Healing from emotional stress and past traumas is not always as easy as healing from the chemical or physical stress the human body experiences.
Spinal Flow Technique founder Dr. Carli Axford believes emotional stress such as abuse, neglect, bullying, feeling unwanted as a child, not feeling safe or not having loving parents can all be stored in the spine as spinal blockages.
“The emotions we have now and as a child, if not expressed or released, become stored and find a place in the spine to do this – often in the centre and passion gateways,” she says.
“Negative thoughts, beliefs and stories have the power to cause spinal blockages, through layer upon layer of internal emotional stress that has nowhere to go.”
Of all the stress our body experiences, it’s the emotional stress – particularly the stress or trauma we carry from childhood – that requires Spinal Flow Technique-facilitated healing the most.
The main areas of the spine affected by emotional stress are the base, centre, passion and pause gateways.
“The human body has everything it needs to heal itself and release spinal blockages, but emotional stress can be stored so deeply that our clients can’t find and release these themselves – they need the help of spinal flow practitioners,” says Dr Carli Axford.
Emotional healing using Spinal Flow Technique
The human body wants to protect us and keep us safe, so when we experience emotions that we cannot process or fully comprehend, our nervous system stores them at the back of our mind – which is precisely where the spine is.
“It does not need to be a significant emotional trauma to create a blockage in our body,” says Dr. Carli Axford.
“Because emotional stress is such an intimate and internal experience – and usually the first kind we will encounter in childhood – it is the one that stores the deepest in the nervous system and tends to hide beneath layers of physical and chemical stress.”
How to help release emotional stress
It helps to understand that emotions are energy in motion (e + motion = emotion). When the energy is not in motion, it becomes stagnant and stores itself in the body as a spinal blockage.
We are emotional beings and our body talks to us all the time, particularly when it comes to feelings. Emotions can be felt in the body as gut feelings, heavy hearts and sinking stomachs, for example. Pain – both physical and emotional – can be our body sending us a message.
Some of the key emotional stress situations during different life stages can include:
In childhood
- Being the result of an unwanted pregnancy
- Not feeling loved
- Being scolded by parents or teachers
- Disharmony at home
- Unstable or inconsistent parenting
- Feeling unsafe, unseen, neglected or unheard
- Family violence and abuse
- Bullying
In adolescence
- Bullying
- Peer exclusion
- Low self-esteem
- Unidentified sense of self
- Undefined values
- Puberty
- Sexuality
- Physical or sexual violence
- Study stress
- Financial strain
- Family violence
- Social media
- Depression & anxiety
In adulthood
- Workplace harassment
- Career
- Family dynamics
- Parenting
- Peer exclusion
- Low self-esteem or self-worth
- Financial strain
- Family violence
- Physical or sexual violence
- Addiction
- Anxiety, depression, mental Illness
- Feeling disconnected
- Lacking purpose
- Death of a loved one
When we understand that emotions and the different feelings they create are perfectly normal, the process of releasing their energy becomes much easier.
The goal of a Spinal Flow Practitioner is to expand the Spinal Wave and release spinal blockages with every contact – the body will determine which order that happens in.
“The body’s healing intelligence is powerful,” says Dr. Carli Axford. “Healing can – and does – happen.”
