What happens when you say YES but you really want to say NO?
I love looking at the body through the lens of Chinese medicine because everything is connected. Acupuncturists are like investigators, we love asking questions (LOTS of questions) so we can get to the root of the problem. There is a reason for every single disharmony in your body. When I started acupuncture school, one of my teachers spent an entire lecture on this statement:
“When there is free flow, there is no pain. And when there is no free flow, there is pain.”
Simple idea, right? If your energy is flowing freely, then your body is healthy. It’s when the body’s energy gets “stuck” somewhere, that symptoms start showing up. Picture a traffic jam; there are hundreds of cars on the road but no one is moving because there is a car up ahead that’s stalled. That one car is blocking all of the cars from going anywhere. This is what can happen in the body. So, energy gets stuck somewhere and there’s a buildup of energy in one place and that causes symptoms like a headache (if the energy is stuck in the head) or stomach pain (if the energy is stuck in the abdomen).
Lots of things can cause energy to get stuck in one place in the body:
Banging your knee against a wall can cause pain in your knee
Eating too much sugar can cause upset in your digestive organs
Drinking too much alcohol can make your Liver congested.
Unprocessed emotions can cause your energy to get stuck too:
Getting angry but not getting over it
Feeling sad and staying sad for a long time
Living in “fight or flight mode” (a LOT of people are living like this right now)
High levels of stress leading to low level anxiety on a constant basis
Stress is a huge cause of stuck energy in the body
Another huge reason energy gets stuck in the body.
Saying Yes when you really want to say No.
When you say yes to something or someone but you really want to say no, you are causing the energy in your body to get stuck. You are not in alignment with your true needs and desires, which means you are not in flow with your natural rhythm. And remember… when there is no free flow, there is pain.
You are making yourself sick when you say yes but you feel no.
It’s so common in our culture, especially for women. I have worked with hundreds of women in clinical practice who say yes to everyone and everything. I’m guilty of it too. Like I shared in my last blog post, I learned this lesson the hard way. I said yes too many times, and most of those yesses should have been no’s. I made myself sick and landed in bed for a really long time. I wasn’t listening to the quieter messages my body was giving me that were happening LONG before I landed sick in bed. So, my body gave me a really loud message in the form of a health crisis. I said yes until my body told me no.
This is why I’m so passionate about teaching the idea that saying no is an act of self love; because saying no is essential to our survival. Saying no is a requirement for a vital life. You must say no to find your flow. And when you find your flow, you find health.
One of the most powerful essential oils to help you recalibrate your inner compass is Coriander. Coriander is the oil of integrity which means it will help you honor your body’s wisdom, and it will help strip away the reasons and excuses we make for saying yes to everyone and everything. Coriander will help you embody yes and no in your own body.