many of the negatives will be stored in this way.

And with no reason to dissipate, they will stay for years, even for an entire lifetime.

However, since the residues are there, they can be found.  Then the emotions can be released and cleared, and with them any stored memories that still need to be processed, understood, and/or forgiven.  It’s simple, really.

You: So what?  Why would I care about this?

Me: I don’t know why you would care.  I only know why I care.  I care because I’m committed to constant expansion of life and consciousness.

Whenever an emotion is lodged in the body, it can create anything from a sense of limitation to severe illness.  My role is to hold space for my clients so they have the courage to explore the stuck area, free what needs to be freed, process the information, let go and move on.  It’s a joyful and deeply liberating process.

You: Sounds like I would be reliving painful things.

Me: Not so much, actually.  The context that we create for exploration is one of objectivity and compassion, so the emotions don’t overwhelm you, and you can see the experience with clarity and perspective.

That is tremendously empowering in its own right.  And then the process of letting go is tremendously freeing.

I look at it as something like creating a sculpture.  There is a central truth within each person, an energy that resides within them and lights their eyes, graces their step and warms their heart.

In some people that light is so fully expressed that one can feel it from across a huge room.  In others, it is partly concealed behind the debris of years.  But I still see it, and I recognize the difference between the debris and the truth.

The way we use it in coaching, the process removes the part that isn’t the truth, much as a sculptor removes the part of the marble block that isn’t the sculpture.  And as we gently chip away at the debris, your inner light shines more brightly each day!

For more about coaching with me, please visit www.dianalees.com .