Inner Strength Part 1
May 5, 2026
Inner Strength, Part 1
The body center of intelligence, like the other centers of intelligence, can be fueled by the ego. Yes, if unchecked, the mental structure of the ego can overtake the body. The unchecked ego has many distortions of reality which impact the body positively or negatively. And, as can be the case with all three centers, the body center can also be in direct coherence with the soul. When the body and soul are in sync, divine energy fuels the body center.
If an unhealthy ego runs the body, it must be under the influence of the ego’s perception of reality. It must adapt to its ego’s narrative of what the world, including the body, ought to be. When in submission to the ego, the body is subservient to its passions, traps, lies, avoidances and the seductive call from the stress point. This means the body becomes a receptacle for not only physical sensations triggered by the ego, but also the body’s response to stress caused by the ego’s story of what the body must be or do. This is when our physical selves can feel things such as anxiety, depression, exhaustion, or any physical reaction caused by the unhealthy ego’s directives.
Some examples of the unhealthy ego’s passions overtaking the body: we may become physically weak or atrophied from sloth, over medicated as a result of gluttony, or it can become withered and parched from withdrawal and inner emptiness. It may be petrified with fear. It may reach critical levels of exhaustion if its drive to accomplish keeps it in chronic stress.
Yet, the body has wisdom all its own, regardless of the amounts of ego that run its existence. If the ego is negatively affecting the body, eventually its physical symptoms and other manifestations let us know that it has reached a limit. That is when things must change. But as we know, many do not listen to the body’s intelligence. Bessel van der Kolk published a book about the body’s memory and its wisdom. The Body Keeps Score (2015) is an account of how the body stores and releases trauma. He maintains that everything said and done to us is cataloged in our physical body that does not forget anything, and whose intelligence has ingenious ways to remind us of our trauma and any unfinished business we may have with it. These may be transgressions against our body caused by neglect, mistreatment, over-extension, over-indulgences, and anything that we or someone else has done to our body that has put the body under stress and pain. Of course, our body also “remembers” the loving treatment we give it, and benefits from our nurturing, loving, and being kind to our physical self.
In my professional clinical and personal experience, I am aware of what Bessel van der Kolk is bringing forth. And his reports are also true for psychic trauma. Many times, when the patient releases an unwanted feeling, memory, or wound, the body expresses the release. It could have been a psychic wound received in early childhood or a recent hurt. It could have been a trauma from sexual abuse, from physical abuse, or from emotional abuse. In some cases, people have kept trauma in their bodies since their birthing process. The expressions of release vary according to the trauma and the person. However in my experience, releases of the trauma are accompanied by a lightness and a feeling of flexibility and normalcy in the body area in which the trauma found its “home.” In my personal experience, grief landed in my heart and entire chest region until I worked on its release.
We know that insults and trauma the body “remembers” can be healed if we bathe our bodies in the soul’s Divine healing light. The body, like the mind and heart, can “forgive” us for our mistreatment of it, and therefore may relieve us from our symptoms. Maybe the body only needs our recognition of its wounds instead of our repression of them. This way relieves our internalized hurt. We may need to give our body conscious affection. It may be open to the supernatural healing powers of the Divine. This idea is explained by spiritual healer and writer, Agnes Sanford, in her now classic book, The Healing Light. Sanford was one of the first healers to write about blending spiritual healing and actual physical healing.
Of great comfort is that body, connected to our soul, is fueled by the very compassion that created the body. In coherence with the soul, the body attunes itself to the body’s wisdom that wants to heal and grow. Its aches, pains and even illnesses teach us lessons that further develop our spiritual strength. And the body is the mechanism by which we feel the connection to our inner wholeness and the wholeness of the universe (Philip Shepherd, Radical Wholeness, 2017).
The body is a physical manifestation of the spiritual self. Therefore, when it receives love, it is reconnecting to the love that created the spirit and the flesh.
Spiritual practice: If your body is expressing pain or inability caused by how it has been treated in the past, place your hands on that part of your body and bless it. Forgive anything you or someone else may have done in the past that may now negatively affect your body.
Self-inquiry: Can I feel my body’s wisdom right now?
Prayer:
Dear God, I pray for the body connection. I know what it is like to be separate from my physical self. I feel chopped off from my being. I ask that I find you and your truth in my body. Amen.
