Why is a health clinic talking about emotions?
Because we believe that we are all one person… physical, spiritual, and emotional beings all in one. When I (Amy) first started studying healing, I started with the physical. After all, isn’t that what needs to be healed… our physical bodies? But as I helped my body heal, and worked with more and more patients I realized that focusing on physical symptoms is not enough. That’s because we aren’t just physical beings. Our physical bodies are constantly being influenced by emotions… either our emotions and feelings, or the emotions from people around us.
The effect emotions have on our bodies has been studied for a long time, but recently this has become a topic of conversation in books, lectures, and other discussions. It may seem like an woo-woo concept when you first think about it, but I know you actually experience this connection every day, even if you haven’t noticed it before.
Here are some examples:
You are having a fun time with a group of people when suddenly you notice the mood of the room has changed. You turn around to see what happened, and notice an unwanted member of your social group has just entered the room. You weren’t facing the door, and you didn’t hear them come in, so you perceived this without using any of your 5 senses. How, then, did you know the mood had changed? It had to be that something physical happened in response to an emotional sense.
Another example that many parents describe experiencing: All of a sudden you get a sense that something is wrong, and you run into the next room just in time to save or stop your child, perhaps from a life-threatening situation.
We usually call this our “intuition” or “6th sense,” but have you ever stopped to think how your feeling was felt in your physical body? Somehow there has to be a connection. This connection has been studied, and many people have theories about how the “physical” body communicates with the “emotional” body. I have my favorite theories, but the important concept is that there is communication. So, if emotions affect our physical body in that way, what other ways do emotions affect our physical health?
This is exactly what I have been studying! We cannot separate our physical, emotional and spiritual bodies. They can, to some degree, be addressed separately, but eventually you need to understand at least some of how they interact with each other. When you do this, you will be better able to progress in your healing. I started studying emotions because I found that I was stuck in my “physical” healing. I discovered that I needed to interact with the emotional layers of my disease to continue healing.
Most of you probably stared where I did. I actually had a hard time even acknowledging that I was so “weak” as to have any emotion affect me. Wow, what I have learned since then! Emotions not only interact with our physical bodies, emotions can get stored, or “stuck” in our body’s tissues. Sometimes this emotion blocks healing from happening, or at least adds to the workload of that organ or other tissue. Think of it as a rock in your shoe. You can keep going on for a while, but eventually you will have a larger and larger reaction: maybe a blister, eventually a limp, maybe even an infection from the open wound… even leading to gangreen and amputation. Of course we would never let a physical irritation go that far, but may people often ignore emotional hurts until they literally poison themselves and their relationships.
So what can we do about it?
Thankfully, there is a lot you can do! Many tools have been developed to help us modern people unpack our emotions. Some of these tools are new, and others are old. One powerful tool is simply sitting alone in quiet, allowing yourself to think and process your thoughts and reactions. However, many people have spent so long being unaware of their emotions that this simple action can be overwhelming. Thankfully, there are more active tools to help us start sorting our emotions, so eventually the practice of being quiet is a joyful and desirous experience, instead of an overwhelming one! And I want to help you learn some of these tools. This is why I run the “Inside Out Group.”
This group is about learning tools to assess, acknowledge and heal our emotional hurts. To get started, we are going to be reading and discussing the book You are the One You've Been Waiting For by Richard Schwartz together. If you do not already have a copy of the book, we have some books at the Clinic for sale. We will also be learning and discussing concepts from Transformational Prayer Ministry (TPM), and David Ferguson’s Relational Needs.
This group meets on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of every month at Be Well Clinic as a group format. When we have new interest, we “start new” and read through the book mentioned above. On April 4th, 2022 we being from page 1, and we will be doing an overview of emotions and some of the tools you can use to help bring emotional healing to yourself and your children. If you are interested, I recommend that you read the final chapter (overview) of the book before coming. Anyone is welcome to this first meeting, and you can get a feel for what this class/group is all about. Then we will proceed with chapter 1 for our next meeting, and so on until we have complete the book, around 8 meetings in all to get through all the material.
Details:
The class starts at 4:45pm, and goes to 6 pm at the Be Well Clinic office in Loveland on the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month. Your class fee of $20 is due every class, please pay this to whoever is working the front desk when you show up.
I am so excited to see what God is doing with this class, and at this time. Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, Anyone is welcome, especially the first week! Please join me in prayer that there will be healing and God will be glorified through this class.
Onward!
Amy