Shamanic Life Path and Back Pain

Emotions and Physical Health: According to Shamanic teaching, back pain may be due to feeling that you are not following your true direction or your own best "life path."

In previous articles, I've alluded to or outright discussed the connection between mental and emotional health and the health of the physical body. One symptom that is often difficult for even chiropractors and masseuses to pin down to a particular cause is back pain. Back pain can have any one of a number of causes - or a composite cause of more than one - ranging from a physical injury like a car accident or whiplash, to that most vague of all feeling words, "stress." Yet on the metaphorical, shamanic, story level, there may be another cause entirely: being on the wrong life path.

Life Path and the Spine

Part of my training in energy work was spent with two healers who worked together to perform shamanic healing, based on North American Native traditions: soul retrieval, energy clearing, animal guides, medicine teachings, and more. At the time, I was attending a major university, studying unhappily towards a degree in the sciences (which I would ultimately drop out of and later achieve in a very different form than I had expected...). I remember these two teachers of mine telling me, with regard to my near-constant back pain, that this was something they had seen before.

"You're on the wrong life path," they said. "And as soon as you begin to feel that you are walking you true path again, your back will free up."

What is the "Life Path"?

One reader commented on my recent article about healing depression by healing your life, saying that the kind of "situational depression" I was describing could just as easily be attributed to what he called "unrealistic expectations." The thrust of his argument appeared to be that life isn't a bed of roses, and that people get depressed because real life doesn't live up to their naive and wishful expectations.

To anyone who has been depressed, I think, this argument has a shaming impact of verisimilitude (it seems true, but it's not quite). The world isn't as we expect it to be, and that can be upsetting and even discouraging. So we can accuse ourselves of "unrealistic expectations" and believe that we have to keep trying harder and harder to make ourselves fit the life we're living (causing tension, stress, and my point: back pain! ...among other kinds of physical pain and illnesses), except for one thing:

I know that when my life is going right, whether or not it's going the way I want or expect it to, I can feel the difference. At the risk of sounding as naive and childlike as this reader seems to think I am, when things click into place, there's something magical about it, and my back just feels better.

I'm on the right path for me, whether I thought it would be this or not, and it feels right.

The spine is the mainstay of the skeleton. It holds us upright. It gives support. It has a straight and true direction, up and down the middle of the body. But when life feels skewed or you're contorting yourself to fit a life that isn't quite right for you (and only you: it may be the perfect life for somebody else), your body may respond by creating distortion and tension in your spine and manifesting back pain.

Redefining Ourselves... and Our Lives

It took years of working on myself, my life, and my surroundings to find a way to lessen the "load" I was putting on myself, unload some of the burden I was carrying, and escape the persistent back pain I had been living with for almost three years. Even today, my back and shoulders tense and tighten when I'm under stress.

If we want to change the symptoms that we are living with, and we are committed to following that change, it is key that we figure out what the message of the body is when it tries to tell us something using pain. The body can be our greatest teacher about ourselves - if we are willing to learn and willing to pay attention.

We must be willing to look at ourselves and find ways to change our habits, patterns of thought, and sometimes even who we believe we are to live a life that is free of physical pain and that honors who we truly are and the life path we are meant to be on.

Be well, and walk with blessings.

Share your thoughts and experiences on the connection between emotional and physical symptoms; Or,

Read more about alternative causes of back pain