When the Body Says No

let me tell you about one patient or one person that I write about in my book this book is called when the body says no I became fascinated by the story of a British cellist her name is Jacqueline Duprey you know something about her yeah Jackie the fray was a virtuoso and a child prodigy so when she played in Toronto here she's British but she was an international star we should played here in Toronto when she was 21 years old people actually cried at her performance the creditor performance because her music was so emotional see what she wasn't the difficult to date the classical musician you know when she played her whole body was into the music she swayed her long blonde hair flew in the air and she poured all her emotions into her music in fact they talked about her cello voice because she expressed all the emotions to her cello but not in your real life in the real life she did not express emotions at all she suppressed herself she ended up with multiple sclerosis by the time she was 27 she couldn't play anymore because she couldn't hold the ball anymore so Korea's very short and you know what she never wanted to become a virtuoso she said I don't want to become a child Richards what she said because it'll kill me she knew it and it did killed her but she said I can't give it up because so many people would be so disappointed if I did and that's why she continued with when she was seven or eight she said to her sister Hilary who also became a musician not as great as Jacky was he also says don't tell her mommy this but when I grow up I won't be able to move her walk that's what happened she became paralyzed multiple sclerosis she was seven or eight she said don't tell her my minutes when removal no well you notice about that if you're a seven or eight years old and put it this way if you had a child that was seven or eight and they were afraid that they won't when they grow up they'll be paralyzed who would you want them to talk to about that if you were the parent you wanted to talk to you but by age seven or eight she knew that she had to protect her mother she was a virtuoso a prodigy so she went to Russia the land of classical music to further her education she was raped there when she came the Commission came back to Kenna or you know to Britain she said to her sister Hill don't tell our mummy this but I was waived in Russia now why it's because when she was born still in the maternity hospital with her mother her mother's father died and her mother who was a very troubled person herself very close to her father was totally grief-stricken and guess what role the baby was given was that to cheer her up to be the mother's emotional support so Jackie never was allowed to be her own person she had to be like an extension of the mother her job was to support the mother emotionally so they had a symbiotic relationship and that's why she was always protecting her and not disappointing the story of exactly the fray I talked about it in the second chapter of his book when the body says no and maybe we just forgot here 20 years after her childhood debut now ill with multiple sclerosis Jackie told a friend what she had cellphone first finding herself on stage coat It was as if until that moment she had in front of her a brick wall which blocked through communication with the outside world but the moments Jackie started to play for an audience the brick wall vanished and she felt able to speak at last with the sensation I've never left her and she performed so the only thing she could express yourself was when she was on stage and every other way she suppressed herself in a marriage and the relationships of the parents she surpassed us up his sister said she was always the Jackie that circumstances demanded so she was not herself it wasn't authentic it was always about the attachment the police I will pay the piece I will play for you a little bit of is from the cello concerto by a British composer called Edward Elgar Elgar was in his 60s when he wrote this and this happened during the first world war universe coupe in the first world war was a time of terrible disillusionment terrible carnage terrible trauma tens of thousands of young people being killed every day in France in those terrible trenchant battles and Elgar the composer was completely despondent and he said everything good and nice and clean and fresh and sweet is far away never to return he wrote that in 1917 when you wrote the concerto he was in his seventh decade in a twilight of his years and his sister writes Surrey her sister writes Jackie sister rights and in a biography of her sister Jackie's ability to portray the emotions of a man in the autumn of his life was one of her extraordinary inexplicable capacities well my comment is extraordinary yes but it's not an explicit all because by the time she was in her 20 times she recorded this P so she was 20 years old or 21 years old Jackie was already in the Twilight for her life within a few years she wouldn't be able to play a jelly anymore and by the time she was in early 40 she would die of multiple sclerosis and she knew that something inside her knew that already she understood Algar because she had partaken of the same suffering is portrayed always disturbed her he had a miserable life he'll she told her SIPP sibling and he was ill yet throughout it all yet her radiant soul and that's what I feel in his music now do you think she was talking about she was talking about herself but she didn't recognize