So, you finally go on vacation and the first thing that happens is that you get a raging head cold. You shift some energy and find a better feeling emotional place, only to wake up nauseous the next day. You finally manage to stand up to your passive aggressive mother in law, and promptly get a herpes blister on your lip. What the hell, Universe? Are you being punished for being kind to yourself? Is the Universe sending you a message that you’re doing it wrong? Or, perhaps it’s the answer behind door number three – there’s a perfectly good explanation for what’s happening. I’ll give you teensy hint: It’s door number 3, y’all.

This isn’t a metaphor, people

You’re not being punished for being kind to yourself and you’re not doing it wrong. When you shift energy from a lower to a higher state, you are actually shifting energy. This isn’t some metaphor, or some theoretical blah-blah, you are actually changing from a lower frequency to a higher one. And this, dun-dun-dun-dunnnnnn, has consequences.

Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. When you hold on to beliefs and thoughts that don’t serve you, when you focus on frequencies that contract the vibration of Who You Really Are and what you really want, and you do it for a long enough time, THAT has consequences. First, you feel some negative emotion. If you’re sensitive enough, you’ll be able to notice this feedback at this early stage and do something about it (focus in a way that feels better). But if, like most people alive today, you were taught not to pay attention to your stupid, unnecessary, girly feelings, and push on ahead, the discord created by this resistance (the contradictory frequency) will manifest in bigger and more obvious ways.

When the non-physical becomes physical

When you think a thought, you actually begin to vibrate at the frequency of that thought. If the thought is “positive”, if it matches or closely resembles the thought you want to be thinking, it’s said to have a high frequency. So, if you’re thinking “I love myself” (or I love [insert anything here]), that will match what Who You Really Are (which, incidentally, is also Who You Really Want To Be) is thinking. This thought will feel good. If you think “OMG, I can’t believe how stupid I am!”, that will not match what Who You Really Are is thinking. This thought will feel bad.

What few people realize is that the feeling, the emotion, is already a type of physical manifestation. Emotions are actually caused by chemical processes in the brain. So, when you focus on a thought, the distance between that thought and the one you REALLY want to think will create a response. Your brain then translates that response into all kinds of wonderful (and not so wonderful) chemicals, which are then distributed throughout your body. When you have an extreme emotional response, you’ll actually feel it somewhere in your physical body. Anxiety can make your stomach hurt. Grief can actually make your heart tighten up painfully. Disgust can make your skin crawl with pins and needles and goosebumps, etc. But even in the more subtle stages, emotions are already a physical manifestation of the energy we’ve attuned ourselves to.

When we hold on to a contradictory frequency or “resistance” for any length of time, that discord is spread throughout our energy body AND our physical body. Your body is always trying to find balance, but since you and your focus are the boss, it must mirror the vibration you’re holding on to back to you. It will seek the frequency of What You Really Want, but will have to respond to what you’re actually focusing on.

To put it in simpler terms: Your body wants to be whole and healthy and balanced and a happy shiny puppy. But if you keep focusing on stuff that feels bad, it creates an actual, physical response that mucks up the works. You might as well be eating poison. That’s right, your thoughts are actually translated into physical responses that either help or hurt your body. Hold on to the resistance long enough, and you’ll create physical ailments and eventually, disease.

Taking out the trash

Now, let’s say that you’ve been focusing on all kinds of ugly, bad feeling, gunky thoughts. You’ve been holding yourself in a situation that doesn’t feel good, because of obligation or some other bullshit reason. You’ve been suffering because you figure that your pain will translate into gain at some point. You’ve been sacrificing yourself for others, for work, for God or whatever. In other words, you’ve been doing stuff that doesn’t feel good.

And then you stop. You go on vacation and relax. You take up meditation. You hire a coach or do some energy work yourself and manage to gain a different perspective. You start to think better feeling thoughts. You begin to focus on a frequency that’s more closely aligned with Who You Really Are. This is a good thing. Only now that you’ve done that, your physical body also has to shift. As the beneficial changes you’ve just made to your energy body translate into the physical, your body begins to heal, which may entail physical symptoms of that healing. This is called “purging”, and it’s basically a way for your body to take out the trash.

