Polarity Therapy: An Aid for Digesting Life

If I asked you the question, how has your digestion been lately?  You would most likely give me a story that includes something about the kinds of foods you have been eating and which ones make you feel queasy, bloated, or sluggish. You may bring up something about fiber and the slowness or quickness of elimination. There may be mention of acid and disturbed sleep or exercise. The story may include a smile as you describe comfort and the satisfaction of feeling nourished. No matter your verbal response, you would most likely place your hands on your abdomen indicating the physical location of the process.

But how might you answer if I asked you, how has your digestion of life been going? And where on your body would you place your hands to indicate its physical location? These may be odd questions on the basis that no one has asked you them before, but they are questions we should all be asking ourselves daily, with each unfolding piece of life both great and small.

Polarity Therapy seeks out relationships with an intention to harmonize them. How you relate to things, yourself and others are driven by your ability to process life as it comes at you. The five sense organs, the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin are the first places you meet the world and other. These are the places in your body where the digestion of life begins. Ideally, to have that smile and enjoy the experience of comfort and satisfaction you would process each little piece of life in the moment you make contact. Like the digestion of food, you would absorb all things nourishing and eliminate all things wasteful. Now compare this to your stories which may carry themes such as resentment, blame, unresolved emotions and relationships, abandonment or confusion.

Often life can feel scary and hard, like the cards are stacked against you, at times hope is a hard one to hang onto. While this all may be true at times, there is an even bigger truth, one that is constant, reliable and even predictable once the proper tools are assembled. This is the truth of your nervous system. Here is where life will either happen to you or be harmoniously expressed through you.

How about a little Nervous System Anatomy - 101.

Just like the digestive tract for food, the nervous system also has a track that information, instead of food, travel through to be picked apart and deciphered for our health and function. As described earlier, the five senses are the ports of entry for information, everything from screen images, the music you listen to, the scents in your environment, the taste of your dinner to the physical feel of temperature or from others. The information picked up by the five senses then follow a pathway to the central nervous system, the spinal cord and brain. This is the location where decisions are made. How will your brain decide to respond or react to the incoming information? Once a decision is made instructions are given and you have the actual experience of that thing. The experience comes through the various systems of the body, blood, immune, respiratory, urinary, digestive, reproductive and integumentary (skin/sweat). Your endocrine system and hormone levels along with your soft tissue, muscle and fascia, all change and adapt to meet the situation. Your nervous system is hard at work, never stopping, always digesting the ever-changing circumstances of life.

If only this was a smooth flowing process with no hiccups let alone blockages, dissociations and holding patterns that continue to show up repeatedly causing you pain and suffering. What are the undigested pieces of your life? What have you experienced that has yet to complete its journey in your physical or emotional body? In my experience it is common to think you have fully processed a life event, yet memories remain in the nervous system and continue to flare up when conditions are ripe to trigger them.  If the life event was about safety, then you may continue to feel unsafe even though the event and peoples involved are no longer present. If there is undigested grief, then you may experience an overwhelm of emotion that you cannot seem to find your way out of. If what adults projected onto you in childhood have not been resolved, then you may find those same relationship dynamics showing up in areas of your now adult life. It may be the daily engagement with this modern world of technology and busyness, without break that you find challenging to digest.

All of this can be summed up into one word, stress. Unprocessed information can create acute or chronic stress resulting in change of behavior, looped emotions, cognitive challenges, spiritual questioning or dismissing and physical injury or illness.

The good news is you are not alone! I have yet to meet another human being that has no challenges when digesting life. If you are breathing the input of information will continue and there will always be room for improvement. The other piece of good news is that you were designed for this! Polarity Therapy dances with the innate part of you that can process and heal. With the support and guidance of a Polarity Therapy practitioner, one who is educated and embodied in the workings of the nervous system and its relationship to the human experience, you have the potential to integrate the nourishing pieces of life and empty out the waste.

Polarity Therapy teaches you the resources needed to track your nervous system so you can understand how well, or poorly you are digesting that conversation, that relationship or news report. With this resource of awareness Polarity Therapy then goes further to show you ways to self-sooth and self-regulate. To become a Polarity client and student is to no longer allow life to happen to you. You become an influencer of your digestion and of a life fully processed, expressed and which is unfolding with more grace and ease each day. Instead, you become an influencer of your digestion, an influencer of how you perceive the world around you and of how you take it in.