What if turning toward your body makes you want to run?

“I want to be with my body… but every time I try, I feel nauseous or I start crying. What am I supposed to do with that?”

A reader recently wrote to me with this question, and my whole body gave a full-on yes: someone was asking the very thing I’ve been wanting to speak to. Because this is one of the most common and misunderstood parts of body-based healing:
​What do we do when symptoms like chronic pain, anxiety, nausea, or emotional overwhelm make it feel impossible to even begin?

When Symptoms Make You Want to Run

When we have these symptoms that come up and we want to run in the opposite direction, I want you to know that you are so normal. This is the most human response that we could have! Why would we want to be with our bodies when they’re in so much pain?

The natural, normal response is to want to run away even more and spend less time with them, not more time. It’s painful, and it’s really hard to stay with our bodies when there are so many uncomfortable sensations and symptoms coming up within it.

Why the Body Creates Symptoms

What’s tricky about this is that the reason why, from a mind-body healing perspective, our bodies create these symptoms in the first place is because we’ve disconnected from our bodies. We’ve disconnected from being able to really hear them out. We’ve pushed our bodies past their capacity, past their abilities, and so the body does what it needs to in order to get our attention.

It creates symptoms in order for us to address the underlying misattunement with ourselves.

It’s similar to a toddler, let’s say, that really wants his mother’s attention, and his mother is busy with whatever important things are going on in life. But the toddler doesn’t understand that, and so the toddler tries to get his mother’s attention and doesn’t get it because she’s busy, and so the toddler keeps pushing and screaming louder and louder and pulling at her and making things really uncomfortable until she finally turns to the toddler to give him what he needs.

And then the toddler calms back down.

And we all know, it’s not easy to stop everything that she’s doing in order to attend to her toddler.

When It Feels Like Too Much

I want to share a personal story of a situation that happened to me over a decade ago.

I received a phone call from someone who told me something that I didn’t want to hear. They had information for me about something that really upset me, really distressed me. I remember the moment of finishing the phone call and my entire back locking up and me collapsing on the floor in agony, and I couldn’t move. I was in so much pain.

This had already been after a good six years of doing mind-body work, and so the reason my back locked up was very obvious to me: the message I received on the phone call really, really distressed me.

And so even though I knew, without any shred of doubt in my mind, that this pain was coming from a mind-body place, the pain was there. And I was so gung-ho about making sure that I do the mind-body work to heal this. I knew what the trigger was. I knew why my body decided to bring on this pain. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do the work because I was in such agony.

My husband, being someone who supports me and tries to help me find balance in life, tried to encourage me to take an Advil, to take the edge off of the pain. And I refused. I said, why would I take an Advil? I know that this is emotional! I know that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me! Why would I take an Advil? I just need to work through it. (Anyone catch that perfectionism? 😉)

And he saw that I couldn’t. I couldn’t do the inner work because I was in such agony.

After about two days of agony, of really not being able to get out of bed much other than for basic needs, I finally acquiesced and took the Advil. And what that did was it took the edge off the pain and enabled me to do the work that I needed to do to start healing this very hurting place inside of me.

To me, this experience has become a metaphor for the work that I do.

Another Kind of Resourcing

I’ll give an example from the other end of the spectrum, something that happened not so long ago.

This past winter, we went away for Shabbos one week, and I walked into our host’s house on Friday afternoon and instantly crawled into bed with a fever. My fever just kept rising and rising throughout the night. In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling like I was on fire. I couldn’t sleep and everyone else was asleep. I had no idea where they kept any pain medication. I was essentially on my own with the incredible fever.

In that moment, I tried to ground my body, but I couldn’t. There was just too much pain everywhere from the flu that I was experiencing.

I resourced myself in a different way. I asked my body to help me find the least uncomfortable place within me. What hurts the least in my body?

I found one tiny part of my body that hurt less than everywhere else and I stayed with that.

As I stayed with that part of my body, it started to bring a sense of grounding. It gave my body a sense of a little bit more safety so that I was then able to bring some more regulation into my system.