You may not realize just how much of an effect your workaholism has had on your body, for example. But when you go on vacation and your whole system seems to break down into a mucus-y, sniffly, stuffy, achey breaky mess, that’s your body rebalancing itself and undoing all the damage you’ve been doing by not noticing just how bad it feels to work 18 hours a day. The worse your purging symptoms are, the greater the energy shift achieved and/or, the more damage the resistance you’ve just released was doing.

Purging symptoms

Purging can take many forms. Here are a few I’ve noticed:

  • Increased Fatigue (the need to sleep a lot more)
  • Yawning
  • Crying
  • Nausea, stomach ache, vomiting (puking is an extreme symptom, usually brought on by large shifts like the ones achieved in shamanic ceremonies)
  • Diarrhea or simply increased pooping (Ha! Made you laugh!)
  • Flu like symptoms, head cold
  • Heavier menstrual cycle, increased cramping
  • Jittery, manic energy (NOT the euphoria that comes after a shift. This usually shows up after the purging)
  • Problems falling asleep or staying asleep
  • Lack of appetite
  • Increased appetite and cravings
  • Increased mucus production (stuffy nose, mucus in the throat, coughing)
  • Increased sensitivity to hot and cold temperatures
  • Etc.

You may have noticed that these symptoms are all over the place and many of them contradict each other. This is because everyone purges differently. Not only that, but some people will tend to have a lot of physical symptoms, while others may have very few or even none, no matter how much energy work they do. You are an individual, unique flower in this Universe. You get to have your own, individual, unique purging symptoms.

Don’t fight it

Purging is a good thing, if not always convenient. The best possible thing you can do is to honor your body and just go with it. If you get sick or tired, rest. Don’t try to push through it. You want this stuff to come out. This is as a physical manifestation of the negative energy you are releasing. It is a rebalancing of physical consequences your body has already suffered. Allow it to happen.

In many cases, you’ll find that you’re grateful for the “excuse” to relax and take it easy, if you allow yourself to do so. While having a head cold isn’t fun, getting plenty of sleep or spending the day in front of the TV and doing nothing can feel like a huge relief from the ordeal you’re normally putting yourself through. Pay attention to that.

If you don’t fight the symptoms but succumb to them, if you take your body’s cue and just take it easy for a bit, the symptoms will pass much faster. If you resist the purging you are, in fact, creating more resistance. Think about it.

Bottom line

This purging will not last forever, nor will you always have to suffer as much when you shift some energy. As you clean up your vibration more and more, the symptoms will get lighter. You may have some stomach issues today, but within a few months of deliberately feeling better, you may find that your purging takes the form of crying, instead. If you no longer put the same pressure on yourself at work, you’ll no longer get sick when you go on vacation. If you learn to stand up for yourself on a regular basis and honor your boundaries all the time, your body will no longer need to react to the one time you do it.

Allow your body to do what it needs to do. It’s simply finding its balance and undoing all the damage that was done by focusing in a way that didn’t serve you. It’s healing. All you have to do is let it.

Have you experienced purging symptoms? Share in the comments! I love to read what you have to say!

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  • Can we still comment? This post is years old but no matter, it’s helping me here in 2021.
    I have been visualising for a year now on a specific financial outcome and it has been feeling so close I can taste it. In fact life has improved so much all round. But then I get the flu from hell and my internet crashes, which means I can’t even work from home. This all drives me crazy (hate being sick, hate being obstructed from working while sick by the stupid internet) but I’m trying to go with it rather than resist. Obvs the universe is trying not so subtly tell me to take it easy while my vibration shifts.

  • Hi Melody,

    Thank you for this post. I have been searching your archives about the explanation on heightened emotions when we start shifting vibration and was about to send you an email when I read this. This explains my situation. I guess I am shifting my vibration, yay!

