Sore shoulders in women; are our bodies speaking to us?
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Sore shoulders in women; are our bodies speaking to us?
Who doesn’t love having their shoulders rubbed after a long day? I know I definitely do. Having sore shoulders is an issue that seems to be very common amongst women, so much so it was a usual occurrence to see the hot pack draped across shoulders/necks on more than one woman at my previous female-dominated workplace.
Although research is limited in this area, it is suggested that ‘the prevalence of shoulder pain was estimated to be 15.4 % in men and 24.9% in women who reported weekly episodes of pain’.[1]
So what is it about us as women that we experience more shoulder soreness or pain than men? Is it just genetics, the type of work we do, or is it issues with our posture?
For some women, shoulder pain can be due to diagnosed conditions such as arthritis or injuries, but for many of us it just presents randomly and we tend to find a random explanation of why it’s occurring.
Maybe you are thinking that you probably slept in an awkward position or were sitting at the computer for too long to explain another episode of sore shoulders.
This was how I used to rationalise my intermittent yet persistent shoulder pain until I became more willing to be aware of our body’s intelligence, and that the pain that cannot be attributed to a diagnosed condition may be its way of gently and sometimes quite loudly sharing with us that something more is going on for us.
“Your body is in constant communication, all of the time. Forget this not.”
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 115
Therefore, beyond the relief of a massage or body treatment – which is often needed – are we willing to actually listen to our body’s intelligence to ask ourselves the deeper question of why shoulder pain presents for us?
Asking the deeper question has been something I have been exploring each time my sore shoulders started talking, or maybe more accurately shouting. Although super annoying, each episode has enabled me to fill in bits of the puzzle to what my body intelligence wants me to understand.
This is what I uncovered from choosing to be more self-aware and ask the deeper question around WHY!
1. I tense my shoulders when:
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People are behaving in ways I don’t like
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I can feel someone has an issue with me
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I need to speak up but am concerned how someone would react to me
2. I was rolling my shoulders forward when:
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I was feeling that life was too hard
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I was feeling no one cares
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I was in a large group and not feeling confident
The list could go on but in connecting the dots, which I am sure many of us can relate to, it was no wonder that holding all that tension and poor posture over long periods resulted in painful and sore shoulders.
With this newfound awareness, I committed to looking at why I reacted in the above situations, as well as making a concerted effort to not tense and roll my shoulders.
I continued to stay open and trust my bodily intelligence, which led me to discover that the main reason I tensed and rolled my shoulders forward was to protect my heart from being hurt!
Although I had understood how our hurts can impact us from presentations by Serge Benhayon, I had not truly connected my hurts to my shoulder pain!
We have made life about protecting our hurts
We might try to hide our hurts, but if we don’t heal them then our life becomes based on protection and not love.
When we are little we are very open and loving with the world and then things happen that hurt. So, over a period of time we shut down who we naturally are bit by bit and slowly build a protection over our hearts so we don’t get hurt again.
Then as an adult when we sense any situation that we feel we can’t handle or where we may get hurt again, we unconsciously tense and roll our shoulders forward as a guard in an effort to protect ourselves and not be open to people, which results in ‘unexplained’ sore shoulders.
“FEEL what hurts – then seek to heal it. With the guard, you have lost control, with the guard, you are out of control.”
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 180
Seems very simple doesn’t it, however addressing our hurts can sometimes feel overwhelming (which can result in more shoulder tensing and rolling) so it’s understandable why we don’t easily make the connection to our sore shoulders and the messages from our innate body intelligence.
As I persist in uncovering my own layers of protection and address the things that I have allowed to hurt me, I am able to connect to a deeper part of me that is forever untouched by my reactions to life and people. When I let go and connect to this inner part that holds nothing but love and understanding, I notice that I am much more able to remain open in my body to respond and not react to what is happening around me with the old survival pattern of tensing and rolling my shoulders.
Connecting the dots around knowing sore shoulders is our body’s way of speaking to us has the potential to be life changing.
Being open to learning and gently taking the baby steps approach, we can use our shoulders as markers to begin to open to people and uncomfortable situations instead of reacting to them and holding ourselves back in the process – which is in fact what every one of us wants: to be openly, confidently ourselves with others and life.
References
Filed under
Health conditions, Body awareness, Human body, Hurt, Tension, Pain, Intelligence
