Creating Bioregulatory Supportive Relationships
By Ian Kennedy
In bioregulatory medicine there are many stressors to be addressed physically, mentally, emotionally and energetically. Often the focus is on the physical body and it's function and its symptoms. Symptoms of course lead us to an understanding of how the body is trying to heal itself and give us insight into how that process can be supported.
Heavy metals, chemicals, immune stressors and scars are some of the big hitters that are pursued to help restore proper regulation and elevate the immune system from overwhelming burdens.
Of all these stressor however, the emotional components to illness may be casually glanced over or completely ignored. It can be difficult for the practitioner who, if not well versed in emotional wellness beyond the psychological, to address these emotional components. How the body holds emotional events, what organs play a role in emotional expression, as well as the techniques to alleviate these emotional responses generated by the body which effects a persons behaviors and illness takes time and training.
However, often helping the client understand that emotions are generated in many ways and function as survival mechanisms, and are often of traumatic and dramatic events that can become long term programs running in the emotional background of ones life can be enlightening and beneficial.
One avenue that can be easy to address and open up a person to the possibility of greater emotional freewill is reframing relationships. It is not uncommon for clients to finally admit that they have been in unsupportive relationships for a long time. We also should remember that all people have relationships with everything around them, including themselves. This goes for relationships with both the inanimate as well as animate.
Often when we talk of relationships the western mind goes to the person that we are closest too, often a husband or wife. Today, if we say “relationship” it is assumed that we are speaking of a sexual partner. Relationship is however that which we relate to. I have a relationship with my car and when it does not run right I have an emotional reaction to it. I have a relationship with my house, my friends, my children, my dog and so on. We even should be aware of the relationship we have with the earth and the greater cosmos.
The important aspect of reframing relationships is to first understand that for most people a relationship is about attempting to extract joy and satisfaction from someone or something else. This is where the problem begins.
When we attempt to extract joy and satisfaction from something outside ourselves we will always be disappointed. No matter how wonderful or fulfilling any relationship may be, it will never be one hundred percent exactly the way we think it should be. Life doesn’t work that way. Life is never one hundred percent the way we think it should be. When we expect someone or something to satisfy our need for joy completely, whether in companionship or function, we are setting ourselves up for disappointments. Because, expectations kill relations.
Relationships are generally formulated with unspoken rules of behaviors and expectations. As long as those are maintained the relationship can survive. If those rules and expectations are broken however, the relationship has to either evolve or die. When we remove expectations and have a clear understanding of the rules in which the relationship is set up, its chances for survival and growth greatly increases.
One of the most powerful ways to ensure that a relationship, especially the human to human one will flourish, is to put they other persons joy wellbeing and growth above our own.
This is not to deny our own, yet, If one is always in a state of mind and emotion that this persons wellbeing and joy is of the great importance to me, without expecting anything in return, we are truly in a state of loving.
This can be seen in how parents care for their children.
If all the relationships one holds are based in one of parenthood, then the greater wellbeing of the other is always above our own. When this is the foundation of a relationship both people who are engaged in it will not seek joy from the other but only share in the joy that comes from it.
In not seeking joy from it, only focussed on giving joy to it, then the joy from the relationship is always returned ten fold. This is why dog owners deeply enjoy the relationship they have with their K-nine friends. Dogs give love unconditionally and are alway happy to see and be with their owners. Dogs only want to please their person, and in being so, generate an emotion of love inside the person that is unique. They ask for nothing and yet seem to give everything. Of course we need to feed them and care for them and it is in that caring that we give, we also receive so much.
So, look at the relationships that are held, see if they are ones based on the extracting of joy or the giving of joy to the other. Dig into the unspoken rules that frame the relationship and work to reestablish the relationship in unselfishness and service to the other.
See if they are relationships of expectation and assumption or if they are of growth and support. When we put others before ourselves and their joy and wellbeing above our own the relationship will not only grow and flourish but will also be deeper and more true and rewarding than once believed possible.