Body Wisdom: Illness is an Energetic Reset
7.7.21
We've all done it. When an electronic or technological device isn't behaving properly, we simply turn it off, wait awhile, and turn it back on. The total system reset is all it needs.
The same thing works with our bodies and nervous systems. Heck, sleep is a natural biological reset. We naturally power down at least once every 24 hours, and when we don't, we are apt to have some pretty intense functional issues.
But sometimes, a full night's sleep isn't enough. Sometimes we get sick. Sometimes we need a full-on energetic reset, a detox. Sometimes, that happens in the form of illness. I like to think of a body illness as our body’s way of telling us we need to clean out our systems in a bigger way. About once a year, my computer does something similar. It yells at me because I have over-worked it for too long. It requires that I take some time to clean up the hard-drive and delete the old files that are taking up too much band-width and RAM, and I reorganize things so it can function for efficiently. It’s a long laborious, and sometimes painful process, not unlike a body illness. Whether it’s my computer or my body, the process is grueling, and the results are always well worth the effort.
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A few weeks ago, I picked up a nasty virus. I like to tout that I have a rock-solid immune system, so when I do get something, I’m usually a little knocked off my ground. This one has been a doozy. I think I got it from playing legos with my nephew who was recovering from a week-long bug. Given the pandemic, I couldn’t help but wonder. My neighbor had the ‘rona a couple months ago, and I have all the same symptoms. But, I’ve had two negative test results, and my urgent care doc said it was probably something else.
I don’t care what the western medical doctors want to call it. I’ve convinced myself that it’s my body reset. You see, I get sick like this about once every 4-6 years. The last one was over Christmas 2017, which puts me right on track. I also know that when I get sick like this, I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS feel much better afterwards. Sure, it takes awhile to recover, but when I do, I feel AH-MAZE-BALLS!
AND...
While I’m enduring the symptoms, I like to analyze them to better understand and be more mindful of what exactly I am upgrading in my system with the reset. Here’s a summarized list of my symptoms and what I believe they are doing for me in this next energetic power-up I’m getting.
Sore Throat
Typically I think of sore throats as my voicebox telling me that either I’ve been saying something I shouldn’t, or that I’m holding something back that I should be saying. But this sore throat was different. It wasn’t sore as much as it was achey. It felt deeper. That got me to thinking that this isn’t about something recent, but about larger concepts and ideas that I have been holding back for a longer time. This sore throat felt more like a bulge, a knot I had to swallow around.
I wonder, as a writer, have I been censoring myself? Are there things I haven’t said that I have been swallowing, for years, that have now turned into a much bigger expression that needs to come out in a bigger way? I did just start (a few months ago) producing content on Tiktok, and it is feeling like a whole new way to express myself, more honestly.
Fever
The next symptom to appear was the fever. We know this one all too well, the toxic ache of muscles coupled with that foggy heavy head feeling that always walks hand-in-hand with sweating and chills. It’s that overall sense of *sick* or *not right*. This is the symptom that knocks me “out of commission.” It is the symptom that says “no, you can’t do ANYTHING right now…just rest.” Most other symptoms I can kinda push to the side and work my way through, but this one makes me STOP.
When my computer isn’t doing well and needs a re-boot, it usually starts running its fan in overdrive. If I restart more than once and it still runs the fan, I know I need to take a deeper dive into the hard-drive. I can’t run any applications. I need to stop everything and re-adjust the deeper inner functions.
Fever and heavy head are my body’s way of kicking on the internal fans into overdrive. I know I need to STOP EVERYTHING, cancel my workload, and go back to the basics of how my body functions. Hydrate. Rest. Hydrate. Rest. Hydrate. Rest. Repeat. All that hydration means a total cleansing of the system, just like cleaning out the files of my computer hard-drive. This is the time when I look into what is essential and not-essential and I get rid of the excess, in big ways.
Sinus Congestion
This time, the congestion in my sinuses reached a level of pressure I have never felt in my head ever before. At one point I told friends and family that I felt like my whole head was a giant pimple that needed to be popped by Dr. Pimple Popper. (btw – I do not recommend binge-watching Dr. Pimple Popper while you’re sick).
Usually, I consider sinus pressure and congestion to be about our body blocking the senses from input of information that we don’t need. For example, I have worked with a lot of clients with chronic sinus issues who also live with verbally abusive people. Their sinuses are trying to block them from receiving too much of that negative input in their environment. I had a client once who had sinus infections all the time, and they always went away when she had vacation from work. Turns out, she had a very demanding and insulting boss. When she quit her job and found a position in a company that was more rewarding and encouraging, her sinus issues went away completely.
For me, post-pandemic, I realized that in the last year I have consumed more news than I have in my entire life, collectively. I have always found that reading the news is a laborious chore in discerning relevant information from mis-information and dis-information. I have always found for myself as an over-thinking introvert, that processing too much news is exhausting because it doesn’t match what I know to be right for me, in my core. But, after a year of ingesting, consuming, processing, and digesting too much, my sinues have finally kicked in and said NO MORE! This pressure was more than I could bare some nights. I had to sleep sitting up just so gravity wouldn’t make it drain and pressurize even more. I knew it was time to STOP with the news entirely.
It was no surprise to me that when I stopped reading the news while I was sick, the pressure felt better, and when I started reading the news again, the pressure came back.
