What is a metabody?
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Marcel ProustEveryone has a body, the physical medium through which we experience space, time and life. Our brain anchors our consciousness, remembers those experiences and simulates the future. But you are not just a brain that remembers and thinks and a body that feels – you’re not just a biological machine.
The less-physical aspects of our lives are our metabody, and its role in our health and happiness is profound. In addition to the memory of the brain, we have body memory – our life experiences, good and bad, are stored throughout our physical body. We also have an energy field, produced by our electrochemically-based nervous system and other biological processes, commonly called the aura. The physical and the energetic combine and commingle to create physical health and well-being; are influenced and influence mental and emotional vitality; and all support and are supported by the spiritual influences in our lives.
How does this interconnection play out in our lives? In short, all that we are affects everything else that we are. The physical affects the emotional when drugs or food causes (un-)intentional mood changes. The emotional affects the physical when stress manifests in chronic disease or emotional crises create sudden illness. The physical affects the mental when flashbacks are triggered by the smallest sensation. You’ve got a body and a metabody, and you need to care for both!
Western medical practice is waking up to this reality. Acupuncture, once dismissed as quackery, is now in common clinical use in hospitals across the country, even though we don’t understand the science of why it works. Psychoneuroimmunology is a burgeoning field of research. Universities are devoting time and resources to the study of spirituality and healing.
A physician works with your physical body; get a metaphysician to work with your metabody.
Please understand: I appreciate and honor the miracles of modern medicine, and I love working with the body. But there's more to you than just a body, and that "more than" is my area of expertise.
Some sources on the science of the metabody include: books on body memory & energy medicine; and articles and essays on the human energy field, stress & chronic illness, emotional turmoil & illness, the science of acupuncture, and psychoneuroimmunology. The University of Minnesota has a Center for Spirituality & Healing.
