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 something about the zucchinis you grew in your backyard and 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.

Now let me ask the question in a slightly different way, how has your digestion of life been going? Where on your body would you place your hands to indicate the physical location of that process? 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 with it. Like the digestion of food, you would absorb all things nourishing and eliminate all things wasteful that would make you sick if they hung around long enough. Now compare this to your stories which may carry themes such as resentment, blame, unresolved emotions and relationships, abandonment or chronic pain or fatigue. What are these things other than undigested parts of life?

Sometimes the world feels scary and unnavigable, like the cards are stacked against you. At times, hope is a hard thing to hang on to. While this may be true, at times, there is an even bigger truth. This truth is constant, reliable and even predictable once the proper resources are assembled. This is the truth of your nervous system. This is the location within your body where life either happens to you or is harmoniously expressed through you.

How about a little Nervous System Anatomy - 101.

Just like the digestive tract the nervous system also has a tract that information, rather then 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 from all your lived experiences including screen images, the music you listen to, the scents in your environment, the taste of your dinner to the physical feel of temperature or touch from another. The information picked up by the five senses then follows a pathway through the central nervous system, the spinal cord and brain, where decisions are made. How will your brain decide to respond or react to the incoming information? However your brain interprets the information it receives, it will send out some kind of instructions on how to relate to the information. Then you have the actual experience of that thing. These instructions are sent out to 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, cravings 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 lacked 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. Undigested anger can cause inflammation in the body and mind burning you up from the inside. 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 bombardment of this modern world of technology, speed and busyness, without break that you find challenging to digest and feel relief from.

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

The good news is you are not alone! I have yet to meet another human being that has no issues ever when digesting life. If you are breathing, the input of information will continue and there will always be an opportunity to increase your consciousness of the process. The other piece of good news is that you were designed for this! Polarity Therapy dances with the innate part of you that can digest 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 you mind, emotions and physical sensations 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, self-regulate and co-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, fully expressed and unfolding with more grace and ease each day.