Welcome to the Hall of Mirrors:
Understanding the Relationship between the Body, Mind and Spirit
By Suzy Peltier, CMT, CHT and Reiki Master
People often think of the word “holistic,” as a synonym for “alternative” healing practices but it has a far deeper meaning. This meaning can be better understood if we were to use the valid but less common spelling: wholistic. This spelling implies the true meaning of the principle, which is wholeness. Wholism (holism) is a model that addresses the whole person: body, mind and spirit. When these aspects of being are aligned and communicating with each other the innate health, vitality, creativity and wisdom of the person can be fully expressed.
This vitality is an expression of vital life force energy known in many cultures around the world by many names, “ki,” “chi” and “prana,” to name a few. If you have ever had a Reiki session, taken Tai Chi or done Yoga as a movement/meditation you have experienced this life force energy perhaps as a sense of relaxation or enhanced well-being. If you have ever talked to your pets or your plants and perceived an answer you were perceiving chi. If you have ever met someone you instantly liked, or conversely, for some inexplicable reason, did not like and did not want to shake hands with them you were probably perceiving chi.
The experience of chi often goes unnoticed, in part because it is subtle but also because we do not have a specific word for it in English. Since the Eskimos have many words for snow, the need to borrow a word from another language to describe the essence of life itself, is very telling. That we lack this basic concept in our language is, in part, the reason wholism and its’ alternative practices are so often misunderstood and judged as quackery.
To better understand the wholistic principle you can think of the relationship between the body, mind and spirit as mirrors reflecting each other. Each mirror is an expression of life force energy. Chi possesses certain predictable properties and behaviors. It is neutral by nature (neither good nor bad), balances through flux (change) and is capable of being guided by intention. It is perceptible (you can feel it) and it is trustworthy. It is reflective, communicative and synergistic. In other words, the body, mind and spirit reflect each other, talk to each other, and listen to each other.
In other words, just as “we are what we eat,” on the physical level we also are what we think, feel and believe. This theory is well accepted in quantum physics and well illustrated in the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know.” It is as though our thoughts (including our subconscious ones) along with our emotions and beliefs express and guide the chi into a manifested physical form and experience.
This cross-referencing system is also the reason an old song on the radio can bring back an entire memory ¾ not just the mental image. More than mere memory, the entire physical and emotional experience of hearing the song could, for example, bring up an experience of bliss once experienced during a romantic picnic. This sensory recollection is called somatic recall. Somatic recall the person’s body is remembering-not just the mind. The person re-experiences the warmth of the sun on their face, feeling of sand on the blanket, the smell of the surf and the taste of the tuna sandwiches as well as the pleasure of a heartfelt kiss. The entire experience is recorded as sensory data that can be accessed through any sense later on because this cross-referencing system is at work all the time, in both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. In cases of trauma the body’s recollection can be very different from how the conscious mind has come to remember it. Somatic recall is a helpful tool for coming to the truth of an incident as the body doesn’t lie and doesn’t filter out parts of the experience as the mind is prone to do when faced with something it can’t deal with.
In the wholistic model all physical pain and illness begins as stagnant chi. Moving energy heals while stuck energy causes disharmony. Eventually the stuck energy begins to harden, first into what we would call an energetic disharmony. Later, once the ch’i has solidified into a physical manifestation, illness or malfunction we would call it a disease.
To illustrate this I recall a client with a shoulder problem who had come for a massage and some pain-specific hypnotherapy. He had seen a chiropractor, physical therapist plus an acupuncturist, all with modest results but so far nothing could break the pain as a recurring cycle. As I was rubbing his shoulder the client suddenly began to recall a childhood trauma in which he fell off his bicycle and injured their shoulder. Instead of comforting him, his father scolded him for not paying attention. Coincidentally, his shoulder had recently flared up after their boss yelled at them for not paying attention to a detail at work.
The old hurt had surfaced in the same shoulder as the childhood injury and now through the insight and guidance, dare we say “of the spirit” his father could be forgiven and the emotions acknowledged and released. The thematic information about the current time trigger and its underlying emotional could finally heal. Now alert to this theme the client is “paying closer attention,” both as a practical practice and as a useful metaphor.
Having a sudden burst of emotion in meditation, a massage or hypnotherapy session can be freighting and embarrassing but in the wholistic model such experiences mark the process of chi moving and the mirrors coming back into alignment. One need not be sure what they are crying about. Tears show that energy is moving ¾ in this case in the form of emotions. Insights may come later in a dream or something someone says. The key is to trust the body and come to honor your own process. In a culture where tears are still seen as a sign of weakness it is time to see them as a demonstration of self-acceptance and trust. Part of the reason these experiences surface is so they can be embraced and we can be present with them in a way that we were unable to do when the original experience occurred. Sometimes emotional releases can be pure emotion without images or reference points, just energy moving. In either case such releases signal a body/mind/spirit integration process that is healing and to be trusted.
