Thank you for your post.  I really connect with what you have written, as I too internalize many of my feelings and they come to speak to me through their manifestation in my body.  I must admit that while I always assented to a holistic approach to understanding health and life, in truth before I began my own journey with my therapist it was only an intellectualized assent. 

As I began my journey in therapy, I became more and more aware of the physical toll and requirements that this journey was making upon my body.  I also began to understand that perhaps there were essential connections between my emotional work and the physical work that I needed to attend to.  I was plagued with chronic joint pain (pain I was told by medical specialists was my lot in life due to hyper-mobile joints), asthma, digestive problems and an overall feeling of body sickness. 

     
I remember the day that my sense of emotional despair was only matched by a profound knowing of the sickness in my body – I slumped in the chair before my therapist in a state of soul exhaustion and said “I don’t think I can do this work, it feels like its going to kill me, and I feel so ill, I can’t take it anymore”.  The words hung between us, the weight of them bearing down upon me – I had hit a wall it seemed, the confession of my embodied anguish spilling out. 

Immediately, questions came to my mind. Would she tell me that I wasn’t really sick; that “it was all in my mind” or that I was being dramatic. I held my breath waiting for the body blow of medical dismissal -something that carried a long history for me. Her reply was simple and yet it captured all of what was hanging between us, “Yes, you’re right, you are very ill.” I was moved. My body had spoken and was heard. The validation of what my body knew created the avenue for moving in a different kind of direction.   It was clear that I also needed physical supportive work to continue my in-depth journey towards the integration of my deeply buried wounds into the wholeness of who I was becoming.

I intuitively knew that the help I sought was a different kind of medical help – something that would take into account the whole of me, not dissect me into little parts. At the time, this sense, this knowledge was only on the fringes of my awareness. I was seeking connection to the deepest parts of myself, seeking to release energies that I sensed I contained, but needed the facilitating hand of someone who understood the kind of journey I was taking. Someone, who could work with and in the rhythm of my emotional journey – a kind of physical counter beat to this melody. 

I know now that my therapist empathically understood all of this when she asked if I was open to considering Naturopathy. At that point I was open to anything that would move me past the wall that I had hit.  And it was at this juncture I began what I consider my healing partnership between my emotional and physical journey towards health.  As this journey has progressed, my awareness of the depth of this connection continues to expand exponentially.

After quite a number of years on this combined path, the sufferings of my body have decreased dramatically and my sense of overall health and wellness still surprises me.  Its a kind of quantum healing.  How amazing !!