Erica Tucci

I was reading an e-zine by Maia Toll, a modern-day medicine woman, about how we can be so disconnected, not only from nature, but from our own nature (in other words, a disconnect from our body). She was talking about how she would get lost in her head when she was younger, how she “lived most of her life in the space between her ears.” It reminded me of me!

When I was younger, I would have a recurring dream of being pursued by some unknown force in a house and finding a hidden stairwell behind a closed door that led to the attic. (The force was never terrorizing, just a bit scary.) I would scurry up the stairs to my “refuge,” where I would feel safe.

My recent interpretation of this was that I, too, would go “up into the attic,” into the dusty chambers of my mind to seek comfort and security from what may have been bothering me. Little did I realize that this “mind play” was actually causing me to disconnect from my own nature, where the real truth of the matter resided. I wasn’t grounded in my body.

Of course, when I was younger, I was just looking for a place to escape the fears that took a hold of me since I wasn’t mature enough to face the gremlins. I would go into my head where I could create a more idyllic world. Today, I have a much different perspective, especially now after having had a stroke, which has brought up everything underlying the physical affliction – every emotion, feeling, anxiety or fear – that has permeated every cell in my body.

Every cell in our body has memory and will respond according to those memories. A simple example of this is if your parents didn’t show you love when you were younger. You may have grown up feeling a longing in your heart, but don’t know how to give or receive love. Perhaps it makes you disconnect from any heart-felt emotions so that you can avoid feeling pain, but the consequence is that you may not feel joy either. Your heart may ache because of the turmoil it feels from your unresolved issue around love. A worse-case scenario is that you are burdened with heart dis-ease because of the toll this turmoil has taken on your heart, or perhaps you have a stroke that was caused by a heart problem, as in my case. The underlying emotional causes of my stroke were also about love, but in a different scenario. If you’re interested in my story, you can download the first two chapters of my book Radiant Survivor for free.

Based on my experience, I feel that our body holds the truth of our existence in the memory of every cell. When we are grounded in our body and in touch with its messages, not only can we potentially avoid maladies, but we also are connecting with our own nature, our inner guidance, our intuition. The more we can intuit what our body is trying to convey – not only the physical dysfunction, such as a tummy ache or back ache, but also the underlying emotional cause of the pain – the better chance we have of healing ourselves both physically and emotionally.

As I continue on my road to recovery from my stroke, I have listened to what my body is telling me more and more. But it hasn’t been easy! Since mid 2012, I have had setback after setback in my healing because I wasn’t listening to my body. Instead of heeding its message to “surrender and let go,” trusting that it could heal itself if I provided the right environment in which to do so, I kept pushing it.

You see, my “egoic” mind kept getting in the way and telling me that the only way I was going to get better was to take full control and use more force, no matter how my body was feeling. My mind instilled fear in me that the only way my body would get stronger was to push it beyond its limits.

But each time I would get entrapped by my mind’s demands, my body would “collapse” into a state of total fatigue and rebellion, as if to say “back off, I can take care of myself.” For me, the right environment in which my body could heal was one where I was gentle with my body, honoring its need to rest, and really listening to its messages: when I could exercise, when I should take a break, how any exercises I should do, if I should even exercise.

I have since learned to really pay attention to what my body speaks to me, although I still have trouble following through with the proper actions or in-actions. Like I said, it hasn’t been easy! My body, in fact, is what gave me the recent interpretation of my dream mentioned above. I had previously had a different interpretation, but it seems that my body directed my mind to write this post and use that dream as the lead-in to what I was to say. This may sound far-fetched, but I don’t discount anything that I feel anymore. Maybe that’s why I feel my intuition getting stronger and stronger each day (and that my Tarot readings are getting much more precise). 🙂 I am allowing my body to lead the way!

What about you? Do you pay attention to what your body is speaking? The more you can ground yourself in your body’s wisdom, the more in touch you become with your own nature. And the more in tune you become with your own nature, the more aligned you will get with nature around you. And I find that to be a glorious way to live!