[00:00:00] Ruth Cummings: Hello, and thanks for joining Your Body Advocate podcast. I am Ruth Cummings, your host, and today I’m gonna talk about how does faith affect our body. Let’s take a deep breath to relax. Ready?

[00:00:20] Ruth Cummings: Okay, here we go. You are

[00:00:23] Recording: listening to your body advocate, telling your body’s side of the story, the podcast dedicated to supporting and improving your body mind connection so you can live a pain-free, passion filled life. Dissolving one body tension at a time. Discover the healing properties of your own body language, and together let’s explore ways to support and improve essential self-talk.

[00:00:46] Recording: Now here’s your host, master of Encouragement and Body Mind, life coach Ruth Cummings.

[00:00:57] Ruth Cummings: Hi everybody. Thanks for joining Your Body Advocate. Here we are again, still advocating for our body, giving our body a side of a story. So I get the question a lot about faith in the body. How does faith affect the body and healing process? And I have very distinct ideas about this and a theory because I worked on so many people in so many different religion.

[00:01:28] Ruth Cummings: That I realize there is a correlation between faith and healing or faith and being stuck, staying stuck, not being able to move forward with many things in people’s lives. Not just healing or I guess physical healing, but also finding their way, finding happiness, um, having a clear direction, knowing what you’re supposed to do in.

[00:01:58] Ruth Cummings: I’m putting air quotes around that because that can be, it’s, it’s a very individual type of answer and question, right? But let me tell you about faith and the body. Years ago, many of my teachers have taught different things, great teachers, about how faith and God is found in the body. And one thing that I’ve learned is that I can find my theories, I can find it from the inner left to.

[00:02:28] Ruth Cummings: All the way up through the foot to the inner left knee. Then across the leg, the left leg, and the entire leg, not just the top or the bottom or the middle, the entire middle of that leg, like a band over to the left hip, and from there, an opposite band and a little bit thicker, probably about six inches of the entire body all the way up to the right shoulder.

[00:02:52] Ruth Cummings: And then from there, it moves depending on the person, possibly up the neck and possibly just stops there in the shoulder, and it creates this bending of the right shoulder and the left hip up towards that. So it’s kind of in a, it’s in a position like of a c and, but it’s in one position. Now, this type of motion of the body can happen for many reasons, not because you have a faith issue.

[00:03:22] Ruth Cummings: A lot of different things. If you’re a thrower tennis player and you’re constantly going across your body, if you’re pulling up your hip because you have back pain, um, many different things. Different, like different types of digestive, digestive issues, different types of things in your chest, going around breathing or different types of injuries, feeling betrays or you have to protect your, your upper back.

[00:03:45] Ruth Cummings: There’s a lot of different reasons. So it’s not always a faith. But when I find that there’s something along this line between the bottom left toe coming up, like that line to the outer left hip, up to the right shoulder, um, then I start looking at, hmm, what else can we talk about? What else is keeping this from healing?

[00:04:11] Ruth Cummings: Why is this chronic? And the question that I ask people, and a lot of my clients, you will recognize this. But I will ask, what is your relationship with a higher power? And then I’ll wait for an answer. What is your relationship with a higher power? Because the answer to that question gives me many clues, and it can give you a lot of clues today as well.

[00:04:36] Ruth Cummings: So I wanted to just share a few. If you are angry with God, something happened and you’re angry with God, that can create, as you would imagine, some type of stuck. This anger. It’s like, and, and sometimes we don’t really know we’re blaming God or we’re angry that something happened in our life. We’re in the world and there’s this anger towards God, this lack of forgiveness and this fiery type of non-com communication.

[00:05:07] Ruth Cummings: Right? And there’s. And if you don’t have a relationship with God, then it’s just like in your body and there’s no one to really talk it out with unless you come to someone like me. And so it’s hard to find someone to actually talk about that because it’s not always accepted in our society to talk about those types of conversations.

[00:05:30] Ruth Cummings: But if you have anger towards God, then. Look at that and try to heal that relationship that can actually help your entire body calm down and you can. Start to see things heal a little bit faster. Some of the things that can help that kind of anger besides massage counseling, Qigong, you haven’t heard of Qigong.

[00:05:55] Ruth Cummings: It’s like a, it’s like a, um, energy movement. It’s very, very simple. It can get very complicated, but it’s, it can be very simple, very easy to follow, and you learn. Move energy and breath. And that’s one of the best ways I have found when people don’t have support around them or they can’t afford massage or different things, different treatments, Qigong is something to find.

[00:06:19] Ruth Cummings: There’s a great, great ways to find that online and most of them are free. So counseling, um, massage and Qigong are some of the ones I would recommend. Also, acupuncture and Ayurveda is how I. Those probably would be the ones that I would choose. So, but learning to move that anger and to take it out and to unpack it and have that conversation with God, that type of blocking your faith can really, really stop your progression in so many aspects of your life, not just your body.

[00:06:58] Ruth Cummings: And that’s what I find. That also stops relationships. It’ll stop you from receiving love or giving love. It will stop many things that, just taking that out and, um, just processing a little bit, looking at it at a different angle, in a different lens, maybe talking to a friend about it. Go talk to a priest if you have, if you’re in a church or a pastor or a rabbi or someone that can understand your faith and understand how it might get, be getting.

[00:07:30] Ruth Cummings: And what you can do about it. So that’s the one thing. Are you angry at God? So that’s about that. Okay. The next thing is, do you feel like you deserve to be loved about God? This is another main one that I hear. I don’t deserve. There’s a lot of shame involved. Something happened maybe, or you don’t, you just don’t feel like you’re worthy of God’s love and this can cause a lot of stuckness as well.

