The Deepest Desire and the Body's Conditioning
El deseo más profundo y el condicionamiento del cuerpo
A conversation about following one's deepest calling, the fear that accompanies it, and how physical symptoms like chronic pain and clenching relate to deeper emotional and energetic causes.
The Deepest Desire and the Body's Conditioning
A conversation about following one's deepest calling, the fear that accompanies it, and how physical symptoms like chronic pain and clenching relate to deeper emotional and energetic causes.
That's been a really powerful and constant thing for me. I think the strongest pull in my life has always been to find out what the universe wants, what I'm doing here, what wants to be done, and to have a big passion for every individual to be able to discover that and be that. I feel quite fortunate, though some of the time it's really difficult, just challenging and heartbreaking and frustrating. But a lot of the time it's very wonderful. Over the last year, getting into that question much more deeply, there have been a lot of crucifixion elements coming up, or just discomfort, and being with the discomfort of it. It's confusing, uncomfortable, full of loss, but I can also see that it's helping in some way.
That's great. At first there's a kind of disassembling, and then things start to realign in a deeper place. It's a disassembling of all the conditions, meeting the fears and the pains and all of the stuff we are, to some degree, running away from and avoiding. We often run so hard that it creates such a mess in our lives that it becomes the only reason we start looking into it.
The terror behind avoidance
I'm speaking of myself. About fifteen years ago, I knew what I wanted, but I was avoiding it and running away from it, caught in a lot of conflict. At one point I literally ran so hard I broke several bones. I ended up awake all night with a cast after being in the hospital all evening, and suddenly this terror appeared. I realized: this is what I've been avoiding. There was a terror around a decision I needed to make, and I had been avoiding it. I sat through the terror through the night, and the decision was obvious. I just looked at it, and it was clear: I know what I want, and I'm terrified to go this way. But that's how I managed to get to it, after being in the hospital all night on painkillers. I was literally running as hard as I could away from that choice, which was creeping up on me because it had a deadline. I had gotten myself drunk first, and then I ran. All kinds of bad.
I wonder about that, because I've also been quite ill this year. I've had a lot of chronic pain: migraines and then other pains on top of that. Being in physical pain can teach you a lot. Sometimes I look for answers in that as well, in what it's trying to tell me.
There could obviously be medical reasons and conditions that can be addressed, and you do what you can with that. What's left, some of it maybe you can't do anything about, and some of it might be an energetic process. More alternative approaches can work. I've been in that place, and all kinds of things helped.
Unexpected healers
Once, very strangely, a dentist helped unlock an energetic process. He was also a healer, secretly. He had set up a dental practice as a front for his healing work and had trained some dentists to detect people who needed his more hidden help. I was one of them. I went to the dentist for a very specific procedure, and he said, "I need to refer you to another doctor." I went to see this other doctor, and after months, the healer explained everything to me, because a lot had happened. He had two whole floors in a medical building, was the owner of the entire thing, and you would never know it coming there. He did some really strange practices that genuinely helped. One of them was actually removing molars, but that was to unlock a problem in my jaw. Then he did some energetic work. I had been sleeping two hours a night with insomnia. I thought it was psychological. I saw him one morning and he said, "Buckle your seatbelt. Today it's changing." I went through a huge energetic process that day, and then I started sleeping eight hours a night.
That sounds like something life brought you to, in line with what you were talking about before: just being open to whatever comes.
Exactly. I was exploring very actively. I was in a lot of physical pain, insomnia, chronic pain. I saw all kinds of bodyworkers and healers, and a lot of it helped. One thing would shift, and then the next layer would appear, and then something else would help with that. So I was very active in it as well. Not just meditating. It's a very physical process. But for people who have migraines, I would always say: get all the medical checks and explore, but there's a lot more going on than we can imagine.
I feel like it's a big old mix.
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I just wanted to say, you're talking about health problems and working through bodily pain, and I've been wanting to ask you about this. My whole life I've clenched and ground my teeth, and for the past six years it's gotten way worse. When I went back to Argentina in 2018, that's when I first got a mouth guard because my teeth were starting to chip. Sometimes I'll have ear ringing and pain, and it kind of fluctuates over the months; sometimes it's worse than others. I've been searching for people who have had success with treatments for this, and a lot of people, even though they get all the appliances and fix their teeth with braces and splints, they still clench. I feel like there's something deeper happening. I just wanted to bring it here to see if you had anything to say or any ideas.
It's similar to what I was saying before: explore everything, and also know that it's probably a lifelong thing to manage, because it's the conditioning of the body and the mind. Some patterns can always be helped and improved, but some of it is just part of being embodied, having a body. The body and the mind will have conditioning, will have patterns. What I can say is that it can come to a point where it's no longer a problem. It can be improved a lot, and then it becomes just a thing you manage. But often it's a sign that something deeper is happening.
The symptom is not the cause
A lot of those shifts I described were not isolated from facing a lot of pain, doing shadow work, trauma work. It was both things combined.
I think the emotional pain is wanting to get rid of it and not being able to, and then thinking, "I'm going to be suffering my whole life." It's a terrifying story around it.
