What My Cat Has to Do With Your Health

You might say that cats are fickle. Particular. Demanding. I tend to think they just have really good boundaries.

Of my two cats, Niko is both more interested in human touch and more likely to eschew it if it doesn't come in just the right way.

The other evening I was trying to get him to climb into bed with me. He was close, in reaching distance, but no amount of special Niko-come-here signals would convince him to come on over. I knew that placing him in bed would lead to nothing - it had to happen on his own volition. So I stretched out my hand and loved on him right where he was. One moment later, he was snuggled up on my lap.

It occurs to me that the body often behaves the same way.

Maybe you want to improve your health, get out of pain, increase the parts of you that are functioning well. And maybe you tend to call to your body in some way or another but it doesn't respond the way you expect or want. Or maybe you try to grab at health, forcing it to sit still on your lap, only to have it run away, perhaps clawing you in the process.

What would it be like for you to imagine that your problematic pelvic floor or your arthritic knees or your bunions or your tense upper back is a reticent cat?

What if, instead of making it come to you, if you will, you went to it? Met it where it was? Honored its reticence? Gave it time to know that you were safe (and not the four year old in the house who might squash it)?

The bottom line is this: what if you entered into a relationship of goodwill, mutuality, respect and love?

Maybe, just maybe, by respecting the boundaries in place, those parts of you that "give you trouble" will be more willing to connect, to respond, to open up (LITERALLY) to healing.

Maybe you'll get exactly what it is you wanted in the first place.