[00:08:00] Ruth Cummings: It’s a different stuckness, so like anger is like fiery and you can feel lot of heat in the body and a lot of best movements and. Um, kind of like aggressions, but sometimes it’s like microaggressions and like you could be outwardly very happy that there’s like these microaggressions in your body that I can find, or your body is, is speaking in pain that you just don’t understand.

[00:08:28] Ruth Cummings: Things come up that have never been there before, never had shoulder pain, and then all of a sudden. It’s doing this weird thing that came out of nowhere. That’s, um, and also a red flag for me if someone says something like that, and it could be anywhere along that line. Okay. So from the, from the right shoulder cross to the left, hip to the hip around that area, and then down the leg to the inner side of the left knee, and then down the inner side of the, the calf shin to the left to, so those are the, that’s what I would follow for that.

[00:09:01] Ruth Cummings: All of these. You could do hot compresses, you could do, I wouldn’t do cold, so I would suggest hot compresses and never do that without something in between. The heat and your skin, just like with ice. I would do hot compresses. You could put your legs up and let them drain. You could gently massage up your leg.

[00:09:24] Ruth Cummings: You could, um, I wouldn’t really suggest if, if you’re acute or if it’s, if it’s hurting. I wouldn’t do foam rolling yet. I would do some gentle stretching and maybe journaling, um, gentler types of sessions and treatments before you start getting in there. If you’re getting in there like. If, if you jump to that conclusion right away, I would look at the anger angle of this, because the anger angle will attack it with anger, you know?

[00:09:55] Ruth Cummings: Alright. Go in there and get it as hard as you can, and if you can consider. Why that’s being so aggressive and try to calm it down a little bit. It’s amazing what you can do to have the body calm down once it trusts you and it can relax and let go. That’s a really, uh, something to think about, the clue for the anger.

[00:10:17] Ruth Cummings: Okay, so another one I wanted to talk about is if you don’t believe in. So there’s this lack of faith. You know, I don’t believe in anything, um, or I don’t believe in God or I’m, um, sometimes people, uh, will say, um, I’m, I’m faithful. Wait, I’m, um, I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious. That’s a big one, right? I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.

[00:10:43] Ruth Cummings: And that. And, um, that shows up in the body where it’s like kind of ambiguous, right? There’s kind of this ambi AM ambiguity and that kind of shows up in the low back and it’ll cause like, um, digestive issues or low back pain. And it’s on that left side. So like you’ll see, um, uh, like different types. Uh, digestive, constipation or diarrhea, and it’s on the left side of the body.

[00:11:15] Ruth Cummings: Sometimes hard periods will be over there. You’ll have your left side will have pain on the front of your hip or the glute area, and it’s kind of. Concentrated on that left side. That’s an ambiguity, uh, not grounded in your faith. Now you don’t have to believe in God to have faith. So you can have faith in yourself.

[00:11:36] Ruth Cummings: You can have faith in, um, the world. You can have faith in the universe. There’s something about faith is important in the body. Now, I haven’t put my finger on it yet, and I’m still looking, I’m still working on people and asking that question day after. But there’s something about not having faith that, um, has the dots not connect from the toe to the knee, to the hip, to the middle of the body, up to the right shoulder.

[00:12:07] Ruth Cummings: And so it’s interesting because when we talk about it with those clients, they often talk about an anger from religious problems they had as a child. They were raised Catholic, they were. Mormon, they were raised Jewish, whatever they were raised, and there was something really bad that happened or something that didn’t settle very well, and it didn’t settle in their body.

[00:12:33] Ruth Cummings: So if I can help them find the path of forgiveness for those times a long time ago, then that ambiguity doesn’t have to lean to God. But I do believe it does have to be resolved in order to have that. Puzzle piece that can help your body heal much, much quicker than without that faith piece that I had seen.

[00:12:58] Ruth Cummings: Now this again is just my theory. So those are my three things that I wanted to talk about today cuz this, this can go, can get much, much deeper. Right. I just wanted to just, just touch the surface on how faith can touch the body. So again, what we talked about was, so the first one, are you angry with.

[00:13:19] Ruth Cummings: Second one, do you feel worthy of God’s love? Do you feel worthy? Are you sh? Are you feeling shame? Are you, do you feel like you have what it takes to be loved by the higher power? So that’s number two. And number three is that you are spiritual, not religious. So there’s this kind of ambiguity about where your faith lies and where to focus.

[00:13:44] Ruth Cummings: So because of that, there’s a lack of grounding and a lack of focus sometimes, and that’s how that can affect your body and that man. So those are the three. There’s, there’s a lot more, but I just wanted to go over those three real quick today for our little short podcast and to help you today to, um, find ways to use your.

[00:14:07] Ruth Cummings: To help you heal, help you be happy, help you succeed in life, help you be the best leader you can be. So thank you for joining me today. I will talk about this more if you guys want it some more. And remember to include the unin included you guys. Be kind, be open and spread, love and kindness. One smile at a time.

[00:14:31] Ruth Cummings: Alright you guys, thanks so much. I’ll see you at the next podcast.

[00:14:38] Recording: Thank you for listening to Your Body Advocate with Ruth Cummings. We are so glad you’ve joined us today, and truly believe you can live a pain-free, passion filled life. To connect with Ruth, work with Ruth, or to grab your free ebook, go to ruth cummings.com. We’d love to hear from you. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe so you don’t miss our next.

[00:14:58] Recording: Until next time friends be open. Include the unin included, think outside the box, and spread love and kindness. One smile at a time.