“Awakened Wellness”, where self-discovery meets purposeful, lasting change.
Embracing a Healthier You: Overcoming Willful Blindness and Tuning into Intuition
Ever wrestled with the silence of your inner voice, especially when it's trying to steer you toward better health and well-being? Marie joins us once more to illuminate the concept of willful blindness—our tendency to turn a blind eye to the very opportunities that would lead us to personal growth. With feedback from our listeners who are embracing a more integrative approach to health, this episode is a rallying cry for self-awareness and the empowerment that comes from acknowledging our part in healing and wellness.
We delve into the powerful synergy of listening to our bodies and leveraging intuition. From tales of physical adjustments that save organs to my grandson’s intuitive sports adaptations, the message is clear: holistic health is a dance of yoga, Western medicine, and energy work. As we wrap up, we leave you with thoughts from "The Missing Peace to Health and Age, and Gracefully," a recommended read that's bound to be your new bedside staple. Thanks for joining us, and remember, your path to a healthier you is just an episode away.
For More Information visit awakenedwellness.life or marieknoetig.com
Ever wrestled with the silence of your inner voice, especially when it's trying to steer you toward better health and well-being? Marie joins us once more to illuminate the concept of willful blindness—our tendency to turn a blind eye to the very opportunities that would lead us to personal growth. With feedback from our listeners who are embracing a more integrative approach to health, this episode is a rallying cry for self-awareness and the empowerment that comes from acknowledging our part in healing and wellness.
We delve into the powerful synergy of listening to our bodies and leveraging intuition. From tales of physical adjustments that save organs to my grandson’s intuitive sports adaptations, the message is clear: holistic health is a dance of yoga, Western medicine, and energy work. As we wrap up, we leave you with thoughts from "The Missing Peace to Health and Age, and Gracefully," a recommended read that's bound to be your new bedside staple. Thanks for joining us, and remember, your path to a healthier you is just an episode away.
For More Information visit awakenedwellness.life or marieknoetig.com
Good afternoon and welcome to your health, your future and your choice. Miss Maria is here with us again and another great show with a lot of information, a lot of intuition and advice and I don't know what other words I want to use but to help us grow, to acknowledge what's within us. What are we listening to? What are we feeling? What should we be seeing? Should we be seeing? What is it that we're missing? And today's show is about willful blindness. Are you making decisions? That's blocking you to move to the next step, blocking you from making a good decision. But before we get started, as always, we have feedback, questions, stories that have come to Miss Maria, and you can always reach her on body within community that's one word, body within community at gmailcom, and we'll repeat that at the end of the show. But you can send your questions, your comments, any little stories you'd like to share with us, and maybe you'll be lucky enough to have it on our next show. So welcome again, miss Maria. What are the people?
Speaker 2:saying All right. So the first one was on the integrative medicine show so many options.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:They had no idea there was anything other than the basic doctor or whatever to do all the different things for them Interesting. Yeah, so they were really excited to learn that they had different ways they could look at healing for themselves. And the choice yeah, yeah, they have a lot of choice. Your healthier future, your choice. You have a lot more choice than you think, so they're taking it as food for thought and they were grateful for that.
Speaker 1:Nice yeah.
Speaker 2:Methods are madness. I have somebody who's in physical therapy. They're in the second time for their back and it hasn't worked. They're very frustrated that they're not doing enough for them. So we had a lot of talks about the limitations of physical therapy and everything else. And what can they do? Because they've been avoiding that over and over again. Now they're willing to try things themselves because they realize that medicine isn't going to save them. People have this idea in their head that once they go, they're supposed to be cured. Everybody wants to be cured. There is no cure. Everything is to band-aid.
Speaker 1:That's a very good analogy and an illustration.
Speaker 2:So if you want to be cured, you have to really dig into yourself on. Can it be, for starters, what's causing it? Are there weaknesses that you have to correct, alongside with what other information you're getting? So, yeah, but they're starting to break down the reality that it's not just you go to the doctor, you go for physical therapy and everything else, and everything's all better.
Speaker 1:There is, apart from you showing up and doing whatever, the physical therapist. The participation is actually much bigger than that. It's much broader, and I think that's a really good observation that we go there and I went, I did this, I should be better, and there really is a lot more to that, and you and I both know that with the long journey coming back from thoracic injuries, it's not as cut and dried and do one, do two, do three. You're all better, see ya.
Speaker 2:All right. Reading between the lines that show they said they're catching themselves just reading the headlines. And then this person said they watch themselves share the information right after they read the headline. And then they saw me in their head saying is that what the article really said? I thought that was pretty funny. I know you're in somebody's head. I thought that was pretty funny.
