Your Body Is Always Responding—But to What?

In the last article, I suggested that our symptoms may be more than problems to eliminate. They may also be invitations to understand ourselves more fully.

If that’s true, then another question naturally follows. What are we responding to?

If you’ve ever noticed that your symptoms seem to change from one day to the next, you’re not imagining it. Some days you feel energetic. Other days you wake up exhausted. One week your pain is manageable. The next week it seems to flare without warning.

Your sleep changes. Your digestion changes. Your mood changes. So what changed?

We often assume that if our symptoms change, something inside us must be malfunctioning. But what if another possibility exists? What if your body is always responding to information you have not fully recognized?

Every moment of every day, you are taking in information. Some of it is obvious — a loud noise makes you jump, cold air makes you shiver, the smell of fresh bread makes you hungry.

But much of the information you respond to is far less obvious: a difficult conversation, poor sleep, financial pressure, a demanding schedule, grief, loneliness, physical activity, illness, your relationships, the expectations you place on yourself, even your own thoughts.

Your body experiences every moment as information. You are constantly interpreting that information and responding to it.

Imagine if you had to consciously notice, interpret, and respond to every piece of information around you — every sound, every change in temperature, every step, every heartbeat, every breath. You would never get anything done.

Instead, you are built to manage most of life’s day-to-day demands automatically. That allows you to stay focused on what matters most.

The conversation you are having. The work in front of you. The person you are speaking with. The task at hand.

Most of the time, this happens so seamlessly that you never notice it. Until something demands more of your attention.

Over time, repeated responses become part of your everyday experience, and you stop questioning them. They become part of what you consider normal. And once something is accepted as normal, we rarely stop to ask, ‘A response to what?’

We experience life as a continual stream of events, making it even more difficult to isolate the information or tease it apart to understand our responses.

Our lives do not unfold one event at a time. One conversation blends into the next. Yesterday influences today. One poor night’s sleep affects the following morning. Work follows you home. Relationships shape how you respond to challenges. Illness changes how you experience everything else.

Rather than responding to a single event, you are often responding to the accumulation of many events occurring over time.

That is one reason symptoms can seem confusing. You may search for a single cause when no single cause exists. Instead, your response may reflect the combined influence of weeks, months, or even years of living.

This does not mean every symptom has a hidden meaning. Nor does it mean every response can be traced to one specific event. It simply reminds us that our responses often make more sense when we consider the broader context of our lives.

Instead of asking, ‘What is wrong with me?’ you might begin asking, ‘What have I been responding to?’

As you become more curious, you may discover something else. Symptoms rarely arise from a single cause. More often, they reflect the influence of multiple contributing factors working together. These influences may come from four broad sources:

• Life Events and Experiences

• Internal Experiences

• Lifestyle Choices

• Physical Challenges

  
  

These influences rarely occur in isolation. They overlap. They interact. They accumulate over time. Together, they shape how you respond.

That is why looking for one cause is often frustrating. It may not be one cause at all. It may be the combined influence of many contributing factors. And understanding those influences is often the first step toward understanding yourself.

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Dr. David C. Paton, L.Ac. — Starting Point Acupuncture