Many of us live with a strong connection to our external body. We see our external, we feel it, we hear it; others see, feel and hear it too. We use our external, our physical body, to greet the world, it looks back at us when we glance in the mirror and it forms a huge part of our personal identity. We are judged on it. We are complemented or criticized on it. Therefore, we tend to give our external a lot more love than our internal. When we look into healing, although pain may manifest externally, the root cause is almost always an emotional pain that has become lodged in the subtle body (unless caused by a trauma where the physical body has been damaged). These emotional blocks store inside the body until they start to cause pain. Facing our emotions and tracing them back to the trigger helps to remove such blockages from within our present day; it is when the healing begins.
This journey is not as straightforward as a physical examination, some tablets or rest though, it needs emotional healing.
How We Can Heal Physical Pain through Emotional Healing?
When we suffer from physical pain, a short-term improvement can be sought. We take an aspirin. We have a massage. There might be an operation. But more often than not the pain returns, and it returns time and time again. When the pain has been gradual, arising over time, and not the result of a sudden injury or break, it is likely to be an energetic block in the body that is showing itself as physical pain. Dr. Bradley Nelson, a renowned holistic physician and lecturer who features in “E-Motion” – a factual documentary that explores how our emotions affect the physical body – says that “90% of the pain the body feels is due to trapped emotions”. We explored this topic with the newest healer to The Yoga Barn, Satyatma Vijnanadeva, through a discussion on how the only way to true, long-lasting healing is through facing our emotional pain; and he says that requires us to dig deep and “face our truth”.
Satyatma is a Spiritual Channel, sharing words of truth from our non-physical Spiritual Guides. He began his spiritual path with a spontaneous and extremely powerful Kundalini Awakening in 1995 and ever since this life-affirming moment, he has been a student of his Guides, Yoga, Eastern Philosophy, Meditation and Metaphysics. Sharing his knowledge for over 16 years, Satyatma now provides emotional healing through one-on-one sessions incorporating open conversation, channeling, energy work and bodywork, Higher Self meditations and thought-provoking discussions at our Head Space Community classes: Mystic Monday’s and Spirituality of Yoga. Through his work, Satyatma helps to guide people back to themselves, to the truth.
“The hardest thing for all of us to accept is that we are fully responsible for EVERYTHING we are experiencing”
A society that keeps its truths out of sight, out of mind: if our trapped emotions cause physical pain, why aren’t we working to release them?
To reconnect with our truth requires space, stillness and some slowing-down of the mind in order to be honest with how and who we are. But, in our busy lives this rarely happens, so the power of the mind can easily mislead us into a false sense of happiness, hiding our truth through external distraction. Our mind attaches to glimmers of happiness from external sources to mask a trapped emotion. Remedying our suffering by doing things which provide temporary relief from emotional pain through sex, games, drugs, alcohol, TV, films and life on social media, to make us forget about a past experience, a current relationship or present life situation that is the cause of our emotional blocks.
We are taught to resist things that don’t feel good, rather than feel them. But, when physical pain arises, it is the body crying out to tell us that something is wrong. Avoiding the real issue (the emotional pain) will only “bring more suffering in the future (physical pain) because the truth is being hidden”. Consequently, our suffering is “compounded and causes layers of trauma to build up in our emotional bodies”, which then manifests as pain in the physical body. Meaning that if external factors only provide us with a temporary state of relief or a false sense of happiness, we need to start looking inside rather than outside for true healing. As Satyatma puts it, “real healing always includes a return to the true Self, which is the real source of power and only source of stable happiness.”
“The power to heal ourselves and to re-direct our own lives lie in honest self-discovery.”
The truth can set you free: the quest for stable, unconditional happiness to release emotional blocks
The name Satyatma means “True Soul” or “The Soul of Truth” so this healer is accustomed to bringing out people’s truths. With an authentic manner and honest style that gets to the “heart of the matter”, Satyatma told us that the goal of any session he conducts is to understand the root cause of pain and start his clients on the path to the truth: identifying with the Self. He expresses huge frustration at the current state of humanity and how we “lie to ourselves and each other” because it’s clear to him how the truth can set us free from so much suffering. It’s “shocking, but incredible at the same time” he explains, “clients tell me things they have never told anyone else. Not even the person they have the problem with.”
When a painful truth is left unsaid, the emotional energy attached to this pain festers inside the body causing emotional blocks – this is when the physical pain appears. “Secret should be a rare thing, not the norm” Satyatma states, but “it’s become the norm to remedy our suffering through pretending we are ok” because, well, it is easier. It might be easier but, if we continue to hide away then we will never heal. Sharing this quote with us from Joseph Campbell: “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek”, Satayama expresses how to experience emotional healing, we have to get underneath the layer of our own denial and fear.
Tracing the physical pain to the emotional block
When asked about releasing emotional blocks in the body, Satyatma told us that the lower back is a common place for his clients to store pain. To heal this pain, he would start by looking at the pain on a physical level. Physically, the lower back is our structure, our stability; it is where our sacrum and base of the spine sit. Metaphysically, the emotion here is not feeling supported. Energetically speaking, it is the home of the root chakra which represents “our safety, survival, our tribe, family and the feeling of being rooted on earth and at home” explains Satyatma. When we lack these grounded feelings, the lower back becomes weak. Although Satyatma can instantly draw these conclusions upon hearing where the physical pain lies in the body, he says that unless the client can identify the root of their own pain his sessions would also cause temporary relief. Instead, he provides a supportive space to discuss how a client may feel unsupported. Once the client has expressed their truth and it is out in the open, the emotional healing can start. This is how we trace the pain from physical to emotional.
Another example is shoulder pain. Metaphysically, shoulder pain can correlate to feeling burdened or that the person is “not capable of bringing their True Self fully into the physical world” as on the physical level the shoulders link to the arms and then the hands, “the primary tools for physical interaction” he explains. So, in session, “the goal would be to determine the root causes of the burdens, blocks, or limitations of bringing their True Self forward, and to try to see them differently and to take a different viewpoint and approach to them”. This would result in loosening the psychic energy of the blocks.
We need to want to be free
For true emotional healing, we need to want to be free from our physical pain and suffering – and this means really want to be free because the journey is tough, worthwhile and transformative, but tough. The truth can be a tough pill to swallow. You need to be ready to start writing a new chapter in your book of life. Emotional healing means change for the long-term. Are you ready to speak your truth?If you experience reoccurring physical pain, have a long-term injury or know you have a few truths that are ready to be told, then find out more about Satayma’s Truth of the Soul one-session here