Speaker 1:That's pretty cool, though in a way, yeah, it was pretty funny. That's that little voice. So they actually heard your voice in their head, like is that what you really read, or are?
Speaker 2:you just repeating the top headline.
Speaker 1:Or does it just, or does it. Is it sufficient?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like yeah, Whoa, that's pretty heavy actually, which means now that person, all those little voices that you hear, you need to pay attention to them because they're actually speaking to you and it was just their body within coming forward, them coming forward saying OK, you know this. So which is another thing that we are taught or dissuaded from listening to that voice in our head saying it's a little crazy, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:Because you know everything right from wrong. It's the beliefs that get in the way and keep telling you it's different. But this one is so strong the more you foster it, it's harder. It's harder all the time to eat the garbage. It's harder all the time to not take time for yourself. It's harder because now you know it's necessary versus it's just. You realize that you're creating your reality by not listening.
Speaker 1:So it gets louder and louder it is. And guess what? La, la, la, la, la la la stops working. It does Because I can't la la la loud enough anymore. All right willful blindness.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's talk about that, my favorite story. I think we all heard the joke 50 years ago, 40 years ago, about the person in the floods on the roof of the house and then they send him two boats and then finally, when he's ready to drown, he's like God, why didn't you save me? I sent you two boats, two boats. Yeah, that's willful blindness in a nutshell.
Speaker 1:How many times have we just said, making a conscious decision, I'm not going to do that Because either this feels better or so. And so said that, and we've actually shot ourselves in the foot Right, made it harder, instead of, at that time, considering it as an option, right, considering it as a choice, right. Which, again, what does that affect? It affects your future, it affects your body, it affects relationships. Why don't we acknowledge it?
Speaker 2:Because it's too much work. And I have a case study for that and it was somebody who was very close to me. Their body was in a little bit rough shape, they were very weak physically and they had a physical job and they were on their third hernia repair in 18 months. Oh, and this person was very personal to me and I said to them I have a really bad feeling. You cannot just go get another surgery. You need to take the time out. You need to start doing some core. You need to get somebody to work with you. Physical therapy but the problem with medicine is abdominal surgeries don't get physical therapy For whatever reason. The muscles in the belly aren't as good as the muscle in your leg. So you have to request it and you have to really push for it, Because anything to do with the belly, they don't give you the rehab they need. That's insane.
Speaker 2:That's your core. That is life. Same with women with C-sections. They cut your transverse abs, which is the support to your entire hip pelvic girdle, and you do not get physical therapy.
Speaker 2:And usually most women, by five years. They have low back issues and all kinds of things. So anyway, I convinced this person by forcing them pretty much to go to the doctor. I went with them to every appointment. We talked to the doctor. They agreed it was a little extreme three surgeries in 18 months and my gut was on fire. So when my gut's on fire, I know somewhere down the road, if this doesn't correct, something bad is going to happen. I never thought about how bad it could be. So this is total willful blindness, because I'm explaining it to this person.
Speaker 2:And this person doesn't want to do the physical therapy, they just want to get back on with their life. So we get it all set up. They've agreed to take their six months off from work that they need to without lifting. They've agreed to do the PT. The family members are on board to support it, the doctors on board to support it and everything else. The only one appointment I couldn't go to was the post-off appointment at four weeks. They went against it, all signed the release and went back to work. Oh, at that point the next hernia was so bad. The bowel comes through. It's like an alien coming out.
Speaker 2:That one, the repair got infected. Once it got infected the whole abdominal cavity, there was no more abs left. They got totally eaten by the infection. So there was no stability left in the core. And for me that's a dramatic example of what happens when we keep pushing the envelope because we don't like the reality and we willfully create a blindness to it all because we don't want it. But there's a reason why. Yeah, we need to take a step back going. Okay, someone is telling me something's wrong. We do it with diabetes. We do it with heart disease. We do it with our exercise. You know, I read a new study coming out of the journal I don't know which one I was reading. Now, extreme exercise is not good for you. Did you know that? These are common sense things?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean, if you do it all the time and you're abusing your body and you're getting injured, but we need to do a study to prove it.
Speaker 2:That's the problem with willful blindness, because you should know already that it's not good for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why do you need someone else to tell you? Why do you need a study to tell you, right?
