Listen Here:

In this episode, I discuss:

I went live in the Facebook group to listener question:

“How do you to tap into your intuition about healing yourself? I am having a series of new physical symptoms and am having trouble identifying the underlying emotions that are creating them.‬”

Additional Resources:

FREE QUIZ: Inner Healer Archetype Quiz

Inside of all of us resides our inner healer. The part of you that always knows the answer. The part of you that is aligned with wellness. Too often, we block that voice out and let our head take over. Take this quiz to discover your inner healer archetype and how you can cultivate more self-healing.

COURSE: 21 Days of Healing Bundle

To celebrate 1 year since my book was published I curated a *DREAMY* bundle for you. 21 Days of Healing is based off my signature online course and was created out of my own desire to go beyond food and heal on a deeper emotional and spiritual level. I curated the most helpful tools within my 15+ year personal journey to help my clients navigate chronic illness, release emotional inflammation, and find the medicine woman within. The bundle includes 28 video lessons, the e-book, 3 recorded workshops, and 3 live Q&AS!

PRODUCT: Clear Stem

Every single item in this line helps fight blemishes and slows the signs of aging. Each item is also free of ALL possible pore-cloggers and contains ZERO hormone disruptors. Your skin is precious, and so is your time – we want to contribute positively to both. Enter code EMPATH at checkout for $10 off of product orders. For 15% off of their Ditch Your Acne course, visit and use code EMPATH.

Episode Transcript:

Hello friends. Have you noticed that you can get caught up in consuming content? Or maybe you notice you are hyper, hyper focused on the doing. Empaths, we often consume, and I know because that was me too, soaking up information from all my favorite teachers and mentors. But it wasn’t until I started focusing more on the being and embodiment work that the door to massive clarity was finally unlocked and I no longer got confused about what was my energy versus everybody else’s. I was able to become a more clear channel for creation and as a result, transform my life, business and health. In fact, my meditation and embodiment practice is what helped me have a nearly $40,000 month this past January, see the highest downloaded month of the podcast, and finally release a lot of unnecessary stress. And my clients felt it and saw it in their lives too.

 

It wasn’t reading more articles. It wasn’t doing more busy work. So I’m inviting you to graduate from the spongy empath consumer into the self-activated sovereign healer. You can take your podcast listening experience from, ‘Ooh, I feel seen, heard and inspired’ to ‘Holy shit! I actually feel different. My being has shifted. I am the embodiment of the woman I desire to be.’ The Third Eye Collective is a simple way to upgrade your experience and commit, not only to a meditation practice that compliments your healing, but also receive personalized coaching so you can be clear on what direct actions to implement into your highest goals. There are two simple ways to get involved at $11 or $22 a month with no commitment. So, if this is calling your name, join this amazing and growing community.

 

Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a holistic business coach and intuitive healer who supports empaths in creating a thriving body, business and life. Healing my own chronic illness as an empath led me to become fascinated with energy, or more specifically, all the emotional, spiritual and holistic healing modalities that my doctor never told me about. I began to share my insights and journey online, and over time, built a powerful community and business supporting women who were also on their path to healing. Think of this podcast as your uncensored and no-BS guide to navigating life, health and entrepreneurship as a highly sensitive person. You’ll get no-nonsense and totally holistic tips from me in real time as I navigate this healing journey right beside you. Now let’s get started.

Identifying underlying emotions

So this question comes from Kate and she asked this in the Empowered Empath group, and she asked how to tap into your intuition about healing yourself. I have a series of new physical symptoms and I’m having trouble identifying the underlying emotions that are creating them. I love this, and first of all, I just want to completely see witness celebrate and acknowledge Kate for realizing that there are emotions underneath our physical symptoms because not everyone understands that. I believe that we are all self-healers and in fact, we are naturally self-healing organisms. So, when we get a cut – actually, I got a cut at the yoga studio today. Well, when we get a cut, it scabs and it heals right over time, and when you get a fever, that’s your body’s way of creating an unlivable undesirable environment for either a virus or bacteria that may be inside your body.

