Partnership, Listening and Health

To be nobody but yourself – in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
E. E. Cummings

Listening is establishing a partnership with your body that allows you and your body to exchange far more information than you can now. In this partnership your body will trust you to listen, understand, and react appropriately to the information it gives you. At first the body will give you only a little information. If you then use this information in a way that helps the body, the body will give you more the next time you ask. Your role is to experiment. Your role is to find ways of responding that will help. When you succeed, the body is encouraged to share more information with you.

The body's role in this partnership is to become a far more effective manager of your health. Let's be more specific. Your body manages your health based on its understanding of your wishes. As you live past the age of reproduction, more and more, the body stands back and allows you to deteriorate. We call that aging. We expect it. As a full partner, your body will bring you back to your youth. Well, not exactly. Richard in his youth had diabetes and damaged heart, liver and kidneys. At this writing he isn't satisfied with that. He wants better. Perhaps it would be better to say your body's role will be to bring your health to what you wish it had been during your youth.

Partnerships do not pop up suddenly out of nowhere. They are built. They are based on trust. Trust between partners is built slowly. There is no fast way to build trust. Partners understand that the other member does sometimes make mistakes. We all know that humans sometimes make mistakes. Bodies do too. My body will allow me to “tell on” it. A few evenings ago, during a 4-hour tennis match in 95-degree temperatures, my hormones went crazy. That wasn't supposed to happen. My game sure deteriorated. I lost the match. The body realized it had work to do. I went quickly home, did a session with symbols, and the body solved the problem while I slept. High temperature tennis workouts uncover a lot of problems. This one sure didn't feel good while it was happening. The body could only solve it after it happened, so it was necessary.

It takes time to build the trust in a partnership. You already have a secure partnership with your body, but, if you are normal, there isn't much exchange of information. If you want to increase the information flow, do five things:

1 Express that you want more information to improve your health.
2 Take the time to receive the information, and check that your partner agrees you got it right. Remember, there are a lot of communities within your body. Be sure the community that sent you the information is the one you want to deal with: the one you call partner. Tumors have been communities in my body also, but I generally didn't act on the advice they gave.
3 Act on the information.
4 Observe the results.
5 Learn from the results. Decide, with input from your body, whether your actions improved your health.

You and your body both learn from experience. The more experience you have working with each other, the easier communication becomes. At first it is difficult, slow and confusing. Nevertheless, it is always possible. As time goes on, communication becomes routine. You and your partner become friends. You and your partner can become more adventuresome. Trusted partners can safely do things that untrusted partners would not - and should not - do.

The word, "know," is crucial. When you and your partner communicate well, you can "know" something about yourself that most people cannot comprehend. You probably can't explain it. If this information is the body's own private information, it is likely you have no words to express it in detail. After all, the body does not use words. However, the body certainly has the right to express it and communicate it to you. The body is the ultimate authority about your health. It can be trusted. Only people who trust their bodies will heal.

Don't kid yourself about safety, however. Build your trust slowly in small steps. The advice of a medical professional is always useful.