Dissolving Physical Pain From Within

By Jessica Bell, D.O.

We are all guaranteed to experience physical pain at various points in our lives, so why is it so difficult for so many of us to navigate times when our bodies are in pain? In order to learn how to work with and dissolve pain, we must first discuss its underlying root cause. Our health care providers, parents, friends, coaches, therapists and trainers all have different opinions about this important and universal physical, sensational experience, and as a result the solutions to this“pain problem” vary considerably when it comes to pain management.  

How I Began Exploring Physical Pain From The Outside-In

I have always been fascinated by physical pain, largely due to my own personal journey with it that began after being pinned under a car during a sledding incident at the age of four. From that time onward, I seemed to always have pain that popped up and remained for a while somewhere in my body, sometimes remaining for what felt like far too long a period of time. This experience with my own pain led me on a long and winding road of self-inquiry and discovery. During my early explorations in healing my pain as a teenager, I learned  how to strengthen my body and ultimately how to use fitness and weight training as a form of rehabilitation. I grew increasingly more captivated by the body’s intricate musculoskeletal system and how it can be restored back to health and optimal function.

I later chose to pursue a career as a medical doctor, and began osteopathic medical school in 2001. What drew me to become an osteopathic medical student initially, were the tenets of osteopathy that stated that the body is self-regenerating and self-regulating. As a first year medical student, I was trained to offer osteopathic manipulative treatments, using my hands to work with patients. I learned how this work helped their bodies return to a state of health and balance within and how to use my hands to catalyze and activate their indwelling healing capacities. 

Intuitively, I knew and trusted that the body held far more

healing capacities than any of the external medical

interventions could offer, and knew wholeheartedly that the

solution to dissolving pain lay within the body. 

I later chose to pursue a medical specialty in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and began my post-graduate career as a board certified pain management specialist. During my earliest months in medical practice, I was trained to offer my patients an exhaustive assortment of medications, topical interventions, injections, splints, compresses and even surgical options in more severe cases. It soon became abundantly clear that these bandaid style approaches to pain management treated only surface layers of pain, not the root cause.

These revelations led me to pivot my approach to physical pain, and return to the way I had been trained to use my hands to treat patients at the start of my schooling. 

Exploring Physical Pain From The Inside-Out

I have learned quite a lot about the origins of pain over the two plus decades of working with patients using osteopathic manipulative treatment, and more recently energetic healing approaches. My hands have grown increasingly more sensitive, after working with thousands of patients over the years, and the energies that make up their bodies and energetic systems.  My treatments have evolved over time, and I now offer both hands-on and distance sessions that continue to teach and inform me about the vast amount of inner vibrational patterns within and around the body.

What I have come to is this… the first step in identifying the root cause of physical pain, requires us to look beyond the story about the origin of the pain. Stories like: repetitive overuse injuries, pain from lack of use of the body, pain from auto accidents or childbirth traumas, slips on ice, falls, raking and snow removal strains, enthusiastic gardening injuries, carrying too much weight on the body, the weekend warrior adventures, etc. This list is quite exhaustive as you can see. Despite the origin “event” of the arrival of the pain, I became ever more convinced that there is a much deeper explanation behind all the stories and theories crafted.

If the pain “problem” is approached from the outside-in as a purely physical issue without looking at the energy and emotions underlying it, the pain often persists and all too often grows larger. While treating the pain with classic western medical approaches can offer symptom improvement, and even pain abatement for shorter periods of time, the relief often doesn’t last, and the pain inevitably returns in a different body region or organ system. This is the unfortunate downward spiral that affects far too many afflicted individuals. We need more lasting solutions.

Unprocessed Emotions: A Root Cause Of Physical Pain 

I have developed an increasing awareness that in the majority of cases,

underneath the story of the injury, it is actually unprocessed

emotional energy that is the root cause of physical pain. 

This is understandable, since most of us begin to stifle our emotions early in life.  We learn to be tough or stoic, overly accommodating or ashamed of our feelings, while stuffing our emotions to move forward, make others happy, excel and succeed in life. This rockets us through our years of early childhood traumas, big and small, years of education and early adulthood achievement often without realizing how much emotional pain we are suppressing. 

