You Don't Have to Tell Your Body How to Heal Your Broken Arm

This entry is part 8 of 9 in the series Surrender

All of those Caterpillar Legs Holding On
Surrender | Rise Up Instead of Falling Down
Surrender | A Vision of the Future Instead of a Memory of the Past
Surrender | Accept
Surrender | Believe
Surrender | Surrender
Surrender | Matter to Matter, Energy to Matter, and Remembering your PIN Code at the Bank
You Don’t Have to Tell Your Body How to Heal Your Broken Arm
Surrender | The Subtitle

Your body knows what to do.

You break your arm. Ouch. You go to the doctor and what do they do? Put a cast on it. A simple case of plaster molded around your arm so it doesn’t move much.

Then you wait for your body to fix your broken bones in a matter of weeks or months.

You didn’t have to learn how bones work, what they’re made of, or how your brain or heart or whatever-is-at-work-here got down to the business of pushing molecules and cells and protein together so your two broken pieces of cartilage in your body meld back together.

Who is running the show here?

Also, even if you told your body (or pleaded or hoped, prayed, or meditated) to NOT heal your arm, it would still heal your arm–although it could take longer.

So how much influence do we have over what our body can and can’t do? Do we have any say in the matter at all? That bone is going to heal because your body wants what’s best for you.

What about things going on that aren’t working out in our bodies quite as we hoped? Disease, medical conditions, pain, allergies, etc.? Do we have any say in how those heal–or don’t heal? If our bodies supposedly want what’s best for us, what’s up with the stuff that’s wrong with us?

I’ve stated this clearly before but for the record and the legal hawks watching, I’m not a medical doctor. About the closest I am to a medical doctor is I used to have a white coat. I think it was a jean jacket. It was pretty bad. Yeah, sorry.

But I have more “say” about my body, how I feel, how things are going in my life, but also physical conditions than I used to. What changed? Did I get a medical download from above? Have I practiced meditation to the point where I can guide my body (and mind and thoughts and actions) more in directions that I would like it to go?

Remember the ATM? Forgetting your PIN code and then walking away and then remembering it? Just for example’s sake, just in case this could be somewhere in the ballpark of truth and reality, what if we laid out our intention to ourselves, we told (or pleaded or asked) our selves if something or other could be achieved. I smell a numbered list at hand.

What if we asked ourselves to:

Lessen our back pain
Stop the allergic reactions to certain foods
Open our imaginations to more clarity on work projects
Give us goosebumps on our arms
Wake up earlier
Dream more vividly
Remember those dreams
Figure out the next chapter of our book
Direct our next steps in our business
Know what to say to our kids
Decrease the limp in our gait
Heal our tumors
Produce tears in our eyes
Smile
Sleep more deeply
Wake up more refreshed
Improve our eyesight

How about that #14, aye? We do have control over our bodies. When we want to smile, we can do it. On command. Without a reason. Just saying.

I hear you:

“Bradley, seriously? You have smile, produce tears in our eyes, figure out the next chapter, and heal our tumors in the same list? You can’t be serious.”
— Incredulous You

I have a book coming up called Play, so no, if I can help it, I’m rarely serious nor take much of anything “seriously” in the sense that we most know the word.

In all of the books in the multiple-book Repossible series, Play might be the hardest to achieve because, and this is going to sound crazy but you might get it if you’re stuck in the idea of “C’mon, get serious, Bradley!” we have a hard time accepting that our higher selves are “lighter” than we are. They’re fun, fun-loving, easy-going, and they’re pranksters, jokers, and don’t take too much at all seriously.

I am fully aware that in the past few tiny little seemingly insignificant paragraphs, I have mentioned healing tumors, smiling, seriousness, playing and even a dabble into the idea that I, yes, Bradley Charbonneau, have an idea of what our greater selves are like.

Crazy, I know.

But I’m not backing down.

Are you looking for serious? Here’s serious: take it less seriously.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and dangle my reputation as a serious author (ha, joke inside of a joke…) and state that our greater selves, our higher beings, our ____________ whatever you want to call them or it or her or him, are not looking for you to be too serious about all of this.

Let me try to explain what I mean by serious–and what I don’t mean.

By serious, I mean trying, especially trying too hard, practicing too much, striving for perfection, and expecting too much, too soon, and all because that’s “the way it’s supposed to be” or maybe “that’s what it said in the book.”

I’m going to take it to another extreme to attempt to bring home the concept.

Say there’s a baby in the room. Right next to you. Her mom left for a minute and asked if you could keep an eye on the baby for 5 minutes. What do you do?

Do you explain tax law? Do you put on your professional face and and walk through your resume and introduce yourself as Mrs. Johansson?

No. Of course not.

You might make a funny face. You might make baby sounds as best you know how. You might even get up and dance around a bit, but probably in an exaggerated fashion for the most impact.

All trying to do what, of course?

Get the baby to smile or even better, laugh.

Dear reader, this is only my humble opinion, your mileage may vary, but here I am the author of a book on surrendering with an upcoming book called Play and a previous book in the series called Meditate. I’ve been meditating daily for years, I’ve attended hard-core Vipassana 10-day silent meditation retreats, got up at four in the morning to do a marathon meditation with 400 of my closest friends in a freezing Munich hotel in December.

I’m here only as the messenger. Believe me, if I thought the goal were for us to take things more seriously, I would tell you, I would suggest trying harder, smiling less, joking never, and pressing on.

Surrendering has more to do with the baby next to you than the greatest guru on the mountaintop. No, I take that back. That guru on the mountaintop? They are the baby. They are smiling, giggling, and life is light, fun, and all they want to do is play.

Please don’t take just my word for it but when you’re struggling to “surrender” to your greater self and you’re seemingly not making much progress, think of the baby and how you would “communicate” your message. See if you can better connect than when you’re trying harder, taking it more (and more and more) seriously, and pursing your lips instead of relaxing them to their natural state of a sly smile.

Whew.

We started off this chapter by healing a broken arm and we have descended (or is it ascended…?) to the point of trying to make a baby giggle.

Yep, that’s exactly where we are.

They are related. Oh so related. It’s almost one and the same.

Yep, your body will take care of healing your arm. But what about that next chapter of your book? What about the clarity you’re looking for on that work project? How to talk with your kids? Healing that tumor?

Surrender.