Self Trust And Truth Are The Basis of Health And Freedom

Keeping the contracts we make with ourselves is an act of self love; it also makes us models of human freedom.

Dear friends,

We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions rather than our actions and covenants.

If you’re struggling to heal or find freedom, you’re not alone; and you’re probably caught inside a web of self-deceptions designed to keep you exactly where you are: stuck.

I know, because I’ve been there.

All through my teens I did my best to ignore the many warning signs from my body, and my conscience. I lied my way through the hardest years of my childhood in order to survive them, but the lies kept getting heavier and heavier until I thought they would crush me under their weight.

During an agonizing period of limbo in my early twenties, I couldn’t decide if I was more afraid of the deep well of pain and secrets buried inside my body, or the unknown consequences of lifting the lid to let everything out.

Like everyone I have ever worked with, I was swinging between opposing poles: fear of pain, and fear of freedom.

True freedom is not marked by the absence of suffering; freedom is about responsibility, truth telling, and aligning our daily actions with the voice of our conscience…come what may. But because responsibility is terrifying, and we often resist it due to our attachment to victim mentality, we ping pong between lies of denial and lies of delusion while hoping for deliverance.

Self deception is a human specialty, and we are all masters of it.

Every day we are faced with hundreds of tiny choices:

✦ When my alarm goes off, will I groan in protest and hit the snooze button, or get up at the time I said I would?
✦ When it’s time for lunch, will I eat the foods that I know will nourish my body - or reach for comfort food?
✦ Will I wash the dirty dishes in the sink tonight, even though I am tired and I don’t want to?
✦ When that gnawing voice inside reminds me that I haven’t had that difficult conversation with a loved one, will I put it off until tomorrow…for the 26th day in a row?

These may seem like trivial choices that don’t carry much weight; but we know they do because we feel a little more constriction in the chest, or a tightening in the belly, every time we dismiss the voice of our conscience and act against it. Then, we feel a ping of guilt or shame. And every time we lie to ourselves, we are lying to the people in our lives.

Our body holds us accountable.

What kinds of contracts and covenants do you have in place with yourself?

At age 24, I lifted the lid and stared into the darkness; instead of killing me, I felt a giant weight lift off my shoulders.

Trapped in a self created prison, for over ten years my body had reflected back to me the state of my psyche: intense feelings of pain bounced off the walls of my thick skin - literal physical walls I’d built unknowingly through a stoic refusal to show my emotional hurts to anyone. Reverberating an endless drumbeat of aching tension, my soft tissue was turning into a maze of twisting vines that squeezed my bones with a ferocity that threatened to strangle them.

Until one day, while writing in my journal, I stared down at four words that changed my life forever:

“I am utterly traumatized.”

Instantly, I felt my body relax.

I had just told myself a truth that I’d been running from for a decade.

This was the moment I discovered:

Truth is felt in the body.

Untruth is also felt in the body, and it feels like tension, twisting, writhing, aching, squirming, restlessness, and the never ending fight to hold it all in. But since these symptoms exist in the mysterious strata of the physical body, they are routinely labeled as syndromes or incurable diseases, as if the body is somehow misbehaving or defective.

If this describes you (labels like fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and MS fit the bill), my unwavering conviction is that there is nothing wrong with your body.

Your body was brilliantly designed to be a reflection of you so that you always have an accurate mirror with which to see yourself as you truly are - instead of as you’d prefer yourself to be.

Before I wrote those words in my journal, I would have preferred to be normal; healthy; not traumatized. Rather than feeling helpless, scared and hurt, I had created my preferred persona: strong, self reliant and immune to pain.

Without the body as a [sometimes painful] mirror, we would get away with our delusions and lies.

Pain holds us accountable to truth.

After writing those words in my journal only to feel the heavy load inside lighten, I made myself a promise:

From now on, I am devoted to seeking the truth: about myself and my past, the body, the state of the world, other people…no matter how painful, I want to know “what is.”

You don’t need me to tell you this, but it’s worth writing anyway:

Truth is often painful; yet it is always liberating if we can step outside our preferences and our emotional reactions to whatever “is.”

Do you keep the promises you make to yourself?

Are your daily actions in alignment with the voice of your conscience?

If the answer is no, then - like every human being I have ever met - you are more afraid of freedom than pain.

