My Shoulder of Should

It happened 5 years ago. I was walking down the street with my 2 year old and holding his hand. He was never one much for walking. He loved to be carried and I struggled to get him out of the sling. It was only from a tired back and a belief he should be walking at his age, did I make the decision a few weeks prior that I needed to encourage him to walk on his own. So I held on to his tiny hand as we walked down the street.

That was when it happened. He let go of the ground. He put his feet up, bent his knees and he pulled my shoulder in a jarring motion down as I tried to save him from falling.

It was a classic rotator cuff injury, I was told by my physical therapist. Nothing torn, just a really bad sprain. After spending 3 months working with a physical therapist, using every ointment on the planet, hot and cold compresses, and keeping it as still as I could, it didn't get 100% better. Sleeping on my side was impossible, and I learned to sleep on my back with a pillow under my knees so I wouldn't move in the night. The mornings I woke up on my side, I was always waking up from the jarring pain in my shoulder. In fact, years later while in my downward dog pose in a yoga class I had my two kids in (even with protests, I thought as homeschoolers, they should learn this), I felt the injury come back full force and I was back into the physical therapist's office. Nothing seemed to make all of the pain go away.

Soon I was introduced to EFT, Louise Hay, and the law of attraction. I found out I could get rid of the pain through tapping, affirmations and what I thought about. For the first time in years, I was 100% pain-free! Well, most of the time.

Strangely enough, my shoulder is my alarm for "shoulds." It happens every time, without fail. Someone in my family needs me, and I get a thought in my head I should get up to help, my shoulder begins to ache. My husband is having a struggling conversation with the kids, and I feel I should fix it, yep, shoulder hurts again. Creating my businesses and feeling I should be working harder to make more money for the family and BAM! I am hit with pain in my shoulder. Imagine how well I did over the Thanksgiving holiday with my family when old stories of "I should" came to the surface... needless to say, my shoulder was as much pain as I had felt for the first time in a year.

Now, I always have the tools to make the pain go away, I just find it interesting how the should is in my should-er. How did that happen? What kind of cosmic message is that? I believe the universe has quite a sense of humor.

The blessing of this gift is I always know when my thoughts have left the here and now and gone into the "shoulds" of the past and the future. I know when I am not in allowing, but fixing. I know when I am not in my own business, I am in other people's business. When I am really clear, I can feel the tingle begin at the very first moment when a should thought forms. That is really cool.

Do you have a sign you are out of alignment? What seems to happen to you when you are wandering from your path of joy? Sick stomach? Headache?

Our body's are not separate from our minds and spirits. It is all one connected package. Learning to only take care of one without the others is sure to create some kind of notification system your whole self is hoping you pay attention to.

My whole self decided it would be clever to create my shoulder of should.

Thank you, it works.