That's exactly why I'm saying: you could have this improved and still manage it your whole life, and it would not be a problem. It wouldn't be the source of suffering or pain. When you associate it with something that will cause pain for the rest of your life, that's just fear. And if that becomes your reality, it's because it's become a belief. You could have a mouth guard, a clenched jaw, all of that happening, and have no pain around it. Just some tension once in a while, some nights you sleep with more tension. The emotional narrative around it is something else entirely. Sometimes we think it's the government that needs to change, or we need to change the relationship, the partner, the job, the jaw, the clenching, and then that becomes the thing that's the problem. "Unless that is solved, I will be suffering for the rest of my life." That's not true. You could have a clenched jaw and wear a mouth guard at night for the rest of your life and have no problem with it.
I mean, I know it's a belief, because I'm fighting what you're saying really hard. I feel like I haven't had a good night's sleep in years. I always wake up tired and I associate it with not sleeping deeply because I'm clenching.
I understand. But the clenching isn't the cause. It's the consequence. It's the symptom.
But if I always have the symptom, isn't the cause always there? If I clench my whole life?
Healing the wound, managing the habit
The cause isn't solved by stopping the clenching. For the sake of dental health and muscular and bone health, you manage it. But the cause isn't some weird neuron in your brain that decides to clench and you just have to remove the neuron. There's an emotional aspect. Sometimes it is physiological, and something needs to be addressed physiologically. That's why I say: see doctors, go to practitioners. In my case, there were molars that needed to be removed because they were creating a lack of motion in my jaw, which exacerbated the tension I had. But that wasn't the cause.
I was an insomniac, two hours a night, pretty much every night for a long time. Then from one day to the next, what changed was an energetic, emotional shift. There were medical and physiological aspects that needed to be addressed, but ultimately it was a heart thing, a healing thing. There's fear. There's pain. And the clenching is a reaction to that. Then it does become a habit of the body and the mind, and that habit can be addressed to help unlock it. Sometimes it's a very deep thing and you need a deeper practitioner who takes more risk.
I thought you were saying it's something that will always be there, and that it can't be healed with an energetic shift. So it's about coming to terms with how things are right now.
What I'm saying is this: the habit of clenching most likely will be a pattern you manage for the rest of your life. But what can be healed is the underlying cause of it, and all of the pain and suffering that is the cause of it. Because of that cause (let's call it a wounding), a conditioning has formed in the body and the mind. The wound can be addressed and healed, and that would alleviate the clenching. But there's a muscular, physiological habit; it's become part of the way the neural system is conditioned. That can be alleviated and improved, but most likely not one hundred percent. It will become a habit that needs to be managed. It will get better, probably not go away fully, but it could come to where it's no longer a problem.
The ninety-nine percent
It's like this with everything. There could be pain at the ending of a relationship, and it's naturally painful. But there could also be a sense of "I'm going to die if this relationship ends," and then the relationship ends and you feel like you're dying. That's the thing that can stop. But the relationship ends and it's sad; there's pain. What we don't realize is that ninety-nine percent of the problem is the whole "I'm going to die if this relationship ends." If all of that is gone, the relationship ending could be excruciatingly painful, but there could be no problem with it. It's just grieving.
This is similar to what I'm saying about the clenching. Physiologically, a conditioning has formed. Currently the underlying cause is still active; that's why it's getting worse. That can be resolved. Then the conditioning is likely going to improve gradually over time, to the point where it simply doesn't matter. I've had sleep apnea, clenching, all of that. The sleep apnea is, I think, completely gone. I used to wake up gasping for air. That's stopped. I used to have a really hard night and a really hard day if I didn't sleep with a mouth guard. Now I can go weeks without one and actually often sleep better without it. After several weeks I start to develop some tension and think, "Ah, that helps," and I use it again for a while. But do I sleep less without it? No. Do I have a difficult day? No. Zero. I can sleep eight hours with or without it. I have a great day with or without it. Is there still some grinding? I'm sure it's still happening a bit. Am I waking up gasping for air? Am I feeling anxious that if I don't have my mouth guard I can't sleep? No. About fourteen years ago, I was in despair if I left it at home. I'm in a hotel, I don't have my mouth guard, I'm going to have a horrible night because I won't sleep, and then tomorrow will be worse. That's how my life was. It was bad.
That's what gets triggered for me in the morning when I haven't slept well. It's an onslaught of thoughts and bad moods. Meltdown mode. I guess what I did this morning when I woke up was: it gives me peace of mind that I'm doing things to get better. I'm doing everything that can help me, most importantly coming to this group, because I felt a lot of support last week from being here and feel committed. When the bad thoughts came, I went to my body and felt what my body felt, just to try to cut the cycle. If there's something in the body to be felt, I need to feel it. But it is with the goal of trying to make it stop. It's not playful. It's not "wow, let's explore the wonder of the world."
Welcoming what's there
It's a practice to learn how to truly welcome sensation. Francis Lucille has a nice way to joke about it. He says: you invite someone to your home, you open the door with a big smile, but you have a baseball bat behind your back, waiting for the moment you can push them out the door. So welcoming.
You offer them a cup of tea, they take a sip, you yank it out of their hand. "Thank you for coming."
To me, one of the ways that helped me the most with that was from Richard Moss. He said to me: just approach it, whatever it is you're experiencing.