If you’re like me, pregnancy and parenthood is a time of a lot of mixed emotions. Excitement and love, pain and heartache. This precious time of life can be very challenging emotionally and physically, but the good news is it doesn’t have to be!
I have been practicing as a massage and energy therapist since 2005. In that time frame I have learned a lot about how the body, mind, spirit and the subtle energy body work together creating the amazing human being. My philosophy on healing is more of a whole body approach. Early on in my career, it became very apparent to me just how interconnected these different parts really are, and how one inevitably affects the other. Through working on many different people, I discovered that often the root cause of physical pain was emotional stress and stuck negative emotions. If I could release or shift the energy or emotion the physical relief would be immediate or work it’s way out quickly. The effectiveness was, and still is, astonishing at times.
Emotions are actual energy that take up space in your body. Have you ever had an experience in your life that made you so angry or frustrated that every time you thought about it, even years later, it brought that anger or frustration to the surface like it happened yesterday? That’s a stuck negative emotion. If not properly addressed, these stuck emotions can cause a myriad of physical pains, illnesses or diseases. This is not new evidence, it’s been studied by psychotherapists, medical personnel and others for many years.
In the article The Connection Between Emotional Stress, Trauma and Physical Pain, posted by Psychology Today it states, “Often, physical pain functions to warn a person that there is still emotional work to be done, and it can also be a sign of unresolved trauma in the nervous system.”
At times people, especially women, can feel guilty or like they are “bad” because they feel anger or hate or other negative emotions. The truth is, these emotions are not bad and it’s OK to feel them sometimes. These emotions have a purpose and teach us valuable lessons. I teach my clients that we don’t necessarily need to strive to NOT feel negative emotions, but it is our goal to allow them to move through us instead of getting stuck. To you reading this now, take a deep breathe and feel the peace that comes when you give yourself permission to be and feel who you are. It’s a process it’s a journey and yes, you can do it. You can heal. You can learn to manage your emotions with clarity and confidence.
As my career progressed in the beginning I developed a technique to help my clients to be able to release negative emotions.
I call it The Three R’s: Recognize, Release, Replenish.
This is a fantastic tool for anyone, especially those who have not worked with energy or done much emotional work before, because it allows the individual to make something so abstract as energy and emotion into something tangible that they can work with. I had been using this tool with my clients for a while when I discovered that it works AMAZINGLY for children because of the simple, yet effective nature. I created a free article you can download from my website all about helping kids manage their emotions, but in the end, it’s for the whole family! Go to www.mywellnessinspired.com to get the free article and to learn this amazing tool.
Managing emotions is just a part of what I do to help people to heal. There are several important areas to address when doing this healing work. That being said, managing your emotions inside is key, and will allow you to feel more energized, in control, and much better able to handle the physical, mental and emotional ups and downs associated with pregnancy and parenthood.