Your Body is the Landscape of your Soul

What does holistic health really mean? Most of us would define holism as inclusive of our body, mind and spirit. Fair enough, but I would add we also have an emotional body. We tend to break ourselves into parts to see how they work, and this certainly helps us understand our complexities, but sometimes this fragmentation gets in the way. We could instead view ourselves as our own unique planet with personalized eco-systems.

Our tissues of muscles, bone, skin, ligaments and tendons can be viewed as our planet's terrain. The skeletal structure can be compared to the continental plates supporting from beneath. As the earth terrain has creatures who live upon her, your body planet or landscape has beings that are part of you!

The bacteria on your skin and in your gut are among the first lines of defence against harmful micro bacteria. The bacteria in your gut also help break down food to assimilate the nutrients needed to feed your body planet. Some bacteria get rid of waste products much as organisms on earth do.

In fact, bacteria make up a 10 to 1 ratio to your number of cells! These fantastic creatures really are complete colonies living as part of your body's vast eco-system. Hopefully, they are good neighbours, but occasionally some disruptive bacteria populate the gut, and we experience that as digestive problems.

Our circulatory system looks like the waterways of the earth. We have larger rivers flowing into smaller streams and further into creeks, feeding all of the earth's terrain. Our circulatory system works the same, only it has the heart to pump the blood through large arteries to small arteries, to even smaller capillaries, which bring water and nutrients to the entire body. Just as the earth builds up sediment or silt in its waterways, so do we, in the form of cholesterol and other deposits. You do not find much silt in fast running waters, usually in slower meandering ones. That reminds me, I should get out and do some walking, speed up those rivers!

Your lungs look like upside-down trees, pulling the oxygen in and breathing the carbon dioxide out. Interestingly trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen for us to breathe. An amazing relationship indeed!

We need sunshine to produce Vitamin D, which we receive ourselves through our skin and eyes, and ingesting plants that have already converted sunshine into food that we eat. The vitamin D sunshine breaks down in our guts, with the help of its colonies of healthy bacteria, to be utilized by our body planet.

Of course, we all recognize how the world we live in can affect our body landscape. Everything from air quality, to the food we eat, to the climate we live in and what we do for a living all impact our physical bodies. But there are more factors affecting our body landscape.

Our planet's winds represent the element of air, or our thoughts and mental well being, which have an enormous impact on our physical landscape. If we think we are not worthy, this will influence how we feed ourselves and take care of our health. If we do not value ourselves, we tend to give too much and overextend ourselves. These thoughts, the element of air, can become damaging winds!

If an unhealthy thought or belief system is given free rein in our psyche, the prevailing winds can shape the body landscape in destructive ways. Much like an island in a lake, you can see the direction the winds generally blow by the bend of the trees. These harmful ways of thinking create stressors on your landscape, which causes a full cascade of physical and mental distress.

Thoughts need to be examined to see if they are having a beneficial or destructive impact on our lives. We cannot see the wind, and are often unaware of what we believe or think as it is in the unconscious mind; it just appears to be part of who we are! To truly improve our mental landscape, we must look to our self-limiting beliefs and societal training and strive to change them to better serve our psychological and physical well being.

Now for the emotions! Your emotions wash over your body planet as you proceed through your day. They can be happy feelings or intense feelings of fear or of overwhelming grief. They are not bad or good; your emotions are only doing their job, telling you how you feel about what is going on.

Without them, you would just sit about, not knowing in what direction to move towards. Joy, excitement and happiness, tell you that whatever is going on is right for you. Anger, frustration and annoyance, tell you your boundaries are being encroached upon, and a change needs to happen. Grief, having the blues and feeling down are mechanisms to help you deal with loss and stress.

When the emotions are allowed to move freely and are acknowledged, you go back to your center once again, and your body landscape will improve. Many of us know what depression looks and feels like....not much fun.

Also flowing through our body planets are patterns of ancestral DNA that contain all of the losses and successes of our predecessors, which can impact us in many ways. You know how you just know how to do something sometimes when you have no previous experience? Well, maybe if you followed back through your lineage, you may find your ancestors were masters at whatever it is you can do just naturally.

Or, like many of us, you may have food hoarded in every corner of your house when the grocery stores actually have shelves full of food available for you. A heritage of starvation, a tactic used to subdue and disperse populations throughout human history, will probably be the underlying issue bleeding through.

Our body planet also has the light of our past lives streaming through. Any place of unresolved past traumas can have a real impact on our here and now, as well as all the skills, talents and lessons learned during these past lives.

Past emotions and thoughts and, in some cases, terror, can and do work on us in ways we may not even be aware of! These energies will all affect our body planet. The good news is that all of the ancestral lines and our past lives can surface what needs to heal. This is where lightwork really shines! (Yes, pun intended).

We are continually being influenced by emotions, thoughts, social conditioning, belief structures, ancestral lines and past lives, as well as by the physical aspects of what we eat, how much sleep we get, what air we breathe and the climate we live in.

A holistic approach is one that entails looking at and addressing the many aspects of our body landscape. Seeking a state of balance in all of who we are will improve our health and well being.

Your body is your ally and works 24/7 for you for your entire life. It is influenced by all of who you are and with all of that it will always strive to keep itself, and by extension you, healthy and balanced, and given the correct circumstances will regain its health once again. Loving and honouring our bodies is an extension of loving yourself. Please put the whip down and have a loving conversation with your amazing body planet who always has your back, literally. It is as unique and individual as you are!