Abuse is a very huge box in which so many things are happening, without always showing any clear signs to the outer world. I would like to look into the box and share with you a kind of abuse that we can call ‘self-abuse’ – an abuse of our own body, maybe without the awareness that we do this, or seeing it as a form of abuse.

At the moment we hear a lot about abuse in the Catholic Church, in sport and recently in the movie world. People are sharing their experiences and this can be a beginning to bring abuse into the light. But there is a lot of abuse in the whole world that we don’t see or hear about. Or, could it be that we don’t want to look at it as a kind of abuse?

Some behaviours are so common and accepted that we are not aware of the effects they have on us. For instance, if we are talking with an angry person, we could say, “Just let him talk, as long as he doesn’t touch me.” Or when people are talking in a not so friendly way about someone behind their back. Or a songwriter writes songs about emotional times of his life that he is still sad about. What are we receiving in these moments?

If we know that “Everything is energy, and therefore, everything is because of energy” (Serge Benhayon, 1999), then it’s logical that there must be consequences to all our behaviours, words, thoughts, actions and movements. This means that in fact we receive throughout the whole day all kinds of energies that are not directly visible. It requires an awareness to notice them and to allow ourselves to feel what happens in our body. Our body immediately responds to the energies and gives us signs, which are always our great marker.

These signs can be very physical and we are not always aware that they are the consequences of the choices we make in our life. Like, for example, an uncomfortable feeling in the body, cold knees, tense shoulders, bubbly stomach, making fists, losing attention, stiff neck. These are all communications from our body to ourselves that something is not right, either outside of us or inside of us.

It takes a level of awareness and responsibility to be open to and want to listen to the body and hear these messages. If we live our life without this connection to our body, then we will not hear them. It does not mean that they are not there. To be in connection with our body is so, so natural that it’s a very big question why we have lost it. Why do we live life in a kind of bubble and think that nothing can touch us unless we immediately have very clear signs?

I lived in this way for a very big part of my life. We all have our own reasons for making this choice, and for me it was a form of protection. It seemed easier to put myself in a kind of armour so that I would not have to deal with an energy that’s not from love. I found it difficult to deal with the things I felt around me and to accept that the world is like it is. I didn’t know how to handle my sensitivity and meanwhile felt the hardness, the disconnection, the suffering or emptiness of people. The reflection was too big and showed me my own struggle with life.

Whatever I did and wherever I was, I was in protection instead of staying with myself with an open heart. I abused my body by being in a hardness, shutting myself down, not being open with my whole heart, not expressing what was there to be expressed and by avoiding my sensibility. This meant that all my movements were made in and with that same hardness, a quality that was different from who I truly am. I didn’t consider the consequences of this to myself and to others. But what I know for sure is that energy goes everywhere and has an impact on everything.

My eyes were opened when I got psoriasis. Within a week I had spots on my whole body, like raindrops. I had light-therapy for this and it disappeared at first, but after two weeks it came back again. This was an invitation for me to look deeper to the roots of this and to be honest with it. As well as receiving conventional medical treatment, I also had some sessions with practitioners of Universal Medicine, which supported me in the process of understanding the underlying energetic causes of the psoriasis.

After one of these sessions, I understood exactly what the spots were really showing me. It was like I was walking through a nuclear building that was leaking radioactivity and when I came out the other end, of course I was poisoned. I was shocked to realise that I had walked through life like an open target. That I had absorbed many things that didn’t belong to me and that this was a kind of poison. For me it felt like a very huge form of abuse that was having an enormous effect on my health. I was swimming in the ocean with all others and picked up all the energies that did not belong to me.

I am learning that my body is constantly responding to my way of life and the choices I make. This asks me to be in connection with my body and to deeply care for myself. With these very clear signs on my skin, I cannot ignore the fact that my daily choices have an impact on my body. Instead of putting on the armour and thinking that this will protect me, I am learning to be open and allow myself to be sensitive, to be vulnerable, to be beautiful, to be powerful, to be precious, to be delicate… to be with me.

It helps me to put my focus on observing the external world, instead of absorbing its harmful energies, because when I am feeling my loveliness it is very obvious that such energies do NOT belong within me. This brings more understanding for my behaviour and that of others. If I can nominate what’s there and express it, then thoughts don’t come in and play their own game. There is more space for accepting myself, which results in more openness, more love.

Abusing my body, in any shape or form, is saying NO to myself, and why would I do that?

I now know that changing our world is just not about doing something outside of us. It is about living in the world in the fullness of who we truly are. I need my body to bring this expression into the world, so it is important that I take real care of it. I am learning to still swim in the sea with everybody, without wearing an armour as a protection, but with my own body as my guide.

By Peggy Verheijen, Teacher, Belgium 

Related Reading:
Self Care – ‘Walking the Talk’
Abuse – My Understanding So Far
The Art of Appreciation – Helping to Break the Cycle of Self Abuse