Speaker 2:Right, it's dangerous. You know, we had some friends over and the gentleman's on five different meds and he said something about taking his meds. I go, wow, that's a lot of meds. He goes, yeah, I need them. I go, oh, yeah, what's going on? So then he tells me and they're all preventable and they're all treatable and you could get off the meds, like his blood pressure and his cholesterol and everything else. And I said you do know you could make some lifestyle changes and maybe get off a few of those. He goes, no, I can't, oh dear.
Speaker 2:And I'm like you absolutely can, he goes. No, my doctor would have told me I mean, you don't, you have to live in an absolute bubble, but people do, otherwise we wouldn't be. I mean, I was in market basket on Sunday and every aisle had a motorized cart in it and some had two, and I was just almost crying when I left the store because I'm like what are we doing? What are we doing?
Speaker 1:What are we? What are we becoming as a society? What are we? That everything is just the easiest we want to?
Speaker 2:accept the reality, that we're creating our own reality, that we're not living in reality. Reality states this is not good, but you're creating it, you're willfully creating it to be blind, so you don't have to live in reality.
Speaker 1:You don't have to deal with it, you don't have to think about it.
Speaker 2:This whole body within the energy work is about sitting in reality, because you have endless options. When you're in reality, when you create a reality, you run out of options.
Speaker 1:You completely run out of options and then it's very difficult to go against your conceived, perceived reality. How do you go backwards? That's even harder, and so I think people stay in that bubble. Wow. Or because I know how many times I've done a couple of shows on the additives in food, because I'm becoming more and more aware of them, I'll see a headline and I'll go research it and I'll be like why, what's in there? And I read it. Now I can't pick up anything at the grocery store without going ugh and put it back, and people are like, why'd you put that back? Because there's five seed oils in it.
Speaker 2:I was born with chemical sensitivities and allergies. Try to find shrimp without a ton of stuff in it. You think you're just picking up a bag of shrimp. You are not just picking up a bag of shrimp.
Speaker 1:You have to be very aware of what they were fed, where they came from. No, you just have to look at the ingredients. Well, none of them say shrimp.
Speaker 2:They all say shrimp, this, this, this, this and this.
Speaker 1:Where's the one when most of them are chemical additives?
Speaker 2:You just want shrimp? Yeah, I don't want, yeah, so it's kind of crazy, but anyway, that's a whole other direction we're going in. Okay, so to age gracefully. We need to start coming out of the willful blindness state. And how do we do that? Start with the meditation. But the key is you have to want to see it. You have to want to see the things that are weakening your energy every day, that are weakening your health profile, that are weakening your emotional state, that's weakening your body. You have to want to. None of this works. If you don't want to, you can make up an excuse every which way on why this cannot work, because you don't want it to work.
Speaker 1:Correct. So you're creating a side bubble to your original one, Right your own obstacle, Right. So, wanting to talk just a tiny bit about how do you get from that bubble where you're considering it, what would be a first baby step to seeing. Well, I'm wanting to get better and it's not as bad as I think.
Speaker 2:Say that again I'm confused.
Speaker 1:No, I probably didn't say that very well, but so you're in this bubble and you're just. You know, no, the doctor's right, or I know what's best, or that's too much work for me. What would be a baby step if it popped into your head? What would it be a baby step to try to meditate? What would be a first step?
Speaker 2:Someone said to me the other day that their back was stiff and I said are you stretching? Yes, and I go. What are you doing? So she tells me the stretches. I go.
Speaker 2:Have you ever tried and I've said this a million times, but she was just in a different place where she was willing to listen this time have you ever tried to lay there and just wiggle around and move one leg across your body and one leg across your body the other way and see what it feels like and then start moving to see what releases your back? And she just got really quiet. I can't do that. I need to know what stretches to do. And I said but if you take the traditional method of stretching that we've evolved to with the physical therapy and the exercise is very linear.
