The body. It is an awesome, organic machine. Like a lot of people, I didn't always take very good care of mine. Different times in my life of not giving any thought to what I ate or drank. As a teenager and young adult, going on weight loss journeys that were very extreme and I would say, unhealthy. Having a momma that went through her own insecurities, she wanted to help. But she just wasn't healed herself, and ended up putting some of that on to me. She went through her own bouts of what I would say was a slippery slope into anorexia, and for me bulimia.
Somewhere in my late 20s though, I wanted it to look different. I was at a time in my life where I was exercising again, but for fun. I had learned how to turn it into play again, like when you were a kid, and you swore up and down, that brand new shoes made you run faster. So all you did was have races and run all over the neighborhood. Or riding your bike with no hands. I was so good at it as a kid, I could go around the whole block not holding on.
But my eating was still garbage. So I looked into what fuels the body. That was it's own fun journey and I decided to take the same approach as fitness. Not just dieting, like we've come to know dieting. But a fun experiment, that the taste buds could also enjoy! Fast forward and I'm looking at medicines the same way. Then eventually having my own babies, I really wanted to instill this in them, having never had this as a kid myself. (My mom did the best she could with what she had and knew, and I love her for it!) This eventually led to my Health and Wellness degree, and I started learning about CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicines). Different approaches to our health.
In early 2018, when I started to suffer from seemingly untriggered panic attacks and anxiety attacks, is when I threw myself into neuroscience and how the brain/mind works. The amygdala, that crazy primal place. The difference between the left and right hemispheres and how that relates to being left and right handed. The mind/gut relationship. All of it! I needed to know how it worked, but I needed to understand it through my Faith. Science doesn't explain away God, it can only reflect His awesome creation, and the complexities. (Lol look up Sir Isaac Newton).
Now this is where it goes off-roading for a lot of West World believers. What we've come to know as "new age." I didn't just want to go recklessly into things I didn't understand, but it felt like the next logical line of questioning for me. When you know it's all related somehow, but connections are missed. I'm not saying that it's all good practice, but it feels like anything mystic or spiritual that we don't understand, we throw into the catchall basket of "new age." We'll go to talk therapy and take prescriptions, and that's perfectly fine, but don't you dare go into any of those weird places where your soul lives. The Saving Grace is simple and Free. Look to Yeshua, and you will be covered. Believe. But when we talk about "works of Faith" and "baptism by Fire" that gets watered down, when we're supposed to know that our Savior literally walked through hell for us. What would He ask of us, in our own testing? So, as I tried some things, I would ask questions that my soul could be at peace with. God what is useable for teaching and understanding? Certainly there should be caution, as we're now not just talking about the body, but indeed the soul place, the other worldly.
What is the soul? Where does it reside in these bodies? The brain. The body does not work independently of the mind. It gets signals from the brain on what to do. The rapid fire instruction to my fingers as I type this, with the well-worn grooves embedded from my junior year keyboarding class, and a super strict teacher that made me cry twice, but damn I can type... sorry, small tangent. So when we talk about the physical manifestations of the bruising and battering of life, it's not to the body itself, but to the mind place. We're told to take every thought captive. Catch those little foxes, that try to run around causing destruction. But what do you do, when it's sub conscious? Not an outwardly known thought, but something deeper that causes that rapid fire, involuntary response to the injury sustained by your soul? From the current lifetime, or from generations previous, we have to find where the axe head fell.
This is my new adventure, and I will not be afraid to explore it. Hopefully helping others as well.