Your Body Is a Timeline: Healing Past Selves in Present Skin
Part Four of The Body as Oracle
Your body remembers.
Not in stories or timelines, but in sensation.
A wave of heat that rises when someone raises their voice.
A freeze that creeps in the moment you disappoint someone.
An ache in your chest that doesn’t quite match the moment — but feels urgent anyway.
These aren’t overreactions.
They’re echoes.
Your body is a timeline.
Every version of you — the one who smiled through pain, the one who learned to leave herself, the one who tried to make it all okay — still lives inside you.
And when those younger parts resurface, they’re not trying to sabotage you.
They’re asking to be seen.
The Present is a Portal
In session recently, a client shared that she panicked after setting a boundary with her mother — even though it was the most grounded, gentle boundary she’d ever spoken. Her words were clear. Her voice was calm.
But her body was trembling.
Her stomach hurt for hours.
She said: “I feel like I did something wrong. Like I’m a bad daughter.”
That was a younger part of her speaking — the one who learned that love required obedience, not truth.
We didn’t rush to “fix” it.
We paused. We breathed. We let her feel it.
And then something softened.
Because present-day safety allows past pain to surface and complete.
Meeting the Moment with Compassion
When you feel a disproportionate response in your body, try asking:
❍ How old does this part of me feel?
❍ What was happening in my life the last time I felt this way?
❍ What might this part of me need now, in this moment?
You don’t need to relive it.
You don’t need to analyze it.
You just need to be with it — gently, curiously, slowly.
The body doesn’t ask for performance. It asks for presence.
The Body is Not the Enemy
Another client once said to me, “I just want to feel normal. Why does this keep happening when things are finally good?”
Because your body waits until it’s safe to reveal what it’s been carrying.
The absence of danger doesn’t always feel like peace — sometimes it feels like collapse, grief, rage.
The nervous system says: It’s safe now. You can let go.
And that’s not regression. That’s healing.
From Here
Healing doesn’t mean erasing the past.
It means reclaiming the present as a place where all of you is welcome.
In our next post, we’ll explore how ritual and micro-practices can help you rebuild trust with your body — not as a to-do list, but as an act of devotion.
Until then, I invite you to slow down when the waves come.
Not to stop them.
But to remind the younger you: I’m here now. I’ve got us.
Because healing isn’t becoming someone new.
It’s remembering who you were before you had to forget.
