What's Your Body Trying to Tell You? MINDBODY Part 1: The Mime

EC Test Carpenter Author

Do you ever wonder WHY your body is doing something? When it makes zero sense given your good habits or genetics or history?

Often quite literal, occasionally freak-out inducing,

always profound, the body maps what’s going on (or went on long ago) in our hearts and lives. Sometimes mime, sometimes historian, the body talks.

But it never lies.

Perhaps you’ve heard there's a “mind-body connection,” or expressions like, “the issues are in the tissues.”

There is, and they are.

In my experience, working with thousands of people over decades, the body is very often mapping and mirroring “what lies beneath.”

One of the most common ways it does this is by what I call miming. In this MindBody phenomenon, you do and you don't have a physical problem. It's real in that it's happening. But your body is actually just pantomiming your real issue, which is not actually physical.

Arianna’s Epiphany | Body as Mime

The other week my patient Arianna boomeranged me back to 2019 - and another patient with almost the exact same location of a red, angry neck rash.

I instantly thought of this other patient when she showed it to me.

And almost as soon as we put 2+ 2 together, the rash disappeared. It had completed its mission for Arianna so no further need to stick around.

That sounds weird. How did that happen???

This rash had been going on for well over a month. It was on the side of her neck. She had never mentioned it, and I never saw it, because she kept it hidden with beautiful collared blouses.

Her dermatologist was flummoxed. The prescribed steroid cream didn’t work. None of the topical rx's did.

Digging in, I learned that Arianna was furious at her boss, stewing over a promotion injustice. (My 2019 patient had been seething over a business partner’s misdeeds.)

Now to follow this story, recall that every part of your body performs a function for you.

Your neck belongs to the 5th primary energy vortex, or chakra, of the body. And it very contains important stuff like your thyroid, parathyroid, the muscles controlling your head movements, your swallowing mechanism, and the larynx - your voice box - so you can make sound.

Bingo on the swallowing and the voice box.

Two more clues and it will all come together.

Clue 1 - Specifically Where

The Chinese medicine meridian system is a network of interlacing energy circuits covering every part of your body. Named for the organs they serve, the meridians carry information necessary to execute specific jobs - jobs for your body and physical, and for your mental-emotional and spiritual health.

The meridian Arianna's rash expressed on, was the one that handles anger overflow.

For the nerds, the liver system is responsible for free flow of your energy throughout your entire body-mind complex, and emotional flow specifically.

When necessary, the gallbladder meridian, its partner, acts like a reservoir, handling overflow.

The gallbladder meridian runs along the flanks of the body, including the sides of the neck.

Clue 2 - Specifically What

Skin.

Your skin protects you.

It’s a boundary that protects what’s inside, and gates what’s able to penetrate from the outside. And, it offloads harmful excess. Think sweating when you’re too hot. Toxins that exit as pimples. Or, as in this case, inflammation.

The Mime

So here we have stifled angry unexpressed voices, and swallowed anger. Both Arianna, and my 2019 patient. Neither of these women were “voicing” what was up to the party involved, even though internally, they were enraged. Enrage (internal anger), becomes outrage not through action, but through another outward expression: inflammation, rash.

Where? On the skin (boundary), of the gallbladder channel (anger reservoir) of the neck at the level of larynx (voice production).

Their bodies mapped by the boundary cross with a rash. Both Arianna's boss and the business partner of my 2019 patient violated agreements. And both woman were inflamed about it, but not speaking up.

So their bodies started speaking up.

The rash was the body’s S.O.S. - miming, mirroring, mapping their respective emotional jams and showing them what healing would require.

In both cases, once grasped, the women prepared and then communicated the issue with the implicated party.

Voila - rashes gone.

Resolutions on their work fronts would take time. But those rashes?

Having done their job of informing the women of what was needed, and the women receiving and heeding the message, they were no longer needed, so disappeared.

For both women, their anger and resentment had acted backward on them.

Healing the rash was a matter of reformatting that intense energy into useful, truthful communication.

And that’s why the steroid cream had no effect.

It wasn’t really a physical problem. It was a metaphor.

Freud was right, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

But I’ve found that most times the body is crying out, doing you an unpleasant favor, asking you to catch its meaning for your own good.

Physical problems are often code or symbolic. In the way a flag stands for a nation, bodily displays represent:

• where you’ve been
• what you’re ready to release
• how you need to grow
• what you need to heal
• action it's time to take
  

MindBody Mapping

Using the chakra system (energy generation centers), the Chinese medicine meridian system (energy distribution networks) and other mind-body schematics, we often can discover and liberate ourselves without intensive physical medicine.

Other times, a combination of physical, mind-body, and energy medicine is what’s needed to heal our bodies and improve our lives.

What’s going on with you? Could your physical issues be an S.O.S. shout out to you???

I have found mind-body mapping to be an incredible control tool helping you get to the bottom of things.

I can’t count the number of times a patient has said, “my body is betraying me.”

• What if you decided it wasn’t?
• What if it wasn't a battlefield?
• What if it's a message from your deepest and best most trusted ally? Your deeper self.

Just planting a seed.

Feeling out of control is a horrible feeling. Understanding, truly, is power.

In PART 2: Body as Historian

we'll look deeper at how "the issues are in the tissues" and how your MindBody connection is at your service and direction, always.

Until then, if you'd like to explore what your body is saying, check out the MindBody Mentorship and Next Level Healing.