    I have been meditating everyday, and also been trying to feel good. Haven’t really gotten into visualizing and all, but getting there. I have noticed for several days now that I have been kind of an emotional wreck, I am either crying over the littlest of stuff, or laughing at the silliest things. But I am crying more, or getting teary eyed over small stuff. Even the simplest things made me cry, like, I greeted a friend for her birthday today, and it made me tear up. I saw some news about a dog earlier, and it made me tear up again. I know that I am easily touched by wonderful things, but I just utter ‘aaawww’, and smile, then I’m good. But recently I’ll probably drop a tear or two, or get overcome with so much emotion that I will cry. It’s a good thing that I work at home or people are probably going to wonder why I cry all the time!

  • O.M.G. Thank you a million times! I have been shifting A TON of energy lately and have been confused by my coinciding general decline in health…particularly the jittery, manic energy, problems falling asleep, bloating, cramping and stomach pain! The jittery background/static/anxiety and total inability to sleep has had me the most confused b/c it was really new and clearly didn’t feel positive. A friend told me her theory was that I had shifted a bunch of energy but I disagreed that doing so would bring on the symptoms I’ve been having. I thought I should be feeling physically better, not worse. Turns out, she was right! Thanks, Mel!

  • Hi Melody, I experience most of those and I can see how they coincide with the stress I have allowed in my life. Arguments with loved ones make me sick to my stomach, actually confrontation with anyone make me feel ill. I also heard that many of us going through these feelings are experiencing a transition to a higher vibrational frequency.

    When I experienced extreme body aches and pains several years ago the doctor diagnosed me with fibromyalgia because they could not find anything physically wrong with me. I ended up becoming extrememly anemic due to an overactive menstrual cycle. This increased over a three-year period until my hemoglobin dropped to a 2.5 (these levels should be around 12 – 14 for women). I was hospitalized to have a blood transfusion followed up with vitamin B injections and more. That was soon followed up with a uterine hysterectomy.

    During that entire period I was under so much stress from heavy workload, huge debt, worried about my daughter who had turned 18 and no idea what she wanted with life.

    After the surgery I started reading about the Laws of Attraction and began to relate how I had manifested much of my life. I slowly got myself out of debt and began to feel really happy again. I have had my share of ups and downs since then, but when I align back with the good energy everything changes for the better. 10 years later I am having a deeper learning with Universal Law and thanks to you it is much easier to comprehend.

    I am in love with my old high-school boyfriend and living at the beach (a lifetime desire). Also, my beautiful daughter Sara and her boyfriend Alex had a baby boy on January 19. Bradley is our little rainbow baby, Sara is surely a crystal child. I have never been so happy in my entire life and it gets better every day! Purging is awesome!

    Lots of hugs,
    Anne

  • Hey Melody THANK YOU FOR YOUR POST, it was particularly illuminating and also confirming my feelings about the purging, only claryfing much better the vibrational shifts!! Here’s something I want to share with you hoping to receive your view on it. I’m separated w kids and am trying to revv up my love life…I keep bumping into men with whom a great feeling springs from our even just virtual..yes I mean msg, contact. A great feeling of openness where trust starts laying the grounds and intimacy to develop……these guys come likewise from a separation and no kids..at the climax of the idyll just before arranging to meet…they get really sick w heavy flu…and then go back to their closed secure ways denying and contradicting incredibly all their very acts and words…or they have like a knee injury while playing their usual sport…
    Knee standing for handling pressure and own desires in psychosomatics..
    Meanwhile I feel sick, in need of perennial sleep and quiet….since I dared shifting to trust and revive also my dance and musical work….or dare say: career! :)))

  • Wow. Thanks for this post Melody. It really helps to know that I am not alone in this and there is an explanation for everything I’ve been going on lately: constant diarrhea (for the last 3 weeks), difficulty going to sleep at night while not being to stay awake during the weekend, lack of appetite in the last week, very emotional and crying a lot. I do feel an energetic shift and I feel releasing a lot of resistance. There were some other symptoms I have experienced after I started this self work: bad migraines a few months ago, but only in the weekend, and 2 episodes of severe vertigo during the month of December, hearing voices etc…I hope this is all these symptoms mean …lol