 

Our bodies are freaking amazing, but we’ve strayed away from this and now oftentimes people search for the pill for every ill. Have you ever heard of that? The pill for every ill, and we pop NSAIDs, which are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen at the first sign of a headache and we think it’s annoying to be sick, and we think that we’re cursed with acne or that these stomach aches are just pure torture. Why me? This disempowering question of why me? But all of this is actually the body responding perfectly and trying to communicate with you. It is always – the body is always giving us signals and that’s why I love Kate’s question so much. When a physical symptom pops up, say anxiety which for me manifests oftentimes as a numbness or tingling in my limbs, especially my hands kind of start to cramp like they’ve lost blood flow and I’ll often feel like I’m going to black out or pass out, I feel very unsafe in my body. So when I get these physical symptoms that come along with anxiety, I ask myself not what did I eat that caused this or what did I do wrong to cause this, or why is this here? But instead, what am I actually feeling right now? What am I actually feeling right now? And oftentimes I realize that the whole entire day I’ve been holding my breath in overwhelm, or that there’s something that I need to do that maybe seems not so fun or slightly daunting.

 

So let’s take another example and explore it a little deeper. This is a process I will often use with one-on-one clients and we’ll just close our eyes and we’ll really feel into any physical symptom that may be surfacing. So let’s use the example of a sore throat and ask yourself… first, we define and decide what is the physical symptom that we want to work on? I have this sore throat. Okay. What is the sensation of that sore throat? What is the sensation you’re experiencing in your throat? And it might be it’s kind of itchy and it is distracting and it just feels like something’s clawing at my throat right now. So that’s what the sensation feels like. What is the sensation – if you close your eyes – what would it look like? And sometimes, especially those of us who are less visual, have a little bit of a stumbling block here, figuring out a visual behind it, but there’s not a right or wrong. Weird stuff can come up and that’s perfect. It’s perfect. Whatever needs to come up is exactly what will come up and what you’ll think of or what you’ll see in your minds. So what does this look like?

 

I have a sore throat and it’s scratchy and it’s maybe even feeling a little suffocating for me. What would that look like? First thing I see is a prison cell. So that’s what I visually see. You might say, oh, that just feels warm and it feels hot and red, or it looks like… Whatever comes up, but what comes up? What does this sensation look like for you when you close your eyes? I’m seeing this prison cell, this prison door with the bars. I think that’s the word I was looking for – bars that are very constricting. Now if this sensation or the visual that came up for you had eyes, what would the world look like from its perspective? What would the world look like? I have a sore throat and it reminds me of a prison cell, and from the prison cell’s perspective of the world, well, it feels really constricted. It feels very shunned or not allowed to express itself because, well, it’s a prison cell, right? It feels very isolating. So what would the world look like from its perspective?

 

And the next question I ask myself and my clients is what would that sensation want to say? So if this prison cell could talk, what would it say? Or if that warm red-hot, fiery feeling/sensation could talk, what would it say? So if I were the prison cell and I asked it, what would you want to say? What would you want to express right now? I think that it might say something like set me free. I just want to be free and let it talk. Let it say whatever it wants to say. It can be challenging to guide yourself through this process, but doesn’t have to be. And that’s when certainly working with somebody else and with a coach to help guide you through it can be really beneficial and sometimes the answers come up faster, but just see what intuitively surfaces for you in this conversation and the visualization of the physical symptom that you were originally asking about.

Ask empowering questions

And what we just did was ask empowering questions, and with what just surfaced there, I would be able to draw then the connection between what the prison cell said. It said, set me free. I want to escape. I want to be able to express myself. It feels so isolating and constricting in here. So that would help me understand that my sore throat might be a symptom rooted in the emotion of constricting myself or maybe my voice in some way. I feel very isolated. I feel very locked up and I want to be seen. I want to express myself and so bam! There we have it in four simple questions. The emotional root behind the physical symptom. Make sense so far? So these are empowering questions versus, oh my God, the sore throat is so annoying. Why did have to happen on the day I’m giving a presentation. That’s disempowering. Instead, we ask these empowering questions that then allow us to see an empowering answer, which is you want to be able to express yourself, and of course, this happens on a day you have to give a presentation, right? So switching out of the mindset of say this acne is a curse or this digestive pain sucks to what message is this here to give to me, to send me, or what is my body trying to tell me? That is an empowering and transformational shift of your inner talk and inner dialogue.

