183: New Life Perspectives with Liz Larson and Bill McKenna - Episode 183183: New Life Perspectives with Liz Larson and Bill McKenna - Episode 183
UK Health Radio Podcast
Bill McKenna discusses how resentment and forgiveness may affect physical health, sharing client experiences and scientific studies. The episode includes a guided body-based exercise designed to help release tension linked to old hurts.
46:26•9 Nov 2026
Resentment, Forgiveness and Your Body: New Life Perspectives with Bill McKenna
Episode Overview
- Resentment may show up in the body as pain, tension or illness when emotions stay unprocessed.
- Research on radical remissions links releasing suppressed emotions and practising forgiveness with better health outcomes.
- Meta-analyses associate forgiveness with reduced depression, anxiety, stress, anger and cardiovascular strain, plus improved sleep.
- A practical exercise involves noticing a resentment, locating tension in the body, and gently relaxing each tension point while allowing the feeling.
- Comparing what you gain from holding resentment with the benefits of letting go can make forgiveness feel more appealing and realistic.
“What we hold against another, we hold against ourselves.”
Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of how letting go can change a body as much as it changes a mind. This UK Health Radio episode of *New Life Perspectives* centres on resentment, forgiveness and the mind–body connection, with Bill McKenna sharing stories that make you rethink what you’re still carrying around. Early on, you’ll hear a striking tale about a woman heading to the dentist with a painful abscess.
Through a simple forgiveness process – asking “Who’s here that I’ve yet to forgive?” while focusing on the painful area – her pain dropped from a 9 or 10 down to zero. Bill acknowledges it sounds “absolutely bizarre”, yet uses it to introduce the idea that the body may express emotions we struggle to process.
The conversation then turns to research on radical remissions from stage four cancer, highlighting recurrent themes: releasing suppressed emotions, cultivating positive feelings, deepening spiritual connection, embracing social support, changing diet, following intuition, using herbs and supplements, having a strong reason for living, and increasing movement. Forgiveness sits right in the middle of this cluster, as a practical way to release emotional pressure.
Bill also shares the view of a pioneering heart surgeon who felt every transplant patient had a history of deep emotional hurt. From there, the episode looks at meta-analyses linking forgiveness with reduced depression, anxiety, stress, anger and cardiovascular strain, plus better sleep and physical health. For anyone in recovery, the most hands-on part is a guided body-based exercise: notice a resentment, find the tension points it triggers, and systematically relax them while allowing the feeling rather than fighting it.
The aim isn’t to force forgiveness, but to reach a place where “you literally don’t feel it anymore”, so forgiving becomes easy because the emotional charge has gone. If you’re wondering whether hanging on to old hurts is worth the cost to your health and peace of mind, this episode may nudge you to put your resentments on one side of the scale – and your future on the other.
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