Feel It, to Heal It
In order to heal, you need to feel… another Johnism.
What does this mean????
I'll ask a client, mid-session, "What are you feeling right now?" And often the answer is "fine," or "nothing," or "I'm okay," or "I don't feel anything," even when they came in with specific things they wanted to work through.
On the surface that can sound like a good thing. But, I've learned it's often the opposite. It can mean the person isn't quite present in their body, maybe hasn't been for a while, without even realizing it.
Another real thing, is we become so accustom to being uncomfortable or in pain its our normal so we “feel ok”.
If this sounds familiar, please don't feel bad, and please don't feel alone. It's actually a big part of why you're here, and it's part of the process.
So much of life pulls us away from our own physical sensations.
John Barnes was quite the cat fan, so this is a fitting photo!
We push through pain, brush past tension, and quiet feelings because there isn't time to sit with them, or because somewhere along the way we learned that noticing them was too much, or not worth the trouble. Slowly, "fine" becomes the easy answer, even when the body is still holding onto something real.
But we can't release what we can't feel. Most of us aren't used to being still, quieting our minds, and gently reconnecting with our bodies.
That's really the heart of this Johnism. Healing invites us to come back into the body, softly, with curiosity, toward the tightness, the heaviness, the ache, the numbness, whatever is there, instead of moving past it. Sometimes that's uncomfortable. But that discomfort is often a quiet sign that something is finally being felt again, maybe for the first time in a long while.
Sometimes it brings up more than just a physical sensation, maybe a thought, a memory, a color, a word.
So the next time I ask what you're feeling, and "fine" is on the tip of your tongue,
I'd gently invite you to pause a little longer. It takes time.
Feel it.
That's where the healing begins.