Is it mental or physical?

Many people think that there is a strong connection between our state of mental or emotional wellness, and our physical states. Some people believe firmly in such a connection. The experiences I have had personally and with clients lead me to be very open to the idea of such a connection. While I always work with clients on supporting their emotional journeys, many people have also seen changes in previously persistent physical symptoms.

• clearance of excema
• cessation of migraines
• resumption of fertility
• ending of allergic reactions

By happy coincidence, I got an email recently from Arielle Essex who is a very expereinced NLP Health Practitioner in London. In the email, she described her approach to asthma, and to health issues in general. I think her words are so elegant, and they sum up, in a very simple way, my approach as well. With her permission, I repeat them here...

I've done lots of work with asthmatic clients over the last 15 years, with great success. However, I avoid any approach that classifies a set of symptoms as a 'thing' to be treated.

Each person does asthma in their own particular way, for their own particular reasons and causes. Our western medical culture tends to slap a label on a set of symptoms and presto! A new 'thing' has been created, which then must be 'treated', fixed, fought, or gotten rid of.

It works much better to de-nominalize the 'illness' and return it back to the set of thoughts, ideas and emotions that caused it.

What has worked particularly well for my clients is to look metaphorically into what 'not being able to breathe' means to them. The chest is a rich area, with many different possibilities. The most common association in my experience has to do with blocked or unexpressed rage. This rage is usually unconscious and ancient - often with original causes dating back to childhood. So, long term therapeutic help usually involves a careful exploration of their past emotional history and some kind of time line re-imprinting intervention.

Arielle's website is here.. http://www.practicalmiracles.com/

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