Ask yourself:

▶ Why do I constantly lie to myself?
▶ What am I afraid would happen if I kept my promises and lived a life of personal integrity?

Lies erode self trust.

Without self trust, we cannot heal; and our bodies will continue to bear the burdens of our deceit.

The formula for freedom is simple:

It is achieved by small actions performed daily that align with the voice of our conscience.

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The healing balm of self trust.

With self trust comes the ability to identify and meet our very real physical, emotional, relational, social and financial needs.

Self trust starts by taking full responsibility for every aspect of our lives. It means we are ready to make emotionally mature decisions every day - both big and small - while accepting the consequences of those decisions.

It means reclaiming whatever authority and power we’ve outsourced up to now.

Your body is a highly intelligent sensing organ, and it knows the difference between truth and untruth.

Trust the pain.

Trust the symptoms.

Trust the tension and constriction.

Trust the lightness and expansion.

Trust that your body is always communicating important truths about the state of your health and well being; about your relationships; the environment; and your purpose.

Your body knows when you are lying; and when you are being honest. Your body knows when other people are lying; and being honest. The bodies of the people in your life know when you are living from truth vs living from lies.

One reason it is so easy to maintain the web of lies and self deception is because everyone else is doing it; and we’re all secretly relieved when the people in our lives are willing to play the same game. We know they’re deceiving themselves, or stuck in self sabotaging patterns; but so are we, so we adopt a silently agreed upon “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Living from the truth requires that we consistently choose courage over comfort and authentic self expression over conforming to the status quo.

We must be willing to face and feel whatever it is that we have always feared most: abandonment, rejection, judgment, punishment, helplessness, humiliation, shame, pain…

TO BE CLEAR: I am not suggesting that we ignore the physical body; or, that we can eliminate all of our aches and pains with truth telling. What I have repeatedly seen in my own life, and in thousands of people that I’ve worked with personally, is that the physical body regenerates rapidly - with a little help - when we are in integrity with ourselves. However, when we are OUT of integrity with ourselves, the physical body will struggle to regenerate - no matter how sophisticated and advanced our treatments and therapies.

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Become a model of human freedom.

Devotion to knowing, speaking from, and aligning our actions with truth is a courageous act precisely because it is so uncommon. When we encounter it in others, we call those people our heroes. Despite powerful forces pressing in upon them from all sides with clear agendas to steer them in the other direction, they obey their conscience anyway.

When you begin to unravel the web of lies in your own life and body, and live from an energy of devotion to truth, you will become a model of human freedom - inspiring others to do the same. Not everyone will be happy about your choice, but that merely reveals their own level of (un)freedom.

This path is not easy.

I miss the mark almost every day, but I also hit the mark every day in many small yet significant ways because I’ve been consciously building this muscle for the last 20 years.

Right now, I am facing a very intense fear of pain vs fear of freedom choice that will change the course of my life. I’ve been engaged in a pretty epic inner battle for months, and the outcome is still unknown. I will probably write about it soon, but not today. I just want you to know that you’re not alone.

All of us experience these inner battles, we just don’t talk about them openly. I wish we would, and that is why I’m writing articles for The Human Freedom Project and gearing up to start the podcast.

Talking about these things openly will liberate us from the collective prison we’ve erected within society in order to maintain the appearance of an idealized “normal” that does not even exist and contributes every day to the growing rates of chronic pain and disease, social violence and trauma, environmental catastrophes, economic corruption and war between nations.

We can let evolution takes its course; or we can intervene and become the pattern breakers.

I’m grateful you’re here with me!

With love,
Elisha

P.S. On August 1st, 2023 I offered a free class on Zoom called Untangling Our Mind-Body Knots.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE REPLAY (scroll down to view the video)

We discussed the difference between degeneration and pain (which are NOT synonymous), and why it’s so important that we learn to separate emotions from sensations, and subjective beliefs, stories and meanings from the objective reality of the physical body.

If you want strategic guidance to do this for yourself along with a deep dive into fascia and nervous system science, pain science, regeneration science, and my guidance on mapping a path to authenticity and freedom, consider joining signature course: Mind Body Breakthrough (available on the replay page).

MBB has helped hundreds of people crack the code on chronic pain and mind-body disconnection issues like so-called autoimmune conditions and fascia “diseases” like fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome.

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