The Amazing Body
- Gill Randall
- Feb 19
- 3 min read
Isn’t the body amazing?
It allows us a constant reset, whether we have a sniffle or pneumonia, a slight trip or a car accident, a headache or back ache, a stubbed toe or a broken leg, we are given the offering every time to heal. So what is the resistance that we all know so well that can interfere with that process?
We tend not to like to feel unwell, and we often don’t want to know or we put our heads in the sand and think it will just go away. So we may take medication or simply ignore the pain and continue pretending it isn’t happening. We live life with lists that need to be completed, often saying we have had a good day on a day when we have achieved what we had set out to do, or a bad day if we have not completed the set tasks. So we will do anything to not listen and avoid the offering from the body. When we become unwell, can it be that there is a message that we have not been living in the flow and rhythm of the body’s cycle and it needs to stop our movements?
During a bout of covid, the tension to do nothing for me was intense. Even though I had overwhelming lethargy and no energy at all, there was a bombardment of thoughts, like ‘The house is such a mess’, ‘I was going to clear out blah blah blah today’, ‘I’ll have to cancel work’, ‘When I get better, I won’t have to space to do everything’, ‘When will I manage to fit everything in?’ It felt a well-trodden path of many previous movements where I have had a need to distract myself from what in truth is happening instead of letting go
What if the offering is to accept the reset from the amazing body and simply settle with how we are feeling and surrender accepting everything happens for a reason even if we don’t understand it. As we age every decade, we change in physical strength and ability and have to let go of old crazy habits we might have done in the past. For me it was tearing down ski slopes or riding on scary fairground rides which now give me vertigo.
Why don’t we allow the body to do its job? Why do we resist and override? ‘I don’t want this, I want to do that’. Surrendering to feeling unwell allows for a deeper truer healing for the body. A time of rest and repose, rather than dashing back to work as soon as possible. Many of us have very busy lives, with high stress in the workplace and women and men juggling full time work and bringing up a family.
Is there a correlation that people have an incidence of low back pain and stressful lives? More than 1 in 4 working adults report current back pain [1]. Some episodes of back pain may be precipitated by physical job demands, but both work-related and non-work related episodes of pain can contribute to work absences, and some workers may experience problems continuing or resuming normal job tasks.
After an illness, the body gives us the message of revitalisation when it has done its work. Why do we not allow it the space and grace to stop and receive and let it do just that?
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