So I’ve been experiencing a great deal of primarily low back pain the last couple of weeks. This is not new to me. I’ve had back issues my whole life. This episode has been extra special. Everything hurts: standing, sitting, walking, lying on the couch or in the bed (on my back, right side, left side, stomach, pillow(s), no pillow(s)—doesn’t matter). The only thing that feels not painful is laying flat on my back on the hard living room floor, which is what I’ve been doing for long periods of time when it gets really bad. I even had to sleep there a couple nights because it was all I could tolerate.

Nothing is helping. I’ve tried stretching, Reiki, heat, ice, patches, meditation, medication, etc. Some dull the pain for a bit, but I want to be numb! I don’t want to feel anything. Wow, did I really just say that? I didn’t say I want the pain to go away. I said I want to be numb. I don’t want to feel anything. Hold on a moment…that wasn’t what I expected my fingers to be typing. I need to process that thought for a minute.

Uh, ok. So that wasn’t where I thought that was going, but it makes total sense when I think about it. That not-so-little revelation deserves a blog post of it’s very own. As Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls would say, “But I digress…”

A friend of mine asked me if I thought the pain was related to my emotions. I already suspected it was. I was feeling like with all the shifting going on lately in the world, in combination with the coaching work I’ve been doing (coaching others also brings up my own stuff to deal with because the Spirit Guides are super smart and know this is a great way to reach me because I am listening so intensely to help my clients!) I had a knowing that my body needs time to catch up physically with the emotional and mental aspect of the spiritual work I’ve been doing. My body is telling me to STOP and just do nothing.

I’ve been receiving this message in readings for months. Part of me always questions it. I would think to myself, “Well, that doesn’t make 100% sense. I’m not doing that much. I make time to relax. I veg out in front of the TV. I play games on my phone and get lost in social media for short bursts. I’ll make a puzzle now and again. I meditate and take an occasional nap (sometimes simultaneously LOL). I’m doing all the things that most people equate to “I’m not doing anything”. Still, the Guides kept telling me to SLOW DOWN! Stop doing so much! Because I don’t always learn things the easy way, they had to take drastic measures.

It wasn’t until I was lying flat on my back on the floor, with tears of pain streaming down into my ears, staring at the ceiling, one cat licking my head and another making biscuits on my tummy, that I realized I was not ever doing nothing the way I’m doing NO-thing at this very moment. I had the most difficult time just lying there. I searched for my laptop to see if I could work from the floor somehow. Could I type from this position? Where’s the remote? I could read a book on my phone or check my email. I even wondered what can I eat or drink in the lying down position that I won’t spill all over myself or choke on. Agh, if only I had trained the cats to scoop ice cream! I could not just stop and do NOTHING! I even started to question whether or not I have some form of ADD the way my mind was racing all over the place, trying to think of things I should or could be doing at that moment.

As the last week or so went by, I started to slowly feel a bit better. The pain is still constant but manageable. It flares up from time to time and radiates to other places, but I’ve been able to do more things than admire my recent paint job on the living room ceiling. I will not allow the pain to slow me down, even though that’s what my body is telling me.

This brings me to yesterday. The barn where I stable Hercules finally released the brutal 1 hour a day quarantine restriction. I could finally ride as long as I wanted and spend as much time with the horses as I needed! I was hurting but not in pain, and I wanted desperately to go for a ride with my big guy. That’s what I did. We rode in quiet bliss under the afternoon sun. We stopped and watched the geese in the pond and looked out for the family of deer I heard in the nearby woods. I focused on how my hips moved freely with the rhythm of Hercules’ walk and how the breeze felt on my warm cheeks. There was no rush to get anywhere. I had no back pain the entire time I was out there. It was a perfect ride on a perfect day.

Just a short while later, the pain returned. As I resumed my position on the living room floor that evening, I asked my Spirit Guides, “What is the root of this pain?” I saw a vision of the elaborate root system of a tree and had a knowing that roots are support for the tree. This morning, more information came to me and I made a larger connection:

Roots are support. My back supports my body. The root chakra is at the base of the spine. My back pain is in the lowest part of my spine. The root chakra is connected to your sense of safety, security, grounding, stability, survival and basic needs. Ugh! My negative belief of not being Safe/Supported/Protected is manifesting physically in my body!  MOTHER F*#@ER!

I am fully aware that this negative belief of not being safe/supported/protected has been festering for a long time for me—like my whole life, because it’s one of the lessons I incarnated into this lifetime to work on. It started rearing its ugly head full force when my husband passed away a couple years ago–kind of like the Whack-A-Mole arcade game. I’d notice that little mole of feeling unsafe, unsupported or unprotected would pop it’s head up and I’d use all my willpower to knock it out. There are times I feel like I’ve made some good progress (insert image of me whacking a mole and cheering as pull out my winning tickets here) and I start to feel like I got this being on my own/taking care of myself thing. Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy. Clearly, what my brain/ego thinks and what my soul knows are two different things. Just because I took a few good hard whacks at it and beat it into submission, doesn’t mean it won’t find another way to surface.

You’ve got to find the tunnel the mole (negative belief) came from, work with it, talk nicely with it, have compassion for it, acknowledge how it is surfacing in areas of your life you didn’t even realize, and then you can start to shift your choices and beliefs around it.

It’s not an overnight fix. There’s no magic pill and no way to go around it. You have to keep doing the work if you want lasting change. Deep down I know this, and I know the reason it keeps popping up for me is because I still have work to do on it. I’m a work in progress. We all are. I love this idea. It brings me comfort and makes me feel better about not needing to be perfect at everything. Plus, the more I work on myself, the better I am at helping others work through their process of eliminating negative beliefs. And I love what I do, so the more I can do it, the happier I am!

The journey continues.

My Spirit Guides remind me they are always here supporting and guiding me.

My animals remind me when I need to take a closer look at myself.

My body reminds me when I’m getting ahead of myself.

My spirit reminds me to find joy in the process.

My heart reminds me that unconditional love is the root of everything.