Judgment; The Barrier to Harmony

Over the past dozen or so years as I have developed my skills as a practitioner and my understanding as a healing facilitator, I've come to realize that certain concepts that pertain to healing relate in all other areas of life. In other words, there are universal concepts that apply not only to healing but to family, community, the environment, the world and spirituality as well. One of these concepts is judgment. A day rarely goes by in the office without visiting this concept, and just to make a distinction here, I am not talking about exercising good judgment in life choices; I am talking about being judgmental. What does this form of judgment have to do with healing?... just about everything.

Some of the most common comments I hear from clients (at least new ones) are “its right here,” meaning that's where it hurts, or “I have a bad ---” (you can fill in the body part). When someone labels a body part this way, they place an immediate judgment on said body part, as if it is bad or wrong. This myth is heavily supported by the very prevalent medical model.

Whenever the brain is overwhelmed with either the amount or content of information coming to it, that information has to be redirected to some other part of the body. The brain, in effect, disconnects and is protected from the offending information or energy. Many times, when some part of our body is hurting it's actually doing a job for us by dealing with or holding the energy that the brain can't deal with. And the pain you may feel might just be your body trying to let you know that you're not dealing with or resolving something that's going on in your life. If anything, we should be thanking the hip or back that's hurting instead of calling it bad. The energy transfer mechanism was a great short term strategy but eventually there is a need to reintegrate all the disconnected parts since true health can only occur when all the parts are communicating and in harmony.

Judgment is one of the most common pitfalls my clients run into when they are practicing SRI (Somato-Respiratory Integration), exercises designed to promote self-awareness and connection to internal body rhythms. They say, “It didn't work. I tried doing SRI but the pain wouldn't go away.” Well, SRI isn't supposed to eliminate physical pain. That would be like trying to eat soup with a fork. SRI is about promoting communication and harmony in the body; it is not about trying to shut your body up so the pain goes away and you don't have to listen.

Just to give you an example, if I had, at some point, severed my communication with you and later wanted to reconnect or re-establish our relationship, I would have to first make you feel safe to open yourself back up to me. If the first thing I say to you is that you're wrong, how open are you going to be to further communication? Not very, I would imagine. Most would agree that making someone wrong doesn't cultivate trust and safety of expression. But this is in effect what happens when we begin by casting judgment on our body. How can we expect to foster a relationship when we start by judging?

As soon as we come from judgment we are unable to objectively see another's point of view. Judgment creates a barrier to true harmony whether it is in your relationship with your body, the people in your life, your community or the world. What's interesting is that if you are truly in harmony in your own body it is impossible for your perceptions to come from judgment. You realize that there is a connection between judgment and health and that it is vital to recognize this to have a true experience of life on all levels.