Speaker 2:If you take yoga, it goes from every angle and twists your body all over. Why don't you do your own in the middle by just laying there and letting your body guide you? And the next thing you know, you start getting into that wave of energy. And then all of a sudden, you're stretching your shoulder too, because you realize your shoulder is attached to your hip and that's opening your back. And then you realize you want to bend over and lean on. You know, do like a child's pose. Your body is going to take you to that next level. But people get no. And she just kept saying I don't know that, I can do that, I go. You're choosing to not try because anybody can lay on the floor, take a couple of deep breaths. I said pretend you're drunk. When you're drunk you can go that extra mile. Right, you can just go these places that you could never go before. Everybody's the same way. Once you get caught in the flow of it, your body's doing all these crazy things you didn't know it could do to release itself.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 1:It's really cool. Well, actually that makes sense. And the reason I asked you is because some people just don't have that first step and I think that's an absolutely just fabulous illustration and I'll take that just one step more. So, with my low back, you know, they say oh, you know, put your two knees over this side, lay on the floor, put your two knees over that side, but that might hurt somebody, Exactly. And I found, wow, that really pulls on one side more than the other. So what I did was what you would say, and I know better.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you have to relearn, Sometimes you have to adjust your little self. You know ballet dancer my whole life. So it's like, okay, I can only do no, no, just lay there. And so I put the two knees over and I'm like, I really hate it on this side. So I just happened to stretch the top leg out a bit and I went oh, that feels kind of cool. So I brought it back in. I went to the other side and I'm like, and I went, oh, I don't like it on. So I do one way on one side, one way on the other and I'm like, okay, eventually it might change. But I opened myself to I don't like it on that side. But in my head from my training all those years I was saying, nope, you got to do five to this side and five to that side. And I undid it just out of, just out of happen chance that on this side I like it with the leg out Right.
Speaker 2:So it's that simple, people it really is, and it's going to the next level inside yourself and just listening to see what your body has to say. And you can still use the foundation of your other stuff and build on it, tweet it, build on it. But my posture for life brings you to start assessing. Does one go higher than the other? Can you feel that movement? What are you going to do? Do you need to do some tissue work to open that hip versus the other? That you have to get to know your body Because you know, I had somebody in the other day and the shoulder was coming from, the hips were out, but it was coming from the mid back, the thoracics, and he had been jamming on the hips and jamming on the hips and the physical therapist was jamming on the hips and all along it was his mid back but he wasn't symptomatic in the mid back.
Speaker 2:But if he had done a full body assessment he would have realized that his mid back wasn't mobile and he would have done some stretches and it would have freed up his hips.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Because we're so interconnected, because we stand upright, so everything has to balance on itself, otherwise we'd fall over. So they all have these nerve patterns, these neuromuscular patterns, that one offsets the other all the time. So if one's out, another one has to be out, even though they tell you they're not all connected. They are all connected they have to be or we would fall over. Correct Any physics person would tell you that we would fall over.
Speaker 1:But yet it doesn't translate over to the body and the but medicine has segregated the body so much.
Speaker 2:we've lost sight of that. And the alternative world doesn't do the physical piece, they do more.
Speaker 1:So that's almost a void there.
Speaker 2:It's a huge void, but that's where all of our discomfort comes from. If your hips aren't moving right and your torso is not doing this when you walk and you're not squishing your organs, you're not digesting right. So you can fix your digestion all you want, it's not going to work if you're not in there turning those organs. Gotcha, you know a lot of the yoga stuff teaches you about, like their spinal twist. You sit upright and you turn all the way this way in a straight line, because then the spine twists. It literally squeezes you out and squeezes those organs Like squeezing out a sponge, yes, yes, and when your arms swing when you walk, it does the same thing. You're not doing those things, you're going to end up with ill health over time. But we don't address any of that, and that's only a small piece. I'm not saying that is the answer, because that's just you've got to be careful of we're so. Once one thing comes forward, that's Everything's got to be this that's it, it's not.
Speaker 2:That's why we have to learn to listen, we have to mix it, because one time it might be your emotional state that's locking your gut down because of how you deal with stress, right. Yeah, could be something you ate that really gets your digestion going. That locks everything down. Now your hips aren't moving right. So the more you get to know yourself, you're going to know when those things come into your space and that are screwing you up.
Speaker 1:Well, it made me just think of perhaps a chauffeur in the future of our organs and how the muscles play into them.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, that's a tough one, because it's not there's. No, it's only gonna be an intuitive show, because we don't know that yet. Right, but what?
Speaker 1:I'm saying is, if you not to put down anybody, but you know, here's your heart, here's your lungs, these are kind of the muscles that are near it. You know, do this, can you feel that? Where do you feel that? Do you see how they're connected? Just, I was thinking. So people don't say I didn't know those parts were in there or I didn't know that's where it sat you know, it's so crazy.
Speaker 2:I had somebody come in because he's in his low 30s and he's pinching off a ureter in his kidneys and his kidney was failing and they told him that he was gonna lose his kidney because he's not draining and they could see in the x-ray that he was pinching it and I knew him personally and I told my daughter and she goes mom, can I get him in? And I'm like sure. And I looked at him and I said you gotta stop squatting the way you're squatting.