that after she died her sister listened to a performance of the same concerto on the BBC it had been Jackie's final performance public performance in Britain a few moments of tuning the sister write a short pause and she began I suddenly jumped she was slowing the tempo down a few more bars and it became vividly clear I knew exactly what was happening Jackie as always was speaking for her cello I could hear what she was saying like what's almost appears on her face she was saying goodbye to herself playing her own Requiem now that's not the recording I'll play for you the reporting of play free now is from that when Jackie was 20 or 21 years old and there are many beautiful performances of this piece but none of them are emotionally poignant I think is the way she plays it so if you wouldn't mind playing that second track now in that CD [Music] it's another fish [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] then the question then is part of these traits of suppressing emotions not saying no taking unresponsive a4 videos not expressing your own needs how do they lead to illness whether lethal illness and and and burnout because physically they affect the body they affect the body because it's now known that the mind and body can't be separated so Western medicine which is about great achievements obviously in many many ways in reckless in some ways however still falls into the deep error of separating the mind from the body so when you as I said earlier when you go to the doctor with a rash nobody's going to ask you about your life and yet that rash says everything about your childhood and everything about how you live your life right now we were the doctor with inflammation of your joints they're not going to ask you about your relationships about your work about what you take on because you separate the mind from the body now interestingly enough was writing in Canada that the very famous doctor in the late 19th century earlier 20th century her name was his name was Sir William Osler and his name still revered in Canada he's one of the greatest medical teachers of all kind all times and he said in 1892 that rheumatoid arthritis was a nervous system condition caused by Rorion stress and at that time he had no proof I mean the science wasn't there yet he just had his intuition he also said if I wanna know whether man will survive tuberculosis I need to know now what's in his lungs what what's in his head he totally got the connection with emotions and by modern medicine told the ignores it if you look at the traditional medicinal practices of Aboriginal peoples in Canada of tribal cultures in Africa shamanic cultures in Latin America traditional Chinese medicine Ayurvedic medicine of India the mind and body are seen as one unit but Western medicine separates them and this is despite the fact that we not have the science to prove that minor body can't be separated so it's not just that Western science doesn't see it Western science sees it but Western medicine doesn't accept it which is rather tragic I think because we could be helping a lot more people in many many more ways if you understood what a scientist telling us and what scientists telling us is that the emotional centers in the brain are completely connected with the nervous system the immune system and the hormonal apparatus so that whatever happens emotionally will show up in the nervous system in our immune system and in our hormones now in a sense that's totally obvious because a game if I were to threaten you right now told a gun or shouted at you really loudly your system would change in a split-second physiologically you be different people your heart rate will go up your muscles will tense you'll be higher cortisol levels and so on in other words just because I shouted you're physically will be different because your emotions would be triggered and emotions would trigger changes in your body so that's obvious but this happens 24/7 it should be just not aware of it so when you're suppressing yourself emotionally when you're not being authentic when you're not expressing yourself the way you need to be when we take on stuff that doesn't belong to us then we're actually suppressing ourselves physically because of the unity of all these systems they can't be separated how are they connected they're connected first of all because the nervous system wires them together so the nervous system like a giant electrical grid that connects all organs and all systems in the body with the brain so whatever happens no a large part of the brain is actually dedicated to attachment this is through all our lives you know in an elderly couple this is a study that was done not too long ago amongst elderly couples who've been together for a long time our mundum is hospitalized what do you imagine happens to the other one somebody say they start getting sick it's like they the chance of dying goes up quite a lot why because the immune system of the one person is dependent on a relationship with the other we're connect our mind and body can't be separated and we can't be separated from an environment so what happens emotionally shows up physically so the nervous system wires all our bodies together with the brain so whatever happens here happens here and whatever happens here happens here that's the first way the second way is that each of these organs each of these systems the hormones the nervous system the immune system puts chemicals into the circulation that go to the brain and are read by the