I’ve now deleted my news apps on my phone.
Cough
One day, the sore throat stopped, and the cough started. I was glad they didn’t co-exist. But in some senses, I would have preferred the sore throat because the cough was, well, intense.
Usually I think of coughs in relation to sore throats, it’s our body’s way of trying to get out the stuff we have swallowed, not said, not shared, or don’t want to keep swallowing from other people.
In this case, the cough was very productive. Lots of stuff coming up. I sounded like a middle school boy who just learned how to cough up the greatest lugie! But these phlegm-balls came from deep down. It felt like they were dislodging themselves from hiding places in the bottom of my heart. At the same time, my chest was tight, my heart felt pressurized in a similar way to my sinus pressure. It was like my heart and the cough were working to dislodge things I have kept hidden in my heart for a very long time. And, while the other symptoms I’ve mentioned came and went, this one is lingering. I must have a lot of stuff hidden that wants OUT!
My deep hearted truth is working to escape!
Loss of Taste
Oddly, throughout this whole illness, I have not lost my appetite. For me, that is a norm. When I’m sick, I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to digest. I don’t want to take ANYTHING in..and I typically lose more weight than I can afford to lose. (fortunately it usually comes back quickly once I’m better). But in this case, I didn’t lose weight. I didn’t lose my appetite. Except for the two days that I lost my sense of taste. I shouldn’t say I lost the sense altogether. I just deadened, or dulled. I can still taste things, but only with certain parts of my tongue. The tip of my tongue senses next to nothing, but the middle and back and sides of my tongue still register flavors, in different ways than normal.
I take this to mean that my tastes in life are changing. Not just on my tongue, but in the world. Things I used to like and enjoy, I may not enjoy so much anymore. And things I didn’t pay much mind to, I’m now ever curious about. As my tongue is re-booting, I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself exploring new adventures that wouldn’t have piqued my curiosity before.
Loss of Smell
As an empath, smells can quickly trigger thoughts and feelings that link to my ability to know when something or someone is “off.”
I have always considered the sense of smell to be the intuitive sense. “Something smells funny about this situation.” And, I’ve always had a heightened sense of smell. I can smell when someone is smoking in the car in front of me on the highway. I can smell when food is about to go bad. Unfortunately, when someone has too much perfume, or has used chemical disinfectants, the smell turns toxic in my system and I immediately feel foggy in my head, and thus the clarity of my intuition. Smell is also the sense that is most directly linked to memory. As an HSP, smells trigger my brain into high gear of gathering data from every incidence I have ever smelled anything like that, and activating neurons to fire in collecting all the data from past experiences and then telling my body how to respond. This is how we empaths often “just know” without really knowing. We smell it.
To have my sense of smell dulled is a very weird sensation for me. It makes me want to stay in my controlled space of home until my smell returns because I feel like my defenses and awareness is down. Losing my sense of smell as an intuitive is almost as bad as going blind. I don’t know how to process circumstances and situations nearly as well as I normally do.
I can only trust that this power-down of my sense of smell is really a re-boot and power-up of my intuitive sense. I have faith that as my smell does return, my intuitive insight will only be stronger than ever.
Light Headedness & Fatigue
Last week, I thought I was better. I had a couple of REALLY good days. I woke up one day and had energy. I did my normal yoga practice. I walked my dog. I fixed a good breakfast. I sat down and worked for a couple hours. Then, as I usually do mid-morning, I took a break to get a snack and play with my dog, Tosha. While laying on the floor with Tosha, the room started spinning, like drunken bed-spins. When I got up, everything went black and I had to steady myself in case I was fainting. The rest of the day I spent in a completely dis-oriented headspace. I also spent the day feeling fatigued. Every time I tried to do something, anything, I got either winded, light-headed, or just plain tired.
This kind of fatigue and tired reminded me of trying to re-boot my computer before the fan had completely cooled down. It needed more time. My body, my energy needed more time. Prior to this illness, my natural tendency was to be a bit of a jack-rabbit in my doing-power. I pride myself on high-efficiency and an ability to do a lot of things in a short amount of time. I thought I did them well. But over the years, I have learned that I did do a lot of things, and I did them well…but I didn’t ENJOY doing them. Rather, I just enjoyed the quick dopamine rush of checking them off my to-do list.
This kind of fatigue and light-headedness is teaching me to slow-down enough to enjoy the process of doing something, not just the product. While I’ve had this experience many times in my life, usually it happens TO me rather than me choosing.
That day that I got light-headed with Tosha, I realized I needed to slow-down enough to really enjoy the process of every single thing I do. Not worry about the product or the checking off the to-do list, but to fully enjoy the actual DOING.
So now, as I am slowly churning myself back to normal, I know it is a very new normal. I’m happily slow-processing all the changes.
Total System Upgrade
When our computers need an upgrade, they require that we log-out of all applications, process the upgrade, and re-start the entire system. It takes time, and when we are done, the upgrade has increased functions and protections we didn't have before.
The same thing happens with the human body. For me, illness is a system upgrade. It's a minor inconvenience and disruption in temporary function so that I can have massive improvement in my immune system and other functions.
I'm eager to see how the next level performs in my world!
If you'd like to understand the energetic lessons of the symptoms of an illness you are enduring, BOOK AN APPOINTMENT for an initial consultation. I'll give you my medical intuitive assessment of what blessings your illness is giving you.