Dear Ed,
A topic very close to my heart, is the effects of trauma on body image. One of the first articles I wrote that was on the internet (unfortunately lost now) was titled “Phantom Body”.
I wrote to you about it last year as well: Phantom Energy Body; Upper-Lower Body Disconnection
Our mind is constantly projecting an image of our bodies on us,
influencing our very real energy field to behave differently from its own nature. Our body shifts out of alignment because of the false image and behaves in a way as to support the false image.
For example, if someone believes in their head that they’re fat, that’s a constant suggestion to their energy field to skew and pull the shape of body into a “fat” shape. Our soul will resist the lie, often causing backswings to that, but the result of that conflict is tiredness and feeling an internal war going on.
I have experienced myself and seen on many occasions, people having a whole double or phantom energy body, purely mentally projected but causing the body to circulate blood to certain areas erratically, and disturbing the alignment of the body. It shows psychologically in what is called Bipolar Affective Disorder, Manic depression and so on.
In my childhood, Ed, before I reached the 10th grade, I was shifted across five schools in three different states. Because of that, I got to see and study different children’s energy fields in very different climate zones and have a sort of outsider’s perspective.
Something very interesting I noticed was that children tended to look like an identity or character profile imposed by a teacher and others around.
For example, a child constantly being projected on as being from a certain community, began to look more and more like from that community/ ethnic group. To my surprise I found out months later that that child wasn’t actually of that community at all, but her name had been misspelled in kindergarten giving rise to that idea. No one had thought of correcting the mistake at all! The child was physically looking like a community she had no connection to, because of it!!
This was in the 5th grade and the child was so used to it that she didn’t seem to think it even strange. She was quite pretty, but carried herself in a sort of crushed way, lessening her height. She was always fidgeting and uncomfortable. She was fair skinned but had developed large patches of thick dark layers of what looked like coagulated blood under the skin, giving the impression that she was dark. This made her actually look, at first glance, like she was from the community being projected on her.
It really amazed me, as even back then I could see that her very physical features had begun to resemble that community with which she had no connection at all!
I began to notice that as I went from school to school. How children carried themselves and gave an impression of something that to my eye, as someone who hadn’t known them before that year, was something false.
For example, a child who was in the top end of the class’s best performers, still carried herself and considered herself a loser, in the 8th grade. This girl could’ve been so sparkly, but was carrying this false projection from so far back. When I asked her why she didn’t take part in an aerobics display, she said that she couldn’t because she didn’t do the movements right. I asked why not. She said that her hands and legs don’t align right and it looked weird. I had a look and they did align right, but she was CARRYING them wrong, as if there was something wrong with them. I asked her why she did that and she said that when she was in kindergarten, the teacher had called her parents to the school and told them she couldn’t put their child in the sport’s day display because her hands and legs were not aligned right.
All those years later when there was no problem, when she’d grown out of that childhood awkward growth phase she was still carrying herself – her knees turned in, her elbows looking a bit disjointed… when there was no reason whatsoever other than habit and projection.
I could go on and on Ed.
Something from my own life – Because I was brought up in a family with no connection to my own genetics (I was unaware of my birth identity till I was 23), I was always a misfit. My body behaved differently from theirs. For example my skin gets sunburned very easily – something alien to a family genetically programmed to the tropics. My digestive system reacts violently to spicy food and I’ve never been able to eat traditional indian food comfortably as a result.
So my body was very drastically different. Yet, Ed, in my childhood and beyond, I’d develop what someone called “sympathy illness” but which I later realized were me projecting a false identity on myself. One incident I remember was when many of the family were talking about how they all had tooth swellings at a particular age. Before that day I’d never had a problem with a tooth in my life. But the very next day my cheek was swollen mysteriously with what wasn’t even a tooth infection but looked like one. I was even sort of aware of what was going on. That I’d projected it on myself.
In reality Ed, we tend to project an image of how our bodies “ought to” look on ourselves based on various social cues, the psychic suggestion of those we look up to and so on. This usually results in problems for us, because our energy then isn’t flowing according to our own needs.
There are severe debilitating problems caused because of this.
It’s a powerful sort of healing, when we connect to our own soul identity, our own truth. The body physically changes and many conditions previously unresponsive to treatment, disappear.
There was a time I rented a room in the basement of a family. That cultural group suppressed women (while making every show of not doing so) and to this day I can recognize women of that ethnic group and those around them and hanging out with them, by their hunched shoulders. I developed the habit as well when I was there, without realizing it.
I later became conscious of it but continued because the one time I straightened up, I was in a bus stand and men around immediately began to notice me and give me the eye like I was asking for attention. For my safety I hunched back. It was the moment I decided to leave there as soon as I could.
Our basic upright posture, where energy flows from the earth beneath to the crown of our heads and back; this is our birthright. The health and beauty and wellness and intelligence that comes from it, move us towards our destiny and the fulfillment of our life purpose.
We must allow no one to take that away from us.
Picture Source
In our times, as children we’re taken very quickly out of the world of childhood where we develop our own physical identity based on physical experiences, and sent into an education system which draws our energy constantly up to the brain. We begin to hold mentally programmed images of our self very strong, stronger than our primal experience of our body, as a result. We constantly project this onto our body and energy flow.
We begin to imitate the elders and others around us in the way we carry ourselves, and even fall ill with the same conditions as them.
The solution is to get back in touch with our own physical and energy body in reality. This realigns the body (something very required if we’ve ever experienced trauma or shock of a deep kind), normalizes energy flow and regenerates our overall personality and experience.
There are many ways to get back in touch with our primal life identity. Just being in our bodies and experiencing our physicality – such as through sports, yoga and so on could do it. One of my favorite methods these days, is connecting with our serpent point. I described it recently in my article: Manic Anxiety Disorder; The Serpent Point, and Mistletoe
I’ve heard many people talk about how when they were married to the wrong person, who didn’t really like them and projected an ugly image on them; when they got divorced they looked different and beautiful and glowing and so on.
It made me think that we might be married to a false image of us that causes a lot of health and body and appearance problems that might be coming in the way of a lot of freedom and happiness and hope and good things in life.
I leave you with a totally unrelated picture but which touches my heart. It’s an old photo from about 1903, of Helen, the daughter of Stanislaw Wyspianski, a famous artist and writer from Poland. Something about this and her mysterious eyes, inherited from her father, makes me think of how all we are all a dream of the moment.
They must’ve told her to stand still, Ed, for the photo. But she couldn’t help it, pinching her ear.