brain and the brain puts out chemicals that are read by these systems so that the white cells in your circulation the immune cells in your circulation can manufacture every hormone that the bank and manufacture that your brain is stuff in the union system 24/7 and uses the miss talking to your brain 24/7 that's the second connection the third connection which and I did it in Nova when I wrote the spoke nine years ago is that the heart has a brain did you know that the heart is a nervous system surrounding the heart is a very fine network of nerves and this network functions like a brain it has predictive capacities especially when something's bad can happen so when you say I knew it in my heart you did you knew it in your heart and the brain here this nervous is the part is connected to the brain up here so they're talking to each other so the heart is talking to the brain that's the second that's a third connection the fourth connection is that the brain puts out electromagnetic radiation you can measure the brainwaves electromagnetically so does the heart so when the two are in sync then you kind of together when the two are not instinct then you're kind of disorganized that's a fourth connection the fifth connection is the gut now the gut is we think of it as an organ of digestion which it is but it's much more than that it's much more than that the gut is also an immune organ that protects you from bacteria and toxins and it's also a sensory organ it helps to read the environment the God sends many more messages to the brain than the brain sends to the God so that when we've got feelings it's because our guts are reading the environment they get messages from the brain and then magnify those messages so the question I asked last night and I'll ask you again right now this is a show of hands I'm going to ask for okay you've had the following experience of having a peripheral gut feeling about something and ignoring it and feeling sorry afterwards please put your hand up okay the majority right you've had the opposite experience a very strong gut feeling ignoring it and being grateful afterwards not put your hand up one two three okay you see what the odds are the 60 people in the room here roughly so out of 63 well had the experience of being glad ignore their gut feelings and close to 60 will be sorry that they ignore they got things in other words the gut feelings have a chance of being right of a warrant of 19 out of 20 so in any battle between the intellect and the gut the guts can be right 95% of the time inside I want to say it's gonna be right 100% of time and I'm going to say that the things that you thought we've got feelings were not good feelings at all they were just very strong emotions what's that you thought fancy would be really that wasn't a gut feeling that was just a misbelief that wasn't a good feeling yeah friends should have beat Italy but but but dinner then but he was kicked out you know yeah your university is actually right yeah they should have they should have beaten me but the point is why why is the gut can be right all the time because the gut weeds the whole environment gut scenes are not about just the words gut feelings about what's going on on a big picture so that when you you know you've got feelings your knowing the big picture the whole of reality now here's the deal and we'll finish this with this before lunch is that when you put your hand up but you said but yes I had a gut feeling that I ignored and I was sorry afterwards you may not realize what you were telling me but you were telling me the story of your childhood because have you ever made a two day old baby that suppressed a gut feelings anybody ever see a tweet to the older sophisticates game you know the two day old is lying there hungry and dirty and and scared and he saved himself oh I'm dirty and hungry and uncomfortable and scared but mummy and daddy are working so hard and I shouldn't bother them right now have you ever met such a two-day-old we are born totally connected to our gut feelings when you put your hand up in response to the question that you suppressed a gut feeling what you were telling me that at some time or another you learned that it was safer for you the suppressed your gut feelings than to stay connected to it why was it safer because your parents couldn't handle who you actually were they couldn't handle who you were authentically and in order to maintain the attachment relationship you have to suppress your gut feelings and f we had to suppress yourself and that's the story of your childhood and you parents did that not because they meant to I did it to my kids not because I meant to do it but because I wasn't emotionally available and mature enough to handle their true selves and so that's what happened to you and so you learned just like the people I've been talking about that in order to maintain any attachment relationship you have to stop being authentic you have to disconnect from yourself and then we take that into our job see and then all the stuff happens so how to understand all that and how to deal with that will how to work with it actually will be the task of the afternoon right now we'll take a break when we come back at one o'clock that'd be time for questions if you have any

Channel: Paloma Foundation

Views: 206,302

Rating: 4.910605 out of 5

Keywords: Paloma Foundation, Gabor Maté, Vicarious Trauma

Id: Bz-VObNRmu0

Length: 21min 26sec (1286 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2017