Some five years ago I facilitated 2 seminars in Kyoto, invited by my friend Dalando who organized and pre-financed the trip. It was May and the weather quite beautiful. Grass was blooming and as we were crossing Kyoto on foot my girlfriend suddenly got one of these sneezing attacks that people with hayfever sometimes suffer from.
I was thinking to myself, “Now here we are in a country almost half a planet’s surface away from where we live. The grasses certainly are much different. The hayfever shouldn’t be active. It’s over reacting.” So I turned to Janshi and asked, “Want to try an experiment?” And when she nodded curiously I added, “In the seminar we have been talking with the inner child and other voices. I think your hayfever really is one of those voices. Don’t you think?” And she nodded and saw that she was already understanding what I was getting at.
So I felt completely comfortable asking, “Can I speak with the hayfever in you?” And after she consented I started something like this, “Thank you for being willing to speak with me. I firstly want to honor your presence in Janshi and even though I don’t know it, I think there is a purpose to your existence. I wanted to tell you, because maybe you don’t know, that we’re here in Japan and that I think you are out of your area of expertise here. These grasses are not to be responded to, they are totally foreign to you. I think it is okay to occasionally have a little sneeze, just so we know you’re still there. But,” now speaking with a firm and clear emphasis, “I think this is totally out of proportion and you should immediatly stop over reacting. Thank you.”
And for the rest of our stay in Japan Janshi had an occasional sneeze or two, and that was it.
Now, was this just a matter of psychological influence on the soma, so are hayfever and other allergies ‘just’ psycho-somatic? Depends on the theory you hold true. I believe it’s just a matter of degree: mind and body, psyche and soma, are twins, and so they should be influencing each other tremendously.
Anyway, the result of the Japanese experiment was thus that I now felt confident to speak with my own hayfever when, upon our return to Berlin, Germany, the season struck me with it.
So I spoke with my hayfever saying that I appreciate its existence as it connects me stronger with the seasons. But it was not needed to incapacitate me in many ways. So, “I agree to honor you every time I sneeze once or twice, and I want you to stop over reacting to a bit pollen that really doesn’t hurt me at all.”
And my hayfever listened and has become a companion that I can live with quite well, where formerly I sometimes had to not go walking in parks or, even worse, go to the country-side.
So thank you, my hayfever, that you have come to agree with the rest of me…
What has come to fruition in this move with allergies is my experience with voice-dialogue, Â the work that I’ve done with constellations, what I’ve learned from the inntelligence between us, and simple day to day intuition.
Thank you Katinka, that’s very interesting. Great that it worked for you too.
You say, “talk to my body” – so am I right in understanding that this was not to the allergy, as in my examples, but to the body generally?
I feel there is an interesting distinction here…
Anyway, I’m sure that our psyche can have a much larger influence on our ailments – and that doesn’t mean that the cause of the ‘disease’ is therefor also in the mind. That’s very similar to saying that since with an umbrella we can keep ourselves dry in the rain, that the umbrella is the cause of getting wet if we don’t use it (or haven’t one with us).
I had that talk with my body about detergent allergy at one point. I told my body that there was no reason to suppose that detergent was harmful, it had no expertise in finding out if it was harmful and that these substances were part of our life now – whether we liked it or not. And that the reaction itself was not helping.
It worked as well. I’m not saying, nor are you I’m sure, that all allergies can be fixed this way – but there is definitely a psychological component at least to some allergies.