Percolate and The Process of Whole Body Healing

By Emily A. Francis

What if you got really still for a moment and let your body speak? What would your body need you to know? 

Don't you feel like now is the time your owe to yourself to find out? 

In this time of uncertainty we might feel safe inside and even have the opportunity to use this time to gain strength, get focused, do something savvy. At the same time we also understand the real gravity of the situation that lurks just outside your door. We try to remain positive, raise our vibrations and create a shield around us so that the dangers miss our homes. At least, that's how I'm feeling right now.

I'm feeling pretty strong on the inside and truly afraid of what's on the outside. I realize how quickly it could be me or anyone else. This thing does not discriminate even if the conflicting reports says otherwise.

I had a thought though. This offering is not going to rely on what you can do to stay positive or fit. It's what you can do to get real. I've spent the majority of my life's work studying the body and what emotions we carry in certain areas. As a clinical massage therapist with some great specialties, I've worked with countless bodies and watched how they carry physical stress and emotional pains. I could easily sit here and talk about how you might be clinching your jaws or grinding your teeth at night and waking with terrible tension head aches. When that happens, it's because we are what I refer to as chewing on the bone.

We can't stop replaying stories and scenarios to the point that our jaws take the brunt and the headaches come from the clinch. Those things are true and exactly proportionately related. Another example might be if our knees are swelling or acting up because we are stuck and feel like we are standing in quicksand. I usually say it's because we are standing at a fork in the road. We want to make a decision, but we haven't begun the movement into it yet. Now, it's different because we are forced to stay standing in that quicksand in real time. This all implies that your body might begin to experience some strange symptoms. Or...could it be that your body has been experiencing said symptoms and you are finally learning to be still long enough to notice them? That's a "what comes first, the chicken or the egg" kind of deal. Either way, pay attention, stay focused and let your body speak. 

I had the pleasure of hosting Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino on my radio show last week All About Healing on Healthy Life Radio. We got into her book PERCOLATE: Let Your Best Self Filter Through. She talked about her nine steps to create change. One of the steps of the nine that she offers in her book is the discussion of when it's time to let things percolate. You are not in action just yet, you are allowing the options and thoughts and visuals to all swirl together and take whatever time they need to take before you step in and move.

It's the moment of willingness to feel all the feelings. She said that if we don't take that time to sit with it and feel uncomfortable for a bit, then we can't jump ahead to the final steps to liberation. 

My somatic body chart shows much of the science behind The Percolate Process. We have our heavy four emotions (trauma, shame, guilt, grief) that the body can experience and store within the tissues and then there are four joyous expressions of emotions (happy, joy, connected, empowered) also stored within the muscle memory and other soft tissues. I have an action bridge in the middle that determines which side of the emotions you will be on.

The actions under my chart are to 1) suppress the emotions which feels like you are choosing not to take action but in reality, not choosing is, in fact, an action. Then there is the middle ground, the one that can take you to the release (3) and to the fabulous four emotions. It's exactly what Elizabeth talks about with taking the time to percolate. The term in my chart is  process (2). It's the same action! 

Whether it's letting your thoughts percolate, or allowing your experiences that the body holds to process, comes down to those moments in time when there is no suppressing and not yet releasing. You are letting things swirl. They gently lift up from the deep set that they have buried into the body, and they are swirling and coming to life in the mind. It's the moment when we get truly honest with ourselves. It's not making any moves except to the surrender. It's allowing all the feelings that have been pushed down, all the experiences that we have tried to disassociate ourselves from, it's all the expressions that we have silenced within ourselves and in this moment, they start to catch a breath. This is the moment where we have to learn to sit with the discomforts and let them rise. It is only through the processing or the percolating that we can finally get messy, and real with what's really been holding us down. Healing has never been presented as something neat and tidy. It's messy. It's designed that way. It measures our inner strength and courage to face the things we've spent a lot of time trying to push down and disappear without the surrender. The surrender is where the strength lives and its best friend conviction is not far away. 

Right now during these times of being home and sitting with the opportunity for at least a little bit more silence and not getting lost in the shuffle of running a million errands and mundane daily details, I ask you to challenge yourself to get still and let anything your body has been holding come up to the mind and present itself without judgement, and without movement. This isn't to fix things. It isn't to do a massive healing overload. All of those are wonderful. They are also what naturally follows if you sit with anything long enough. None are  possible without this piece of the puzzle. 

About Emily A. Francis

Emily A. Franics is the host of the weekly radio show All About Healing on healthylife.net and the author or Stretch Therapy, The Body Heals Itself and the upcoming release on pre order now: Whole Body Healing: Create Your Own Path to Physical, Emotional, Energetic and Spiritual Wellness available now through all online retailers. Find Emily at: emilyafrancisbooks.com

Now available to pre-order.

Whole Body Healing by Emily A. Francis

Learn how to take an active role in your own healing process and discover a wide range of treatment modalities to help you achieve physical, emotional, energetic, and spiritual wellness. Within these pages, you will find dozens of hands-on practices for working with your body as an integrated whole and for incorporating chakras, emotions, spiritual energies, and much more.

Join author Emily A. Francis as she shares the critical information and solutions you need to heal the ailments and illnesses that may be holding you back. This book explores traditional and modern healing techniques such as breath-work, cognitive therapy, hypnotherapy, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, homeopathy, flower remedies, essential oils, naturopathy, EMDR, EFT, and many more that go beyond the physical to help you find and forge your own path to living your best life.