PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDERS
In the first place, it is important to be aware that Psychosomatic Disorders are real problems. They are not invented illnesses, hysteria, or hallucinations, or a wish from the client to attract the attention of the people who surround him. Almost any illness can have a psychosomatic origin. Asthma, cancer, bad digestion, pain (real pain) in the joints, migraine, allergies and more can all be psychosomatic disorders. Of course, it is not always so. Sometimes an allergy will have a psychosomatic origin and sometimes a genetic origin, for example.
There are several mechanisms that explain how psychosomatic problems are generated. The most common is when we are suffering from an unrecognized emotion or thought, and because we don't recognize it, its strenght transforms into what we can call a psychosomatic disorder. Let's suppose that we are very sad but don't want to feel it. Instead of feeling sadness (the original problem) we can feel pain (the transformed problem).
For example, let's assume that a client hates his mother. It is possible that he won't be feeling this hatred. He can even believe that he loves his mother and his relationship with her is normal. But in reality he hates her, and he cannot or doesn't want to become aware of this fact. Maybe the hatred is unconscious, maybe his self image will become damaged as a result of becoming aware of the hatred against his mother, etc.
If we assume that hate is an energy, this means that he will have a lot of energy inside, that corresponds with his hatred. As Physics tells us, energy is not created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another. Just because the client cannot become aware of his hatred against his mother, the energy of the hatred won't disappear. It will change, mutate, be transformed into something else. This something else can be an allergy, pain in the neck, difficulty to sleep, headaches or whatever. So, in this case, the hatred (original energy) has been transformed into a headache (transformed energy).
The parallel would be:
Physics: the energy can never be distroyed, but it can be transformed into a different kind of energy
Healing: the negative emotion can never be distroyed just because we don't want to feel or recognize it, but it will be transformed into a psychosomatic disorder
The best solution, in our hypothetical example, would be that:
First: the client becomes aware that he really hates his mother,
Second: that he stops hating her, and
Third: that he forgives her for whatever wrong she has done to him.
To sum up: the best solution would be to become aware, to stop the hatred and to forgive, but, to be very honest, this complete and best solution is not accepted by every client. People are human, and it has been said that "to err is human and to forgive is divine". Some persons can really forgive and some others cannot, or can only forgive after weeks or months of painful efforts. Maybe if our client could forgive his mother he would have forgiven her long ago. After all, everybody lives better forgiving than hating.
Hate is the main manifestation of animal chakra number nine, and it is very difficult to stop once it has grown too much. Besides human chakras, we also have animal chakras, situated in a middle line below our coxis. I will explain them in a further article.
In some other cases of psychosomatic problems, a root approach can be taken with more possibilities of success. For example, when someone that we love dies, it might happen that we refuse to acknowledge the sadness, and that many different symptoms are produced as a result of the transforming of the energy of the sadness. A healer with knowledge can detect that this sadness is the root cause behind the physical or emotional symptoms of his client, and propose some specific healing to unblock it and release the symptoms. This process is sometimes called "to heal a blocked mourning".
The blocked mourning problem is quite common and, in my experience, although it can create any kind of physical symptoms, in many cases produces joints problems. So, the client might think that he suffers from arthritis, for example, a very real illness, when he might be suffering from unrecognized sadness. The energy (of the sadness) cannot be created or destroyed. It won't be destroyed because the client chooses not to recognize it. It will be transformed into something else. Sometimes into problems in his joints.
In general, an emotion, when it is strong, is a string of blood that wants to enter some particular organ. A particular client with high blood pressure because of a blocked mourning had a string of blood that tried to enter his heart. Another client with pain in her right shoulder had a string of blood that tried to enter her ovaries, etc.
The unblocking of the mourning allows the blood, whose content is the sadness, to enter its target organ. Once it is there it will fortify the organ.
Hatred is usually a string of blood. In some cases it tries to enter the liver (as the chinese traditional medicine says), but in my experience, in other cases it looks for other target organs. If we allow it to enter our liver (and the only way is forgiving) our liver will become stronger than before. It will be "fed" by the forgiveness.
Because unconscious hatred is a common problem, I invite everybody to consider forgiveness as a great healing for both body and emotions.
