Mind Heals the Body and the Body heals the Mind

I want to speak about why working only with the body or only with beliefs does not bring real integration or healing — because the two are inseparable.

Yesterday I came home feeling afraid.

I noticed I was scared to go to sleep, because the night before I had been woken up by my neighbors in the middle of the night. The noise was loud, unexpected, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

As I tuned in, I realized there was a protector part of me that was keeping me from falling asleep.

This part didn’t want to relax — not because it was anxious for no reason, but because it didn’t want me to feel again what I felt the night before:

powerlessness, helplessness, and the pain of trying to make people understand how much their actions affect others — and realizing that nobody cared.

So instead of forcing myself to sleep, I consciously chose to do parts work with this protector.

When I stayed with it, I realized that underneath the protector was a much younger part of me — a part that felt deeply unsafe, hopeless, and completely alone, even while surrounded by people.

And then a memory surfaced.

I suddenly re-experienced a moment from when I was about 19 or 20 years old. One night, I allowed myself to have fun, to be free, to come home late — and when I returned home, my boyfriend at the time brutally, physically abused me.

What hurt just as much as the violence itself was what came after.

None of my family members stood up for me.

Nobody protected me.

Nobody named what happened.

Everyone tried to hide it.

Even my mother — who was traveling across the country at the time — did not come to pick me up because she understood my pain. She came out of shame, not protection.

No one stood by my side.

That entire experience was suppressed.

Never spoken about.

Never acknowledged.

And in that moment yesterday, I realized something very important:

That day was the last day I ever truly allowed myself to be free, to relax, to have fun, to stay up late.

From that moment on, my nervous system learned a belief:

To relax, to surrender, to enjoy life is not safe.

And that belief didn’t live only in my mind.

It lived in my body — as fear in my chest, as a tight knot in my throat, as unexpressed words that were never said to my parents, never spoken to anyone.

This is how beliefs are formed. (I was already a match to that experience because of the similar situations in childhood. Did you know that a soldier is less likely to return from was without PTSD if their upbringung was more in a healthier side?).

Repeated experiences of being alone with pain create a core belief:

I am alone in the world.

The world is not safe.

No one will stand up for me.

And once that belief is formed, the body organizes itself around it.

When I zoomed out, I realized this is not just my personal story.

This is the state of the feminine in general.

The feminine today often only allows herself to truly relax when she is wasted, intoxicated, or dissociated — because sobriety and relaxation don’t feel safe.

Why?

Because so many women carry deep, embodied experiences of:

• not being protected

• not being believed

• not having someone stand up for them when something bad happened

Over time, women disown their own ability to stand up for themselves.

And how could it be otherwise?

How does a person learn to stand up for herself if no one ever did it for her from the outside when she was younger?

Healing cannot happen only in the body.

And it cannot happen only in the mind.

When a belief unlocks, sensations rise.

When sensations are allowed, beliefs can reorganize.

One without the other does not bring integration.

That is what restores safety — not forcing relaxation, not bypassing fear, but meeting what was never met before.