Defining the Journey of Healing

Defining the Journey of Healing

What is Healing?

From a Medical Practitioners Point of View:

It is diagnosing, prescribing treatment, minimising or relieving suffering. Or actively intervening in the course of disease, to help effect cures, prevent illness, or eradicate disease.

The Holistic View:

A process of bringing together all aspects of one’s self. Finding integration, harmony and balance with each aspect of the self (the body, mind and spirit) and understanding that each aspect is of equal importance and value to the other. It is ultimately transcending (overcoming) suffering or becoming whole.

Becoming Whole

This is the combination of physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being.

However, Wholeness is not dependent on being cured. True healing can be independent of illness, impairment, cure of illness or even death. It is about finding a place of harmony or balance between the mind, body and spirit. When we are in a state of harmony, we can gain deeper meaning in life, this may be regarded as spirituality. From a place of harmony, physical health may often naturally follow.

What do we mean by spirituality?

Spirituality means many things to many people, aside from the potential religious associations, it can simply mean a feeling of connection. This connection may be with family, friends and associates, connection with nature, or reconciliation with oneself and others or connection to something we regard as ‘divine’. Spirituality and a deeper understanding or connection with life may also be a way of finding meaning to our physical and emotional problems.

Illness or emotional trauma often awakens people to what is important in life. Learning the meaning or reason for any suffering helps to reduce the distress and helps to overcome suffering.

Even a dying person can be considered healed if they have reached a quiet acceptance in their heart, a knowing that whatever is ahead for them is alright. Illness and suffering are often the greatest teachers for our spiritual maturity and progress in life. Hence it sometimes regarded as part of our ‘journey of life’.

Defining Illness

Dis-ease, loss of capacity to function as normal. Loss, isolation, suffering.

Defining Suffering

Suffering can be physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual. It may involve illness, injury, pain, or emotions such as anguish, fear, anger etc. Suffering may make us feel helpless or angry and even wonder what life is all about, we feel less able to cope with life itself, we do not feel complete, whole or healthy.

Suffering may be resolved if that threat to our ‘wholeness’ is relieved.

Currently, the ability of conventional medicine to resolve suffering is limited. Doctors have little time to pick up on the subtle clues from conversations or body language of their patients. An inability to develop appropriate empathy for a patient or client can even increase distress and suffering. Sadly, due to the pressure our doctors are under, the result is often medication to mask the suffering rather than finding the source of it.

Is it fair to say that our ability to overcome suffering is

possibly about our personal growth and finding inner peace?

Inability to heal

Many of us find it difficult to understand there is a connection between our emotional/spiritual well-being and our physical/emotional suffering. When we find that connection hard to accept, then healing as a ‘cure’ for dis-ease or relief from suffering may take more time and patience.

Over time, when a client or patient is willing to develop a relationship of trust with the healer, that caring relationship may foster personal growth in the client as they begin to find a sense of inner peace. Sadly, healers cannot help everyone, we understand that each of us has a personal path of emotional or spiritual learning and sometimes we are not quite ready to accept or understand that.

What is Energy Healing?

Energy healing is an holistic practice to activate the body's subtle energy systems (chakras, meridians etc) allowing life force energy to flow freely. By releasing energetic blocks in the flow, the body's natural ability to heal itself is stimulated.

To maintain health and well-being, the body needs its energies to flow freely throughout the body. When energies become blocked due to emotional or physical traumas, toxins, prolonged stress, muscular constrictions etc, it creates disturbances in the energy flow in our bodies, which over time contributes to mental, emotional issues and/or ailments and physical disease.

Our bodies are created from energy. The molecules located within our bodies are constantly vibrating and radiating positive or negative, balanced or unbalanced frequencies. This is already understood by science.

Trauma or emotional upsets can disturb the balance of energy in our body and in turn it may eventually materialise into physical ailments, like pain, sickness or disease. Our energy and physical bodies are intertwined. All the traumas we carry physically, emotionally and psychologically, impact upon our energy systems (chakras/meridians).

Is healing for everyone?

There is a misconception for many people that you need to be ‘spiritual’ to be receptive to energy healing. Energy healing is readily available to everyone who is interested and willing to receive it. You don’t need to be spiritual or sensitive to feeling subtle energies in order to benefit from an energy healing treatment. Humans (just like every living being), all have an energetic body that needs to be balanced and taken care of regularly. Energy medicine transcends time and space. Therefore, you don’t have to be located in the same room, city or even country as your energy healer to receive and benefit from energy healing treatment. 

What does energy healing feel like?

During an energy healing treatment, there should be no physical discomfort. Many practitioners ask their client to lie comfortably on a couch, others have their client seated on a chair or stool, while they work non-invasively. The client remains fully clothed at all times and a healer never physically touches the client without their permission. Contact may generally be a light touch to the shoulders in order to gently alert them to the fact that the healing session is ended. Any physical contact is always made with the greatest respect and is never intrusive or inappropriate.

As blockages are being released and chakras are being balanced, patients may experience a rebalancing process. Sometimes this can be felt as tingling, warmth, coolness, light headedness, sleepiness etc. It is generally a very peaceful and enjoyable experience. It is also possible that it may evoke a variety of emotions, even tears. This usually occurs when a deeply embedded trauma is finally released. A healer allows a client time to talk if they wish, to process what has occurred and ask questions. The whole of the time you are surrounded by unconditional love and no judgement.

However, some people feel nothing at all during the healing process. Either way, the healing experience will have had a positive effect at some level.

Is healing compatible with other treatments and therapies?

Energy healing should complement any other form of treatment or therapy. Combining holistic complementary therapies with conventional health treatments can help to optimize health and wellbeing. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to healing. Energy medicine doesn’t replace Western Medicine and vice versa. But, together various forms of healing and therapy can work to effectively support the healing process.

Absent Healing and Expectations of Healing

When anyone is too ill or is too far away to pay a personal visit to a healer, we can still work together. The emphasis is on that word, ‘together’, this even applies when visiting a healer. (If we hand ourselves over and expect a one touch miracle, then we haven’t learned or understood the cause of our problem, in these cases, relief, if any, may be very temporary.) 

Healing is about taking time, working with your healer as a supportive partner or friend, learning about yourself and taking action. In fact, what we are doing is taking back responsibility for our own well-being and learning that we are often far more capable of understanding the potential causes of our health problems than we might imagine.

For absent healing, you would be asked to arrange a specific time and day(s) when you are ready to receive healing. You would be asked to sit (or lie down) quietly to be receptive to healing energy. You may be asked to do some simple breath work (which has many physical and energetic benefits to health) or a visualisation. Feedback is really important and you would be asked to have contact every couple of weeks, (more frequently if desired) so that progress can be monitored.

The Journey

The journey of healing and towards wholeness is a complex one with many stages and much to learn. During the process we learn much more about ourselves, to be much more aware of everything around us, to acknowledge everything, learning to accept unconditionally what we judge to be good, bad or indifferent, we learn to understand our emotional pain, to forgive ourselves and others, to let go of expectations and most of all, to move forward with a growing sense of peace.