In my post Allergies: what are you resisting? I discussed how, beyond the physiological causes, allergies can be a sign you are resisting something, maybe dealing with a difficult issue or accepting a situation or person.
There is a hidden clue, as there usually is, in the origin of the word (as a linguist and teacher I have a fascination with etymology and I often use it to help explain concepts). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in my amazing visual dictionary for iPad, Wordflex it comes “from German Allergie, from Greek allos, meaning ‘other’, on the pattern of Energie ‘energy’“. Other translations of allos include “different” and “strange”.
So when we have an allergic reaction, we are literally reacting to the energy of others, or their ‘different’ things or places. Wow. This realisation came like a lightening bolt to my consciousness.
At the most literal, physiological level, this has a sound medical basis, which indeed is where the word was first used just over a century ago, coined in 1906 by Austrian paediatrician, Clemens E. von Pirquet.
Go deeper, though, and the doors open to profound healing not just of the body – without medication, which anyway just hides the symptoms – but of our relationships with ourselves, our circumstances and the people around us.
In the next post in this series on allergies and their emotional and spiritual origin, I explain how to use them to help find freedom, peace and harmony by aligning with our true nature and universal energy.