Speaker 2:That simple I straightened him out, showed him what he needed to do. I showed him how to do all his exercises without crunching and pinching on his abdominal cavity, about lengthening his body. He's stronger, he's leaner and he's not losing a kidney, because we don't have anything in medicine that would know how to do that other than just, it wasn't a surgical intervention, so then we don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2:Correct, but if you take a little bit of the yoga philosophy, you take a little bit of the Western philosophy, you take a little bit of the acupuncture philosophy and you mix them all together along with the energy piece, you've got this great thing.
Speaker 1:And you're in charge.
Speaker 2:Because it's all intuitive and your body's telling you take a little of this, a little of that, a little of that and mix it all together. But we're so linear that we're not getting our answers because we want to stretch our legs only one way.
Speaker 1:And that's not always the answer.
Speaker 2:And I'm not telling people they should go crazy and try all these things and spend all this money and get all these practitioners to do it.
Speaker 1:Because, again, when you expect someone else to, do it, you're gonna get a limited perspective and they can't read your body as well as you, and you're not doing the work. It's not being initiated by you, so where's the learning piece of that? Again, you're still trying to get a band-aid Right.
Speaker 2:Wow, you know I'm very blessed with my grandson. He's 16 now and he was born without his large and small intestines attached, so he had emergency surgery the first day he was born. So he has abdominal scarring and stuff and his torso goes out all the time because he pulls down and he goes to the gym with me and we have a blast because I have a lot of the same weaknesses. But he realizes that if I don't keep my body straight because I don't use a part of my belly there, that my hips go to one side, I can't use my pec anymore and my basketball game is skewed. So for him it's all about his basketball game. Okay, so all about the basketball game.
Speaker 1:He's got a vested interest here, a huge vested interest.
Speaker 2:But he realizes that it's just gonna be a lifelong thing for him and that's okay. But if he doesn't, his body's gonna go in another direction. He's gonna blow out a knee he's gonna have a roto and rotator or whatever, but he's wise enough to know that. I need to keep an eye on what's going on. I need to self-assess, I need to understand, when I do my exercises, what they should feel like.
Speaker 1:So it's truly a life journey. It's not just one thing at one time.
Speaker 2:I have yet to meet anybody who has a perfect yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, the seasons change, the weather changes, the temperature changes so why wouldn't your body change?
Speaker 2:Come to me to throw out their backs because they're over yoga-ing Is that a word?
Speaker 1:Oh, I guess it's the word people.
Speaker 2:You heard it here over yoga-ing yeah because they think the yoga has to be all these crazy stretching but their body's not equipped. No-transcript, there's not one thing, and that's my point. You know, the more you get to know yourself, the more you connect to that infinite piece of you, that energy piece that you know so much. Because we do know so much, my days are awesome because every day I'm getting stronger. I mean, I'm gonna be 59 this year and every day I'm getting stronger. I'm stronger than most women in their 30s who can say that.
Speaker 1:Not a lot of people.
Speaker 2:I would be disabled right now because I was so physically limited on my right side. It completely collapsed. I mean, I want everybody to have what I have.
Speaker 1:Yep Well. I'm getting there, but people just have to look at it, because you know how I was two years ago before I came to you. Yeah, I still don't know, maybe going on three. Yeah, I was so locked down that I I didn't even know. I forgot how to use my arm. I forgot literally. I couldn't do the most simplest things in. But it has to come from us.
Speaker 2:Right, it has to, and I can only guide you. People want me to be the doer. I'm a facilitator of what you're capable of, and how open you are is how capable. Like Heidi, I talked about her in the last show. She was very open, so her potential was huge. It increased, yeah. Yeah, she was in survival mode. When you're in survival mode, a lot can happen.
Speaker 1:I do. Well, all right, so let's, how can people contact you again?
Speaker 2:Body Within Community at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:All right, and what is the website where they can find out about the meditation Marine?
Speaker 2:Noted K-N-O-E-T-I-Gcom.
Speaker 1:Dot com, so you can find out about meditation and my books on Amazon.
Speaker 2:The Missing Peace to Health and Age, and Gracefully.
Speaker 1:It's a great book. Believe me, you should get it. Keep it right by your bedside. So again, thank you. As always, I can't wait till next month. It's getting more exciting because we're moving faster and I don't mean faster, but we're moving along and learning so much more and becoming comfortable with talking about this, of reaching out to each other and not being afraid of what that little next step is, or a little bit of experimentation, or just a little bit of thought change. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1:Thank you again, thank you All right, everybody, we will see you next time. Make sure to share, share, share these shows and send your comments and questions to Marie. You can always reach out to me as well, but she's got the better answers. But we will see you next time. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you.