There are many intuitives who are sensitive to how illness and health interact on so many levels within ourselves, and I am one of them. 

However, and this is a big (BIG) disclaimer, if you’ve been following me for a while it won’t come as any surprise that I absolutely turn my back on simplistic magical thinking when it comes to illness. Our bodies and minds are fallible. They have built-in obscelences that are critical to how we experience our lives. It’s wrong and ableist to pretend that we can be as healthy as we want to just by saying affirmations or by ignoring science. I believe the body-mind connection is real, and an important function of how we live, but it is also only a part of how we approach our vitality. 

Rant over. So, keeping that in mind, let’s look at the heart chakra. (A chakra is one of several collection points in the body for our life-force energy). It is positioned right above our hearts, slightly to the left of the center of our chest. I often refer to it as the busiest intersection of the Universe, because it’s where our spirits fasten to our physical form, along with our emotional selves. Three planes of existence in one center point. 

We never experience illness or health in just one of these spheres without experiencing the same in at least one other. To address how each level is operating in an individual, you often have to look at all three. They are always interconnected.  

This is how deep trauma, prolonged stress, or heartbreak can all manifest physically into (this is a very simplified list) heart disease, breast cancer, or respiratory problems, among others. I’ve noticed a lot of this over the decades. If a client comes to me and has had a major health issue that started in their chest, I’ll often look back a year from the onset to find they’ve been struggling to find time to cry their tears, reconcile a deep hurt or disappointment, or forgive themselves or others. Or all of this.  

If we have a biological predisposition for any inherited condition, suppressed grief or trauma can bring it to the surface sooner than it might have.  

And some hurts are just too big to process without sustaining a heart chakra injury:

Heart disease/heart attack can be an alert to the rejection of oneself after the rejection of others, or exposure to cruelty. 

Breast cancer is a signal that one’s boundaries are weak and there is an imbalance in the giving and receiving of love. There can be shame about the power of one’s emotions, or the inability to accept oneself as an emotional creature. 

Lung disease functions as a repository for unresolved grief or grief that feels too harmful to approach.  

Infectious respiratory disease is one of the most powerful ways we release old patterns and forgive ourselves and others. Often we end up with the flu or viral illnesses when we are done with a way of being in the world that no longer serves us. Without oversimplifying the pandemic, (which we are learning new facts about every day, one of which is that it may infect us through our respiratory system, but primarily attacks our blood vessels, making it more of a circulatory condition) I have been thinking a lot about a virus that is spreading through the entirety of humanity that is dangerous, not being managed well in my own country, and that affects every single human being even if not directly. As we learn more about it, we are simultaneously being forced to confront the systems in our society which only serve a select few, which we must transform.  

Remember: I do not believe healing ourselves emotionally is the only thing we need to do to recover from physical conditions. I have benefited from great medical care and I love my doctors, both western-based and alternative. 

I also really abhor the way the metaphysical community took a subtle way of understanding health and turned it into a way of making illness and different-ability our fault in ways that it just isn’t. Physical challenge is part of our human existence, period. It can be a vehicle for our death or simply a part of our experience in a human body, but it is never, ever anyone’s fault or a sign of worthiness. It isn’t a moral issue nor is it anything but what it is: the way we are. Sometimes well, sometimes not.  

I’ve done a lot of thinking about COVID and how significant it is to be living during a global pandemic. Every single one of us is experiencing one or many of the ways a novel viral illness has spread itself through the globe over the last three years. 

Most of the spiritual lessons we’ve had to face have been about vulnerability. We’ve watched as large portions of our populations have not been emotionally well enough to grapple with their own and have turned to denial to cope. 

We’ve also watched as kindness and compassion and civility have taken a backseat to fear. 

Other’s complacency in “othering” and objectifying people is one of the  biggest missed opportunities of the pandemic. Instead of seeing our fragility as a challenge to become more generous, many have contracted into cruelty. 

It’s never easy to live here on our planet. There’s too much suffering. Growing into the best versions of ourselves requires a price of admission that’s daunting. 

But as I see it, we only have two choices when shit gets real: stay afraid, or help. 

And evidently, there’s nothing like a global pandemic to remind us of that.