Healing the 'Pain-body': A Roadmap to Consciousness and Wellbeing by Sarah McCroskey Director of the Bioenergy Balancing Center East Bay The term “pain-body” coined by Eckhart Tolle in his brilliant book The New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose refers to an “accumulation of old emotional pain” which “almost everyone carries in his or her energy field”. Although the term “pain-body” was new to me, the nature and healing of this very human aspect is deeply familiar. As an energy worker and a certified Bioenergy Balancing practitioner for over a decade, I have come to know the inner workings of the “pain-body” and more importantly how to harness its capacity for soul-level self discovery, physical/emotional healing and consciousness. Mr. Tolle characterizes the “pain-body” as “a semiautonomous energy-form that lives within most human beings, an entity made up of emotion” and likens it to a “cunning animal” that must feed itself or “take on energy” and does so through generating painful emotional experience, interpersonal drama and negative thought. Unchecked and without a clear way to communicate, it’s true, the “pain-body” has only one way to assert itself into our awareness - through repetitive emotional patterns, physical symptoms and limiting beliefs – a.k.a. drama and suffering. However, as a repository of our unfinished business, the “pain-body” or “body consciousness” (a term I use) can be a guide and ally in energetic healing. When given a means to communicate, it can provide a soul-level roadmap to well being. As Tolle states, “Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves behind a remnant of pain.” This pain – unexperienced feelings and trauma – is taken into the energy systems of the body (meridians and chakras) and held until we can get back to it, when we feel safe and capable of processing the content. This is how we coped with the initial trauma and at the time we considered it critical to our survival. Although this unconscious coping mechanism gave life to the “pain-body” it also demonstrates the enormous compassion and loyalty the body consciousness holds - assisting us in ‘putting one foot in front of the other’ and moving on in life. While talk and analysis can provide awareness of issues and dynamics of the past, the content lives energetically – trapped in the body’s circuitry, often outside of our conscious awareness. The content is brought back ‘up’ when the original event is re-triggered by something deemed similar. So finding a means of communicating is key. Muscle testing and body dialogue are very learnable skills which give the body consciousness a voice. Once the body has a way to communicate we can discover what got stuck and when. We can also find how these incidents are held in the energy body and release that charge. This frees us energetically and emotionally. Through further inquiry we can track the beliefs or negative interpretations we may have created or adopted at the time. Releasing and replacing these limiting constructs with something more current that truly serves us completes the past incident and places us squarely in an empowered NOW. We can re-trace this energetic roadmap because the body consciousness holds complete recall of every experience, every event as well as our interpretation of that event. It knows how every physiological and biochemical process is working because it is the body consciousness that operates these functions. It knows, with precision, how past trauma and energetic content are impacting the body – creating physical symptoms and emotional patterns, the “pain-body” content. With the proper tools and finding joy within the depth journey of our soul-level path, freedom is not only possible, but we can be grateful to the “pain-body” - it shows us what needs our love and attention while compelling us to awaken! Sarah McCroskey ©2009 (Published in Open Exchange Magazine July/Aug/Sept 2009) Sarah McCroskey, Director of the Bioenergy Balancing Center East Bay, will be doing workshops at Unity of Berkeley (2401 LeConte, Berkeley, CA 94705) this summer teaching the tools to Heal Your ‘Pain-Body’ (see website for dates and details). Sarah also teaches teleclasses and provides private, one-on-one healing sessions. For more info see biointegration.com or 510.231.2425. RETURN TO OMPLACE HOME