Healing often means getting better in some way and that can happen on many different levels … you can heal from an injury, disease or sickness, you can heal from an emotional hurt and you can heal relationships to name a few.
My feeling is that all healing is self healing. Healing is dependent on improving communication and being present so that we can have conscious choice. (more about how to do that a little later)
An important thing to remember is that we are energetic beings and that we live in an energetic world. Everything is energy … our thoughts and feelings, our bodies, the chair I am sitting on etc. and if we want to heal, we need become aware of the energy in and around us.
What are the barriers to our Self Healing?
The biggest barrier to our self healing is what we believe to be true.
Our expectations, past experiences, education, friends, family and our beliefs about ourselves all affect what is possible for us. As we learn about ourselves, we start to notice how our experience is filtered or limited by what we believe.
From the time we are born, we are socialized by the group mind and taught to believe what … a good boy/girl is, a good Canadian is, a good family member is, and on it goes. Through socialization we are taught to look outside ourselves for truth, safety, love, validation, worth, etc.
As we grow, things happen in our lives that may scare or hurt us. If there are no answers to explain what happened or if we are being abused, then we need to make up an story to feel safe. The stories we make up to feel safe affect every aspect of our lives … how we feel about ourselves, the type of relationships we are allowed to have, the type of work we can do, etc. The troubling thing is that many of the stories we make up are not and have never been true.
What is true is that a “event” happened that scared or hurt us and we made a story up to understand it so that we could feel safe.
The unexpressed energy from our stories and from any life situation in which we were unable to release it (to feel it fully) is held in our bodies as chronic tension.
Our stories protect us from the sometimes overwhelming feelings of the energy of the events we haven’t let go of yet. The stories want to keep us safe but they keep us safe by keeping us away from the truth of ourselves that we are already safe. In order to let go of the stories, we need to be in our bodies in a safe way so that the little child within us that went through the event finally feels safe enough to release the energy of the event and be free of it. Once the energy of the event is released the story is not needed any more and just disappears.
When we are living in our stories, in an effort to complete or heal these long held energy patterns (stories and chronic tension) we unconsciously choose situations in our lives which have a similar vibration or feel in the hopes that we can finally heal them.
So, here we are as adults living our lives, unconsciously reacting to the life we see through the filters of our stories, our chronic tension and the expectations of the group mind and we are tired.
In order to really live life we need to know where we are so that we can “choose” our life instead of reacting to the stories that tell us we are not safe. In other words we need to know how to feel when we are present (in our bodies) and when we are not (in our mind believing the stories.)
The gift is that we feel that something is missing and it is often experienced as drama, a deep longing or as a health issue. Over time, some of us come to realize that what we are missing is our connection to self and to life. We want to Find Our Way Home.
What can we do to Heal?
Personally I feel that healing is learning to be more present and grounded in my body so that I can have a “felt sense” of what my truth is, which is “does this feel good or not.” I do that by practising the Healing Exercise. With the felt sense of my truth, I’ve learned to stop looking outside of myself so often for approval and I’m letting go of stories and beliefs that do not serve me.
Important parts of my learning and journey have been to seek counseling when needed and to have bodywork and energy work done to help me discover what I hold in my body.
The most important thing I have learned on my healing path is “that I don’t need to know the answer!” To need to know the answer takes me away from my body and my truth and into my mind, which just creates drama and another story.
What would I recommend for Self Healing?
- Use the Healing Exercise whenever you need to come back to the present moment so that you can know and speak your truth.
- Do the Gratitude Exercise each day so that you bring gratitude into your life, mind and body. Doing this will change your life!
- Use the 4 Questions as a way of knowing what your responsibility is in any situation.
- Let go of “needing” to know the answers to why things are the way they are and feel them instead.
- Write out what kind of life you would like to live and focus on the qualities you would like to live … eg. joy, passion, peace, play etc.
- Write in a journal to get things out of your head. This is helpful in picking out patterns of thought that you may want to let go of.
- Be careful of the information you put in your mind. Read inspiring books and articles. Choose what you believe to be true.
- Take up an activity that allows you to feel your body … drumming, chanting, yoga etc.
- Find a practitioner you feel safe with to explore and help shift what is being held in your body.
- Counseling or coaching may be important in helping to shift perceptions and to work through issues that you may be having difficulty with on your own.
It comes down to you finding the tools you can use to remind yourself of who you really are.
How can I help with your Healing?
I won’t teach you anything, I will help you discover your answers within yourself and help you notice the changes taking place in your body and energy field so that you can have “felt sense” of where energy is being held in your body so that you can make a choice about it and shift it or let it go. This is important, because the stories (energy) that are held in our bodies act like filters through which we experience life and because they are unconscious they impact our ability to make lasting changes in our lives. Our nervous systems act on them before we even have a chance to think about how we want to react in a situation.
A session is done over Zoom at this time and very empowering.