This works for a period of time, but I have come to see and feel that

whatever emotion is experienced and not expressed, becomes compressed down and stored within our biofield and in our bodies. 

What is the biofield you ask? In her brilliant book, Electric Body Electric Health, Eileen Day McKusick describes the human biofield, the magnetic field that surrounds and interpenetrates the body. Eileen reveals that this field holds a vibrational backlog of every undigested, unprocessed emotion we have ever experienced in an anatomic map that she outlines so eloquently. Every unprocessed magnetic emotion in the field has a corresponding electrical, biochemical counterpart in the cells of the body, that are continually in communication with one another. In other words, compressed magnetic, emotional energy in the biofield, corresponds to compressed, electrical energy in the physical body. If the emotion remains in the field for long periods of time without being expressed, or dissolved and transmuted back through the body, physical pain ensues. This was a life altering discovery for me as an osteopath and truly the missing piece to the “pain problem” I had long been searching for.

I now know that over time, our emotional energetic storage fills up, resulting in an increasing backlog of emotional energy, ultimately resulting in energetic dissonance in our biofield and physical dis-ease in the body. 

True Root Level Solutions

Since the striking realization that dissolving physical pain in the body requires a deeper understanding of not only its emotional root cause, but also a knowledge of its storage form with the human biofield, I have changed my approach to working with pain. I now work within the backlog of emotions contained within the magnetic human biofield while also simultaneously working with the corresponding congested (painful) regions of the body. The results of this approach have been mind blowing, to put it mildly.  

While there are many ways to “comb” the magnetic emotions back from the biofield to and through the body, where they are processed, digested and dissolved, I would like to share a couple here with you…

Learning To Feel Your Feelings

One incredibly potent approach is to allow your feelings to be expressed through your day, while also learning to feel the backlog of emotions stored within your biofield. We all came into life knowing how to feel our feelings, and yet most of us have become disconnected from this form of energetic, emotional expression and are far too practiced at the art of stuffing and storing our feelings. Learning how to feel your feelings competently again to comb back through your emotional backlog, is the work that my life and professional partner, Claire Garner NBC-HWC, Intuitive Emotional Healing Guide brilliantly offers through her Intuitive Emotional Healing Framework. Through the building of awareness of the mind (and its stories) and fostering emotional resilience with practicality and true self compassion, Claire helps us learn to feel emotions back through without drowning in them or feeling incredible discomfort. I truly cannot recommend this approach more highly for dissolving and working with your emotional backlog.

Another solution lies in working directly within your body, using your energetic self-healing tools: breath, intention and focused attention. When you learn to welcome in, lean into and acknowledge the pain in your body, literally breathing into the center of the sensation, everything starts to change.  Pain is a directive, a message that says, “Slow down and rest your breath, intention, and attention here. I have something important to share with you!” These messages can be quite persistent at times. 

This practice of being with the pain and breathing into the center of the ache takes time and most importantly consistency.  Breathing into and being with the pain in a compassionate and loving way each day begins the unwinding process of liberating the bottled up emotions that created the physical pain in the first place.  This approach is often too simplistic to be fully appreciated, but I assure you it is an incredibly powerful and effective tool that works in truly magical ways.

I observe miracles in my own self-treatment practice and continuously, while working with others in my One on one sessions that are offered both in person and virtually. I also co-lead an amazing online community, Self Healing Immersion, along with Claire, where we host live weekly sessions to support our self-healer community in dissolving their physical and emotional pain through the combination of these profoundly healing frameworks.

It has become a great passion of mine to teach others how to work within their own human biofield and body, using breath, intention and attention to connect back into the center of their painful regions. It is truly miraculous to witness as the pain dissolves. Sometimes it takes some time to feel these changes in the physical body, but with consistency, a little trust and true belief that it is possible, our body responds and is restored to health and wholeness over time.  

It is our design by nature to self heal in this way.  Trusting in this miraculous human vessel we have been born into is the first step to unlocking the healing wisdom of the body.  

To experience this energetic healing for yourself, please consider joining our next Public Group Healing Session or simply contact me directly.