  • My body is saying it is hungry for real food right now….have been doing some heavy duty purging recently….but am excited to say for the first time in 4 years kidney and liver are both functioning normal levels.
    I am loving going to Liangong (healing form of Qigong) and I am feeling much better.
    Now changing focus to release the inflammation.
    I am very slowly changing…I was hoping for hare speed but looks like I am getting there at tortoise levels. Still making progress and that is the best!

  • Suffered with migraines for about 6 years, when I was living in big-time resistance… last few I had were absolute shockers, yet, at the time, I knew that I was coming to the end of ‘needing’ them, kind of knew that I’d outgrown them, and was actually so grateful (while still in agony!) and sure enough, haven’t had one for ages!! and I used to get one a week, average
    Also, have had two Bars treatments recently and altho I believe we’re energy, I was a little skeptical that anything could be achieved by touching points on the body?? but, both times have felt what I can only describe as energy, shifting in my chest… a little bit like ‘butterflies in the tummy’ – but more of a swirling sensation!

  • Hi Melody,

    Whew! How true! I used to get sick as soon as school was out back when I was teaching. I learned to just write off the first week of summer vacation every year.

    I’m familiar with purging from fasting, when your tongue gets fuzzy and lots of stinky stuff sloughs off. I hadn’t thought of it in the emotional arena, but it makes a lot of sense! Yeah. Bottom line, trust your body. It’s a great signaler and early warning system.

    Hugs,

    Carole

  • Thanks for your post Melody. You’ve so explained why every holiday I usually get ill. And that started in my school days already.

    And interestingly enough, not so much in the last few years. But then I have been following Law of Attraction and in particular, you, over the last few years. So have been paying more attention to a lot of things.

  • Hi Mel,

    Thanks so much for this, it explains a lot. I have been doing a fair of EFT lately, really shifting my negative built up emotions and found that I have developed a really stiff back that aches terribly. It literally feels frozen. This came upon me yesterday after doing EFT. I also find that I am crying quite a bit for no reason or at certain things. I was starting to get worried, so glad that you explained this for us. God Bless xx

  • Hahaha!

    Here I’ve been manically taking pregnancy tests, because I’m bloated, I’m nauseous, I’m exhausted (always yawning), I can’t fall asleep and then sleep in late (not like me lately), and I even have the extra mucus thing in my nose (sorry, TMI, I know).

    Then I read your post. I just shifted from “don’t like what I’m doing but I’m stuck doing it” to “SCREW THIS! I know what makes me happy, I’m gonna do it and I’m gonna do it ROCKSTAR while I be ROCKSTAR with my current state, too!” Whole new energy level for me.

    Hadn’t connected the dots until today. THANKS MELODY!!

    • OMG, so awesome Cheryl! I could feel your energy strongly. Really happy for you, thanks for sharing!!!

      Marjorie

  • This is how I think of illness–as a purging or taking out the trash. Our eating habits and emotions differ with seasons, so when the weather changes my body makes adjustments. It has to get rid of the old to embrace the new. I have symptoms right now from heavy emotions that came up on Mothers Day. My lungs have been heavy with grief and now I’m having one long coughing fit after another.

    My difficulties usually come after I’ve been elated, joyous and full of gratitude on the heels of a beautiful realization, a-ha! Or a release. I think, “Yes! This is it! I’m in alignment. Let me spread the love. I will shine, shine, shine!”
    And then some more heavy stuff comes to the surface and down the hole I go.

  • Great post Mel! Yes, been there done that! So, that explains it. The list you provide are means of purging and also indications that the body is fighting and at work protecting.