When the emotion is not strong, in most cases the filament will be made from fire, but in my experience again, psychosomatic problems from fire "stagnation" are less common than from blood.
THE DETAILS OF THE CREATION OF A PSYCHOSOMATIC DISORDER
The mechanism for the creation of a psychosomatic disorder is interesting. Because the filament of blood really wants to enter an organ, how is it that it doesn't succeed? Because another organ or part of the body is losing its vitality to unblock the desired entrypoint. In some cases the blockage is done through the heart, but I have seen also the liver or any other part of the body lose its vitality to prevent an entry. The substance used to block the entry can be blood, fire, or any other element.
We have produced now a deficit of energy in some organ that will affect the healthy working of the organ. The consequence could be anyone, and will be related to the organ with a deficit.
There is also at least another kind of psychosomatic problem, that we could call "bad karma". I will talk about karma and its psychosomatic effects in a further article.
THREE PARTICULAR CASES
For people who are interested in the more minute details I will explain three particular cases, that I have treated.
The first example is a woman who had a lot of hatred against almost everybody. She didn't feel it, but as we know, the energy of the hatred was active. It was a very big filament of blood trying to enter her vagina. This is not a usual place to receive and integrate the hatred. I don't know whether she was sexually abused when a child but it is likely.
What she felt was a very big depression, what I call level -7 depression. My treatment was helping her for a week or so to stay in good mood. After four sessions, and seeing that nothing substantial was improving and that the symptom didn't improve for long, I refered her to another healer. She choose to go to a psychiatrist instead.
Her vagina was not willing to accept the blood energy. And her brain was losing earth in order to block the entrance of the blood. Because the part of the brain involved was the emotional part, she immediately felt depressed. As she told me "I feel empty inside, my heart doesn't feel happyness or joy."
This is an interesting observation, and actually even astute. Hate is the result of an overactive 9th animal chakra. Love begins with the 9th human chakra (the third eye chakra according to the old persian knowledge). Below the human 9th level chakra we have loving-kindness but it is not the same thing. There are many different shades and types of love, probably unlimited. But the thing is that any animal chakra working with enough intensity will overshadow, or overpower, the analog animal chakra. When someones hates with intensity, his 9th animal chakra will cancel the analog function of his 9th human chakra, that is, the kind of love that we usually call "compassion". The fact that this particular woman was able to notice her empty heart means a lot. It means that she was not always like that, something had happened to her in the past. She could still remember the "flavour" of compassion, enough at least to feel empty and joyless in her heart.
I saw that she hated a lot of mostly innocent people and needed to forgive them. Because I didn't see that this was possible for her, I concentrated on symptom treatment. I diminished the hatred links that she had with the most important people in several ocassions, and she left my sessions feeling calm and happy. But when she came again for the next session she had re-created the links of hatred again again, and nothing was really better. I learned a lot about psychosomatic problems, and specially about hatred, from this woman, but I confess that I couldn't really help her and I don't believe that I could help her now, either.
I know that, after trying with me, she went to a psychiatrist that gave her a strong antidepressant and it didn't work, either. She phoned me after being two months with the psychiatrist (a good sign, even if I couldn't help her, she still trusted my opinion) and I referred her to another healer.
The second example, a woman who had a problem of hating her own son. In this case the hatred was more legitimate, as the adult son was shamessly living from her mother and didn't want to work himself. The string of blood tried to enter her right eye, and was blocked by a "ball" of water coming from her lungs. The immediate result was insufficient breathing, and because of this, chronic fatigue and related symptoms.
Because this woman was more "humanly advanced" than the first one, I could explain her the problem with her son, and I closed the link of hatred for her. She didn't forgive her son, that continues to abuse her, but didn't create again the link of hatred against him.
In this case the hatred was coming from her 9th animal chakra, but her 9th human chakra was more powerful and this particular woman was very able of feeling compassion and understanding love.
Now, somebody could ask: the fact that she didn't hate her son any longer doesn't mean that she forgave him? In my opinion, no. To forgive means to forget emotionally. She didn't send her son any further hate but she had his misdeeds always present in her emotional memory. When we forgive somebody his misdeeds will disappear from our emotional memory. Not from our intellectual memory, of course. Maybe we have to protect ourselves against a really evil person, and even break all contact with somebody. Only when we forgive, we can act, and not react.
