Beth Anne Fisher had several experiences that indicated that she wanted to know more about the Body-Soul connection. In this interview for MysticMag, Beth explained to us why she believes everything is connected, why love is the deepest medicine we have and how we can listen to our bodies.
Check out this great interview!
When did you discover your intuitive side and that you wanted to help people?
Looking back, I had quite an imagination as a child, making up all kinds of stories and events, creating books and other kinds of writing, and sensing a persistent connection to Source, I called God. As a child, my intuition was very strong, however I also practiced perfectionistic tendencies starting at a young age to keep myself safe. This led me quickly away from listening to my intuition and towards learning to be a people pleaser to keep the peace and happiness of the group. This was further reinforced by going to school and making excellent grades from the youngest ages all through graduate school.
I didn’t realize until later how deeply my connection to my intuition became discounted and down-trained by my academic training in a Western-oriented system as a physical therapist. It has been an intentional path not only to becoming more aware of my intuitive side, but also trusting it. And it continues to be so.
From a young age, maybe in my early adolescent years, I knew that I wanted to help other people and alleviate suffering in the world. There’s some suffering that feels essential and there’s a lot that is not. I have always wanted to support the alleviation of unnecessary suffering. I felt early on that this meant going into the medical profession, however I never wanted the hours of a doctor or the task of doing anything internal with people, like giving shots or doing surgery. Enter physical therapy – it was perfect for me.
I quickly realized though that solely addressing the physical ailments that came through the door was not enough to support people in truly healing on the deeper levels. Very early in my career, I became interested in energy medicine practices, individual spirituality as a resource for healing, and holistic coaching.
In your website you mention that you want to help people uncover a deeper ‘why and what’ the messages of your symptoms might mean in your life. Do you have any examples of that with your clients that helps us understand better?
Absolutely. It first starts with an orientation shift with how we relate to and understand our physical bodies. I’ve recently started a podcast where we talk about this frequently. To be clear, I’m talking more about persistent body symptoms here – the ones that nag, that someone has been to the doctor for, and they are told that nothing is wrong. The really frustrating ones like that – could be low back pain, headaches, GI issues, that kind of issue. When symptoms are reframed as messages and our understanding of our body is reframed as kindly trying to get our attention rather than ‘my body hates me,’ we can start to listen with compassion.
One of the most profound examples for me that I still carry with me was a woman who was sent to me for low back pain which she had experienced for several years. At the time, I had a background as a physical therapist, but was focused on a blend of energy and fascial balancing work. As we touched into her body’s messages through this low back pain symptom together, we discovered that she had a hysterectomy, or removal of her uterus a few years prior. As we progressed through a couple sessions, we identified a need to restore the energetic presence of her uterus to her pelvic bowl.
She returned to me a few weeks later with no back pain. I couldn’t believe it initially, even though I knew that the physical and energetic bodies are very connected and expressive of one another. Her need was a restoration of the feminine presence in her body. Her back pain resolved as a result.
I want to be very clear that it is not always this obvious or fast, but receiving the gift of this story in my work provides myself and my clients with hope and possibility for what can happen when we look at the integrated bigger picture.
You also mention about having a fear of missing the point even when everything seems ok. In your experience, that feeling is just fear and anxiety, or trauma or other factors can play a part?
I think it can be a myriad of ‘inputs’ depending on the individual and their story. For sure, with the types of highly sensitive individuals that I tend to work with (and that I am), fear of missing the point, despite doing all of the “right” things is a more existential-type of fear. And that can very often come from earlier experiences of childhood or developmental trauma, persistent beliefs given to us by others, or even generational beliefs or trauma that have been passed down to us, for example.
I might offer from my own experience that sometimes the point is that there is no point, meaning that the process is the path. The glorious truth is that you’re not missing the point. You are the point. I know I’m being a little cryptic here, but in a universe of loving consciousness is both more simple and more complicated than it seems. I love holding space for folks as they sit, walk, and live with these questions.
What is interconnectedness?
What a question! Everything. Is. Connected. From my training in physical therapy, we learned systems by compartmentalizing them: the nervous system, the musculoskeletal system, the connective tissue system, the cardiopulmonary system, etc. We do this to learn.
The real ‘work’ once we’re done training, and we’re never really done training, is to re-integrate the systems to understand how they affect one another. For instance, from my later osteopathic manual therapy training, diminished movement of the liver can be a strong driver for right shoulder pain. Or, as I mentioned earlier, the loss of support from a uterus can be a primary driver for persistent low back pain in females. Our bodies reflect what is true on a much larger level too, infinitely.
All these body systems are part of a much larger system that encompasses them all – the human system, inside of an ecological system that encompasses the entire Earth, inside of a system of the Universe. Given what we know about quantum physics (and I’m no expert in this), what happens in my body can be reflected out in nature, and vice versa.
Can you present to us your guide, “Five Simple Practices For Listening to Yourself Instead of Everyone Else”?
Here are the suggestions for listening to yourself:
- Orienting to your environment
- Grounding with a ball under your foot
- Notice a Nature Cycle
- Hands on Face
- Observation over Critique
Really, these are all ways to get out of your head, and into your body, where the real wisdom is.
Please share with us a special message in these challenging times
My deepest grief right now for myself and others is that we have ‘outsourced’ too many things in our culture, including access to our own Wisdom. Wisdom for living our most authentic lives is in our bodies and the whole of our being. It’s not attained by thinking harder and longer in our heads, or checking our phones.
If we are willing to do some inner work and embrace safe community spaces where our nervous systems can heal together, we can find trust in ourselves, goodness in life, and beauty throughout the planet. Call me a softy, but I really do believe that Love is the deepest medicine we have and our ability to access it is vital for the present and the future. You can write me off as an idealist for saying this (and I am 🙂 but I do not think there’s anything more true or worthy of our pursuit. And, there’s a billion ways to do it, as many as there are people on the planet.