    I have become more empathic lately, and just feel the emotions of others when in the vicinity. Like those of a cold neighbor when I pass by her. she always has a frown on her face, is perpetually angry and speaks only when she wants something. Her vibe is so overpowering, I have recenly noticed this. I feel the pain, joy, anger and frustration of others, it seems. Or is it my response to their vibes? Not sure, but I sure am reacting to something. It goes away not long after, thank God.

  • LOL. Interesting. I seem to have six of said symptoms – so now I ask myself if I could really have been so screwed-up? Eh, yeah, probably.

    But I think things-are-a-changing! Last week I went to Costco and as I was about to leave my apartment realized I didn’t have that $2 coin for parking. I just said to myself that I will figure it out when I get there – instead of going into a tailspin over something so stupid.

    As I am driving into the parking lot, a woman stops me with an “excuse me”. Instead of being rude and just driving on I stopped and she told me she was about to leave so I could park in her space and handed me her parking ticket! My first reaction was to say that I usually park “way over there” and so didn’t want her parking. (I can just see Melody shaking her head at that one – yes, I have in the past demanded the universe manifest exactly how I want it done!) – But instead I thanked her graciously for her kindness and took her parking space – and didn’t need to worry about that $2 coin.

    Couple days ago I needed so go into the center of the business district which is horrific due to lack of parking. Surprise, surprise, I saw an open space and was about to parallel park when I saw one further ahead that would be easier to get into. Not only was there parking but the meter had 36 minutes left in it. Yay!

    Couple weeks ago I was on my way to donate stuff to the SPCA store but couldn’t find it. U-turn upon (illegal) U-turn, frustration building because my good deed was being thwarted, I literally said (I am not kidding): “Universe where is this damn store!” – looked to my right and there it was. I was right outside of it.

    So Melody, what is it with me and the Universe and parking spaces? Coincidences? Little gifts? I like it!

    • Emilio, loved your stories of manifestations! How awesome to get little gifts from the universe!! Sounds like you’ve got some good vibrations going there! Keep it up 🙂 Thanks for sharing!!

      Marjorie

  • After my breakup I needed to start putting myself first again (and make it that strong that I will be able to maintain it during my next relationship). The weeks after the breakup I felt that I needed to rest a little bit more, I was just so tired. I actually felt guilty that I did, but now that I read this I realize what was happening and I know I just have to go with it.

    I allow the feelings of pain to pass my body, I feel the pain while questioning why and the relief while it leaves my body when the realisation that it’s for the best enters my mind. These feelings are still in me and change like the tides of the sea, but I do notice the moments of pure contentment become longer and the moments of pain leave more quickly now. I still miss the relationship, but know now that it wasn’t right for me as I had to compensate what I want from a relationship too much. Even though I was terrified of living without him, I am happier now then when I was with him… So in a way my body is grieving for all the times he made me sad and all the times I suppressed that feeling. I hope I’ll be strong enough next time so it won’t ever happen again. I realize that’s why I need to grief now.

    Thanks for this post!

  • I loved this post! It really illustrated what I went through the last couple of days. I’m seeing now that I have had a pattern of this process for many years, I just didn’t realize that it meant I was getting better! Yay! I still felt a little crummy this morning, but I really, really wanted to take a walk on my usual nature trail. I felt fine during the walk, which was great since I was really craving some outdoor time. Your explanation has helped clarify something that has puzzled me for years. Thanks so much!

  • Thanks for this post, Melody. It was exactly what I needed today. A few days at the end of last week, the annoying scratchy throat, etc came for a visit … I didn’t think much of it except that it’s not normal. It’s gone but the lingering stuffy nose and tickle cough remain … nothing too serious or debilitating … just there. I have made some pretty drastic shifts in my thinking regarding some relationship issues the past month and finished the move from “settling” to accepting only the best sometime last week. It’s interesting to know the little bit of sluggishness is my “self” readjusting to find balance. The times of getting REALLY sick are pretty distant for me and it was also nice to discover that it’s severity is related to where I am vibrationally (that it’s better). Am so glad I’ve found you site to shed an illuminating light on everything. Thanks again 🙂

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