 

And when I’m in doubt, or maybe some of those do not provide crystal clear answers, or I don’t have a call with my coach, then I use muscle testing and I teach muscle testing in many of my online courses – most of them actually – and you could use a setup statement like is the emotional root of <insert your physical symptom that you’re trying to figure out>. Is the emotional root of my sore throat, is the emotional root of this digestive pain, is the emotional root of this headache, so inserting a physical symptom – and then the next blank will be filled in by the emotion you may be hypothesize or might think might be the root. So we can also double check and we can see on the example of the sore throat and the emotional root that we broke it down to is it feels constricted.

 

So, in the setup statement, when he was saying is the emotional root of this sore throat a feeling of constriction of my voice? A feeling of isolation, a frustration around this presentation I have to give? So again, just to recap that structure is the emotional root of <physical symptom>, next blank, insert emotion, and then you would muscle test and you would get either a yes or a no, or a true or a false and that’d be a really good way to not only double check the work that you just did, but if you’re not getting clear answers in that first part, you could also start here or come to here as another way so keep trying it with different emotions. You could start with emotions you think it might be like, oh man, I’ve just been really feeling like there’s so much I want to say, I don’t know how to say it lately. So, you might start with that feeling of constriction or not being understood or not being heard, but then don’t be afraid to also insert into that blank, things that you don’t really think it is, but it still could be.

 

I don’t know, maybe I thought it was the things we just discussed and I really don’t think it is something around like my heart feeling broken, but whatever I was going to try it anyways and then you say it. Is the emotional root of this sore throat heartbreak? And you might get a yes. So even though it’s not obvious to your conscious human brain does not mean that it can’t be that thing, so sometimes you will absolutely surprise yourself. And this in particular finding the emotional roots and discovering the emotional roots behind our physical symptoms has been one of my favorite things to help people with and to teach people. And after working with hundreds of women, I’ve been able to narrow this down pretty freaking quickly within their bodies.

 

So everyone who joins me for my new program RISE, which is six weeks long, will have the opportunity to ask about all the emotional roots of all of your physical symptoms if that’s something that you’re craving information/answers/clarity on. And if this process doesn’t give you a specific answer, it’s something we can break down together. So I invite you to join me for six weeks of my program RISE. I cannot wait to get started. It’s a group coaching program, meaning you’re going to have hot seats and access to me one-on-one within a group setting, and all the details are on the sales page. I’ll drop the link below for you to check it out and just feel into it. Is this something that you need, or are you craving support a support team, a support system of a sisterhood to be able to lift you up when you’re feeling stuck or you’re at a healing platform, or you’re just not really sure what steps to take next? This program is for all of you feeling any of those things.

 

Hey, Healing Uncensored listeners! I am just so glad that you were here and I hope you’ve been enjoying little switch up in the content the last couple of episodes where it’s just been really organic and me just hopping on and speaking and coaching from the soul. But it’s a completely different experience when you’re actually on the other side and that’s what RISE is all about. We can actually see each other on video and have real, raw, authentic conversations just like on this podcast, but face to face. I cannot wait to hold the space for all the women that are already enrolled, and I hope that you’ll consider joining us. Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. I hope you gained something. And if you had any a-ha moments around what some of the emotional roots are behind your physical symptoms, then I’d love to hear them. Tag me on Instagram at the_empowered_empath. I love you all and I’ll see you soon.

 

Connect with Sarah:

Instagram | Facebook Community | Pinterest | YouTube | Third Eye Collective

Work with Sarah:

Online courses | 1:1 coaching | Send show requests to sarah@theuncensoredempath.com!

This post contains affiliate links. We may receive a small commission for purchases made through these links. Thank you for your support!