Then sure enough, I drifted back off to sleep and woke up later with my fever broken.

The Metaphorical Painkiller

When we are flooded or overwhelmed or in tremendous pain with what’s going on inside of us, whether it’s physical pain or emotional pain, turning in towards our bodies can just become another overwhelm if we don’t have the right support in place.

Sometimes, sure, it means taking a painkiller in order to work with some sort of physical or chronic pain until we’re able to get into those deeper places. There are other ways that we could work through it on an emotional level, to be able to become resourced enough within ourselves so that we can go into these deeper places to support ourselves. To take a metaphorical painkiller. To help our nervous systems relax in the moment.

If You Feel Nauseous When You Try to Sense Into Your Body

Going back to the original question, if you feel nauseous when you try to sense into your body, if it’s possible to be with that nausea, we would use that as the opening, as the way into the body. We’d use that as the doorway.

And if you can’t, because the nausea is too overwhelming, then what can you do temporarily that’s safe to distract yourself from the nausea, so that you can sense into your body and not do it in an all-or-nothing way?

If You End Up Crying

When you ask about thinking about it and then just ending up crying and it’s not conducive to anything, that resonates with me. I’m also not a big fan of cathartic responses just for the sake of catharsis. But sometimes, it’s a step forward for the body.

Sometimes when we cry, there’s a release. And that release relieves pressure within our bodies and allows us to be able to take the next step forward.

So if you end up crying, can you then take it a step further? That’s not the ending! You’re still in the middle of a process.

Check back in and see: now that I’ve cried, what’s possible now? What am I now aware of inside? What now is asking for my attention?

How This Comes Alive in My Retreats

There are women who join my Retreats over and over and over and over again. Even though my retreats tend to follow a similar structure, because of the different themes of each retreat, the different groups of women that attend, and the different place that we are all in as we journey through our lives, there are nuances that come out that help participants nudge themselves a little bit forward in their lives. In each retreat, shifts happen, and those shifts stay with women.

I don’t believe in one-day transformations to your life being perfect. I believe in the subtleties that can happen in these retreats, in these moments: when there’s a little bit more of an understanding of ourselves, a little bit more compassion for ourselves, a little bit of a shift within our bodies that changes the way that we do things, sometimes forever.

Women have told me months after retreats about things that have shifted for them and that they are still holding on to.

These aren’t big shifts that would get a lot of attention on social media, but for each one of these women, it’s something that is so significant for her in her own personal life. Because it’s the subtle nuances in each of our own personal lives that make the difference for how we feel about our lives and enable us to live more aligned with Menuchas Hanefesh.

What Happens Through the Training

The women who join my practitioner training come from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Some are therapists that already work with the body and are looking to work with the body in a deeper way, to have a more embodied understanding of the nervous system. I do a really good job of making the science of the nervous system more accessible for people, making it easier to understand and incorporate into their work.

Other women who come to my training are some sort of other practitioner themselves, whether they are breathwork practitioners, coaches, kallah teachers, body workers, or whether they’re just joining for their own selves.

The women who go through this training and connect to this work start to see themselves and the world differently.

There’s something that settles inside.

There’s a knowing that there’s a way forward that doesn’t have to be so complicated. When there are so many different ways out there pulling at us, we know that there’s one place we can always come back to, and that’s our body.

Our body will always direct us with what we need to be attending to.

So no matter what main modality one might use, when we have this underlying foundation of understanding the nervous system and how to work with our bodies in an embodied way, it becomes the foundation for all the work that they do.

If This Resonates

If this is the kind of work your body has been asking for, work that honors the slowness, the messiness, the not-knowing, then you’re invited to join me.

My upcoming retreats are a space to experience this kind of shift in a way that’s gentle, real, and lasting.

And if you’re a practitioner who wants to learn how to hold this kind of space for others, in a way that’s embodied and rooted in the nervous system, the Level 1 training begins on Monday.

This isn’t about quick fixes. It’s about coming into a different kind of relationship with your inner world, one that makes healing possible, one step at a time.