Are You A Lumper Or A Splitter?

Have you heard this phrase before? Lumpers group things together and splitters tend to divide and categorize. Those who know me might guess that I’m a “lumper”. That means that I see similarities more than I see differences. I love making connections and helping others to see and feel the connections and how they relate to our health and wellness on many levels. Making simple connections puts things together and can be a catalyst for incredible empowerment and transformation in our lives.

So what I’m hoping to do in this article is to help you to understand what I’ve come to understand over many years in regard to how our nervous system relates to our health and wellbeing. When I was a medical student in my twenties, I learned that if I was worried about something that didn't feel good and focused on it, it quickly made it worse. On the other hand, when I caught myself and connected to something positive, I was able to stop a cascade of tension, stress, worry, and pain from getting set into action. When I made the decision, a conscious decision in the moment to connect to a good feeling, a magical thing happened. I became empowered to help myself whenever and wherever I needed it. It was so helpful. I felt liberated. I felt relieved that I didn't need someone to fix me or save me. Huge.

So how did I do it? At the time, I was only in my mid twenties. I was a second year medical student and didn’t know all of the intricate complexity of the body systems. I didn’t have the felt perceptual awareness that I’ve worked so hard to develop over the years as a hands-on cranial biodynamic osteopathic physician. What I did was simple. So basic, one might think, it couldn't possibly work. Except on the other hand, it's truly profound. And profound because it demonstrates the amazing interconnectedness that we have in our incredible human design.

Ok so get on with it, right? What did I actually do that was so amazing? I had suffered from chronic pain in my pelvis for many years. No one could really tell me exactly what it was from. And after all of the extensive medical stuff I had tried, it was still a big problem. As a medical student I was expected to be on my feet all day in the hospital. I had to get the lab results off of the old fashioned computers early in the morning so that I could be ready to give them to my strict attending physician when we rounded on the patients. I had to be on my game. It was demanding and super stressful.

So here's what I did: I never knew when it would happen. Sometimes, I would just get a twinge of discomfort in my body, usually in my lower abdomen and hip. And if I kept standing or moving around, and especially if I got worried that it might get as bad as it sometimes could, it could be so severe that the only thing that would help would be to get in the fetal position and lie still for a long time. But on that day I did something different. I tried a simple mind-body connection method where I put my attention in my body and I did the simplest thing ever: I told myself, “I'm OK”. And as I did that I felt myself drop my attention into my body in a soft and centered way, and that's when the miracle happened. Instead of the pain becoming severe, it stopped. It blew my mind. And I kept doing it for a little while because I knew that if it came back and got bad I wasn't going to be able to do what was expected of me as a medical student that day. And so I played with this same method anytime I got a twinge of discomfort. And the more I did it, the better I got at it, and the less pain I experienced. This was really one of the earliest and most powerful lessons for me in the power of the mind-body connection.

The power and the perfection of our body’s ability to heal itself demonstrates how stress and worry begets tension and tension turns into discomfort and pain. And when we pay more attention to that pain or that problem whatever it is or wherever it is, it can quickly become worse and out of control. And then we feel out of control. So this is what I mean by me being a “lumper”. Consider for a moment that our nervous system goes from our brain to every organ in our body, every tiny spot on the surface of our skin, and deeply interconnects with our blood vessels and lymphatics. Consider that tension on whatever level, can block connection and flow. When we think we are a bunch of disconnected parts and pieces, our body believes it and can feel that way. If we focus on a part or a problem, it fragments and separates. It divides and splits. But when we realize that our nervous system is what determines whether we're in fight or flight or a state of rest-digest and that through simply connecting to our body’s powerful interconnectedness in a simple way that feels good, we support our own connections and in turn our own healing. We really have way more control than we have been led to believe.

There's more and more research coming out that recognizes the importance of the connection between pain, trauma, and mental illness, and how mindfulness can be helpful in many aspects of our physical health, such as heart disease, gastrointestinal problems, and autoimmune disease, just to name a few. Everything really is so connected and we have so much more power to make a difference than most people think. It's exactly what happened to me that day when I experienced the difference between being upset and worried about something that was happening in my body versus what happened when I connected to my body in a healthy and loving way. It's a dramatic difference between going into a deep abyss of pain and suffering versus making the most of our amazing internal human superpowers to help ourselves to feel better when we need it.

This is why over the years and working with my patients, I've used this similar method to teach them to control their own anxiety, to stop their own palpitations, to encourage their gut to function more normally, and to more deeply heal their own trauma. This happens in a simple but profoundly powerful way when we learn to “self-soothe” by simply connecting our mind to our body. This is inherent in our wiring and happens through the simple act of connection, when we drop in and sense and feel. It's a real and powerful act of self care and can result in incredible self healing.