To delete misdeeds from our emotional memory has a deep significance from the point of view of our health. It diminishes our level of stress and increases the strenght of our immune system.
From my point of view this mother had good symptom release, she could breath deep and well again, but the filament of blood has still not entered her eye. Her lungs are still blocking it. The improvement in symptoms is possible because the hatred link was not created again and the amount of water that she needs to block the blood is way less than before, maybe ten times less. We can say that she doesn't hate her son anymore (big improvement) but hasn't forgiven him either. As a human being I can understand her very well and I am telling her case to talk about real problems, and reactions, from clients.
The third example is a woman who had pain in her right feet. I vividly remember this thirty year old woman entering my practice with crutches. She was a Pilates teacher and had a wonderful body. I am sharing this detail because it is important to understand her problem. She later became a good friend and student of mine.
So, she told me that her right foot was in great pain and that no physical therapist or massage therapist was able to help her. After scanning her, I told her: "In my opinion you don't have any pain, you are hungry". " Really? I don't feel any kind of hunger", she replied. Then I continued: "Just as an experiment, try to say: I am hungry". She accepted the challenge and said that, several times in a row. I asked her after one minute: "Where is your pain in the foot now?" And she answered: "I don't feel the pain, but I am hungry now."
Because this young woman had to take a lot of care of her body, she was not eating enough. She was hungry and she didn't want to accept it, and as a result she suffered from a psychosomatic problem, in this case pain on her right feet.
The repressed hunger created hate against herself. The string of blood tried to enter her liver. To block the entrypoint in the liver, her right foot produced a ball of water that tensed too much her plantar fascia. (Some fascias depend a lot on some frequencies of water to regulate their tension). She had, because of repressed hunger, a psychosomatic plantar fasciitis (pain in the foot).
The solution of this case was simple. I told her to eat, besides what she was already eating, a potato each day. Luckily she paid attention to my advice and her plantar fasciitis disappeared forever.
PSYCHOSOMATIC HEALING IN THE IMAGINAL WORLD
From the point of view of the Imaginal World, psychosomatic illnesses are usually seen as obstacles that block some organ or diminish its function. Let's comment the last example from this point of view. Now we abandon the field of healing and we enter the field of mythology or even magic.
My friend's archetype is the fairy. I saw that day a fairy entering my practice with a string inside her liver that was preventing her to absorb well whatever food she ate. Because of this, she was weak and her right leg was aching, but from weakness, and not from illness. When you are weak and walk a lot, your legs might hurt. In her particular case she was not able to fly and had to go everywhere by walking. Today, she is still not able to fly. She will be able to fly once she accepts her role as a healer, but this is a different story.
When I was talking with her I just untied the string on her liver. The fact that she cooperated with me means that she didn't try to tie it again. Some clients don't want to cooperate with you, and this could be perceived as if they would tie again their own knots, immediately after you have untied them. In the real world session, in most cases they start arguing with you. A client of this kind would have maybe told me: "I know that this is not my problem, how can you even suggest that I am hungry. I want you to massage my foot and bla bla bla ...".
Once the string was untied, I gave her imaginal food. In the Imaginal World, in the country where I live, you can invent food, the laws of nature are different there. I feed her with a watermelon, two roasted chicken and three apples. She was very hungry. All this corresponds to the dialog phase.
There is a wonderful sentence that many healers know: "as above, so below". This sentence is true, but in this case "above" means untying the string and feeding my friend, and "below" means talking and suggesting her to say "I am hungry". The Imaginal World is a world of archetypes and the correspondences above-below are in general not literal.
We can study now our second example, the woman whose son was abusing her, as seen from the Imaginal World.
When I spoke with her I saw a strange object, like a kind of chrystal, blocking her right lung. I didn't know immediately if the chrystal was poisonous or just an obstacle. The existence of an obstacle tells immediately that the problem is psychosomatic. An insect, or a poison, is not an obstacle, and represents an illness or an attack. For example, someone with a real emphysema could be seen as having a worm inside that is eating his lungs. Cancers, in the Imaginal World, are usually seen as if some organ was being burned into ashes by a fire. The ash still is part of the organ, the wind doesn't make it disappear, but the organ cannot work, as it is not solid or connected anymore