Somatic Healing for Crohn's disease?
If you have tried everything else, healed your body as far as you can using the ideas on this and other sites, but still experience symptoms of Crohn’s disease it may be worth researching somatic healing. ‘Somatic what?’ would be a fair question – I asked exactly the same question just 3 years ago.
Somatic healing goes deeply into the relationship between mind and body. To provide a topical example, is your body unable to ‘digest’ your beliefs about yourself? In this post I’m going to give a brief introduction to somatic healing and encourage you to research this fascinating topic further especially if you are still seeking a solution to ongoing symptoms.
What is somatic healing?
Throughout our lives, especially when we are children, traumatic circumstances can occur that stir strong emotions within us. An emotion tells us something is affecting us at a deep level. Perhaps a fear for our safety, a fear of being unloved, or of rejection, of financial ruin maybe. It’s also possible that an emotion indicates a boundary has been crossed, such as anger, but at the time we were maybe too young to really understand what it meant and deal with it effectively.
This is the explanation offered by Healthline.com;
‘Traumatic experiences can take a heavy toll — not just in the moment. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or complex PTSD (CPTSD) can last for weeks, months, even years after the event.
You might be familiar with some psychological symptoms of PTSD, such as flashbacks and nightmares. Trauma and other mental health concerns like anxiety and depression often cause physical symptoms, too.
That’s where somatic (meaning “of the body”) therapy comes in. This approach prioritizes the mind-body connection in treatment to help address both physical and psychological symptoms of certain mental health concerns’ Source
Commonly emotional responses are not understood at the time they occurred so our body stores them in it’s tissues until the time our consciousness is emotionally strong enough to work them through, perhaps learn and assimilate an important life lesson, and release them. The problem is that these forms of negative energy (‘e’-motion) disrupt the body’s normal functions and hence disease can occur.
Somatic healing is the process of listening to our symptoms, working with our bodies and processing the trapped emotions, perhaps with the help of a skilled therapist. Once outdated beliefs are released and replaced by healthier, more mature attitudes, the body can discard the negative energies and return to a normal, natural state of being. That ‘natural state’ often means we become much more ‘present’ rather than remaining trapped inside our personal histories harbouring beliefs that no longer serve us.
Resources
There are a variety of authors who have written of somatic healing, psychotherapy and some who have gone further by explaining the concept of the ‘shadow’ which is a metaphor for all those aspects of ourselves that we reject due to beliefs arising from traumatic experience. These are a few of the books I have found most useful on my journey through somatic healing;
- Spiritual Bypassing (Robert Augustus Masters)
- The Healing Power of Illness (Thorwald Dethlefsen)
- Your Body’s Telling You: Love Yourself (Lise Bourbeau)
- The Challenge of Fate (Thorwald Dethlefsen)
Somatic Healing cannot be done by simply adding or removing an item from your diet, taking a supplement or remedy, or avoiding stress. It is an active process where the work is done by you, the patient, through entering into dialogue with your body and releasing long held outdated beliefs implanted during difficult life experiences.
It is utterly fascinating and deeply rewarding but not for the faint hearted. If this is a step you are ready to take then I applaud your courage. The journey is both painful and rewarding, perhaps most notably in terms of the new relationship you develop with your body.
Comment
I applied all the techniques detailed on this site and genuinely obtained relief from my many symptoms as evidenced in the Blood Tests post. Yet I still had minor persistent bowel symptoms although none of the classic debilitating Crohn’s symptoms.
In 2019 I was admitted to hospital for a twisted bowel that was corrected surgically. I knew my consultant and registrar both expected to find a flare up of Crohn’s disease. The following day however, after surgery, the registrar confirmed there was no sign of Crohn’s disease detected during surgery and asked how I had managed it. The ward doctor asked the same thing. You now know the answer I gave from the information on this site.
But why had I required surgery? A couple of months later I was fortunate to be introduced to a phenomenal spiritual counsellor who introduced me to the concept of somatic healing. She offered to help me understand my body in more depth and over the ensuing 4 years I gradually understood why I was ‘all twisted up inside’, ‘unable to digest my daily life experiences’ and so on.
If I could sum it up concisely it would be this…..I learned my body has it’s own intelligence, it’s own needs and that I had to develop enough humility to be able to listen to and respond to those needs. I now understand my body and I are a team tackling life together which means my egocentric needs must take a backseat much more often to the needs of my body.
If you are interested in exploring this fascinating subject further you may like to contact Your Natural Self for more information.