You might have heard the term, “rewiring our nervous system”. Or neuroplasticity, which means our nervous system’s potential to heal and change after trauma or injury. And there are so many complicated methods and devices and quick fix techniques that try to do this for us. But really the thing that makes the most difference, the place where the real magic happens is through consistency. So it's not like rewiring happens in one moment. Think about it. If a stroke victim is re-learning to walk, they have to keep doing it to get stronger, and that creates entirely new neural networks. If we want to learn a new language or instrument, we have to do it over and over again. Rewiring happens when we change the pattern, when we make new patterns. When we make new pathways. And these pathways are really pathways of healing that happen through the simple act of self connection.

It's a kind of muscle memory that connects us to ourselves and our body’s profound capacity for self healing. It really is a simple process of being a bit more conscious and paying a bit of attention. Catching ourselves and stopping ourselves in the moment when things are feeling crappy and instead of choosing to focus on the tension, the pain, or the problem, we can do something different. We can create a different pattern. And that's where the magic happens.

I get that this may be a lot to consider because perhaps you don't have the medical background that I do. But that's exactly what I'm trying to get across to you. You don't need to be a physician. You don't need a deep dive into spiritual practices, because you actually have all that wisdom and power built into your human body. So you don't need to get it all. And it’s even better if you don’t try to think to figure it out because it isn't about thinking, it's about feeling. You only need to connect to it to activate your own wholeness and inner healing power. So try being a lumper. Connect your mind to your body to make the most of your wiring. Choose the better option in the moment like I did. And then practice a bit, then do it in more and more moments and that's how we rewire our nervous system. That’s how we create real empowered transformation. And that neuroplasticity, the capacity for change can help us to heal and it can also help us to experience more awe, more gratitude, and more fulfillment. Being in you helps you to be more in your Being. We can activate our human superpowers to help ourselves to feel better on many levels anytime and anywhere. If you still aren’t sure what I’m talking about or how to do it, read some of my other articles, watch some of my free videos, or check out my courses where I help you make the connections through guided experiences.

Really what I'm talking about is wholeness. Because wholeness is all of us. Wholeness is our interconnectedness. Wholeness is our mind, body, and spirit. Wholeness happens when we connect to ourselves when we use our mind to connect our mind to our body. Instead of thinking we start to sense. When this happens, we become centered in ourselves. When we're centered in ourselves, our soul, our spirit, our being gets to be part of the equation. When we feel more than we think, we embody ourselves in a real and whole person kind of way. And so I hope you're starting to see, or even better, I hope you're starting to feel in yourself, more of your whole self. Wholeness goes much farther than this. Wholeness is what connects us to the infinite. To all of creation. Wholeness is the magic, the miracle of beingness. Wholeness is what most of us feel like we're missing.

So what if you could access that missing piece, the peace that you're missing? Your own empowered capacity to make the most of your incredible human design? And don't forget, it feels good when we do this because when we're connected, our nervous system takes a huge sigh of relief. This is how we plug-in to our whole selves. This is how we claim our human superpowers. This is how we follow the breadcrumbs to wholeness and real human beingness. This is how we support our own healing on many levels. It takes a bit of practice because we have to wake up our human capacity to feel, but when we do, amazing things happen.

I was talking to one of my recent course participants recently and she's really starting to get it in little “aha” moments. She's really starting to access and experience the Health that is within her. She’s starting to make the connection that when she connects to her body in a healthy and loving way, simply by dropping in and sensing, it starts a chain reaction of healing. Our Health is that incredible world of interconnectedness that is supported by the Breath of Life, by Divinity, by the Creator of this incredible universe. It's inside and outside us happening all the time and we wouldn't be here without it.

So this is how we can connect to our inner wiring to heal profoundly and to be whole. To experience the interconnectedness of all that is. To access the inner wisdom that is embedded deeply within us all. That is our human birthright. It's our Inner Intelligence and it's within all of us. So check it out. Use your mind to connect to your body. Drop your awareness into your body and feel something positive. Find a feeling memory that feels good in your body, perhaps something that you’ve felt before at the beach, or when you look at a sunset, or when you allow your breath to drop down and to expand your whole rib cage gently and fully and then to allow that beautiful breath to keep breathing you fully and consistently. There are so many ways to connect. And it really is so simple. Don’t overcomplicate it by thinking. It's simply about dropping in and feeling and connecting. My dream is for all of you to become lumpers like me. Where you stop thinking about and focusing on the problems and the parts. Where you get to live more and more in the interconnectedness of your Being, and support your Health and happiness in the process. Claim your power, heal your body, know yourself better, and relate more fully to the incredible divine reality that supports you from the inside out.