How I stopped getting sinus infections by asking a completely different question 
For a few years I was on first-name terms with my GP’s receptionist. Not because anything dramatic was happening. Just because I kept getting sinus infections which would start as sinusitis – an irritation of the nasal tissues – then develop into a full blown infection. Repeatedly. Several times a year, like clockwork. Antibiotics, a brief recovery, and then a few weeks later the whole thing would start again.
It became one of those things I accepted as just part of my life. Some people get bad backs. Some people get migraines. I got sinus infections. That was apparently just my thing. Except it was not. And the moment I stopped accepting it and started asking a different question, it stopped. The question that changed everything.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why so many women with chronic unexplained symptoms have been right about their bodies all along, and why the medical system is not designed to find what they are looking for. Today I want to make it more personal.
I work with the body-mind connection every day in my practice. I help women understand why their bodies are doing what they are doing, find the emotional and energetic root of what is driving their physical symptoms, and change it there rather than managing it at the surface. And yet for a couple of years I was managing my own sinus infections at the surface without once turning the lens on myself. Eventually I got fed up enough to sit with it properly. Not research it, not book another appointment, just sit quietly and ask a question that sounds almost too simple to be useful.
What is literally getting up my nose right now?
I want you to notice the language. Not what is causing my sinus infections or what is wrong with my immune system. What is getting up my nose.
Because that is how the body works. It is extraordinarily literal. It uses the same language you would use to describe the emotional experience underneath the symptom. And when you ask it the right question, it answers almost immediately. In my case the answer came quickly and honestly. There was a situation in my life at the time that had been irritating me for a long time. Not in a dramatic, obvious way. In that quiet, persistent, low-level way that does not quite surface as a proper conversation but sits there anyway, getting under your skin. Or in my case, up my nose.
The body is not being poetic. This is the thing I want you to really hear because it is easy to dismiss it as a nice metaphor. It is not a metaphor. It is a mechanism.
The body and the mind are in constant conversation. What you cannot express outwardly, what you suppress, tolerate, absorb, swallow or push to the back of the queue, finds another route. And the route it takes is almost always directly connected to the language you would use to describe it:
- Something is a pain in the neck and your neck goes.
- You cannot stomach a situation and your gut suddenly has an issue.
- You feel like you cannot breathe in a particular environment or situation and your chest or your lungs go.
- Your shoulders carry responsibility literally.
- Your lower back goes when you feel unsupported.
- Your throat closes when you cannot say what needs to be said.
None of this is random. The body is specific, consistent and patient. It will keep communicating the same message in increasingly insistent ways until someone finally asks the right question.
What I did about it
Once I had my answer I did not ignore it or make a grand gesture of changing my whole life. I shifted my perspective on the situation. Not the situation itself, which was not entirely mine to change, but how I was relating to it. What I was making it mean. The story I was telling myself about it and the amount of mental and emotional energy I was giving it every day without even noticing.
That shift was enough. I have not had a sinus infection since. That was a couple of years ago now.
I am not telling you this to suggest that changing your mindset cures everything. That is not what I believe and it is not what I teach. Emotional and energetic roots can be deep, complex and layered in ways that require proper work to find and shift. A perspective shift alone will not resolve thirty years of a pattern. But sometimes the communication is relatively clear and relatively recent. Sometimes the body just needs you to hear it once.
The practical question
If you have a recurring physical symptom that has not responded well to conventional treatment, try asking this. Write the symptom down in plain, everyday language. The most ordinary words you would use. Then sit with it and ask whether there is an emotional or situational equivalent.
- Your sinuses are blocked. What are you not wanting to face? What is getting up your nose?
- Your knees keep giving way. Where in your life are you refusing to bend?
- Your voice keeps going. What have you been unable to say?
- Your lower back will not settle. What are you carrying that does not belong to you?
Do not force the answer. Just ask the question and notice what surfaces. The body has been holding it for you, waiting for you to be ready to look.
One more thing. There is a second question worth asking once you have your answer.
What needs to change?
Not necessarily in the external situation. Sometimes that is not possible or not entirely yours to control. But in how you are relating to it. What you are tolerating. What you are absorbing. What you are giving energy to that is costing you more than you have realised.
The sinus infections were not random. They were a message I kept not hearing until I finally got quiet enough to listen.
Your body is doing the same thing. It always has been.
The question is whether you are ready to hear what it is saying.
If this has landed for you
The deeper work, finding the original root of a physical pattern and changing it there, is what The Healing Pathway is built around. It is a membership for women who are ready to stop managing what they are carrying and actually find where it started.
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Tracy x