What Is Healing Anyway?

WHAT IS HEALING?

Healing is restoring and/or repairing ourselves in response to an injury or illness.

The injury or illness may be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Generally an injury or illness in one area is reflected in the other areas. And an injury or illness may be multi-dimensional to begin with. Addiction comes to mind immediately. It destroys the person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, if not all at once, then certainly in a cumulative manner.

Physical injury/illness is characterized by a visible disruption of function in the body, with or without pain. With the exception of fatal injury, and short of regenerating lost body parts, the human body is always healing itself.

Mental illness is observable as an inability to process information in a meaningful, productive or coherent manner, and/or bizarre ideations, dysfunctional communications, all sorts of self-destructiveness, violence, etc.

Emotional illness/injury generally consists of suffering that doesn't have an obvious physical root or cause, and includes all sorts of mental anguish, heartache, remorse, fear, loss and mourning, etc.

Spiritual illness or injury takes the form of lack or loss of hope, purpose, connectedness, meaning and joy. It also generally has an appearance of lack of animation.

Clearly, these categories are arbitrary and they overlap a great deal. Personally, I get the blues when I'm sick. Not only does my body feel bad, but I also become mentally lazy, emotionally self-pitying, impatient and joyless. I tend to communicate less, and when I do communicate it is mainly to complain.

HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?

Healing is something our bodies do automatically, without our conscious volition.

We all see this. We can do things to support our body's healing processes, or we can impede these processes, but our bodies will keep trying to heal in spite of us. This ability to self-repair and renew is less apparent emotionally, mentally and spiritually, but it does occur.

We are all familiar with the expression "time heals" with respect to emotional wounds. Like the body's scars, emotional injuries leave their mark, but the intensity of emotional pain generally diminishes over time.

Mental illness is more perplexing. If you have a mental illness and you are prescribed drugs to treat it, I strongly suggest you take your medication. But we all know that periodically most people with a mental illness will stop taking their meds, just to see if they still need them. I know of people who have healed from mental illnesses.

Spiritual illness seems to involve beliefs about mortality and the meaning of life. Connecting with the higher self, or soul dimension goes a long way toward healing an ailing spirit. Conversion is a form of spiritual healing. But it isn't necessary to believe in a "God" or a higher power to be spiritually healthy. I include 12 step recovery programs in this category. AA/NA are programs of spiritual healing.

Connecting with your higher self or soul self is spiritually healing. Meditation is very good for connecting with ones own higher self. A simple beginning can be made by observing the mind. Make friends with the observer, because that is your higher self. So far as I can ascertain, the higher self doesn't get the blues. It can be a wonderful refuge in difficult times.

It is very helpful spiritually to believe that you have an immortal soul. This takes some of the sting out of the inevitability of physical decline and death.

Taking responsibility for oneself also helps with any spiritual recovery. This includes recognizing your own power as managing director of your life. Claiming values and goals connects you with your creative dimension. Creativity is spiritually healthy. If you don't currently have a reason to live, create one and your life will begin to work in ways you never imagined possible.

Life is short and confusing. Only you can make your life matter (to yourself). Waiting around for anyone else to give you the "answer" to the "meaning of life" is futile and wastes precious time you could be spending enjoying yourself. Create your own meaning.

HEALING HAPPENS

There are a lot of differing perspectives on what healing is and when and why it happens.

But one thing is for sure. Healing does happen. It happens when we try and it happens when we don't try. And sometimes it doesn't happen, no matter how hard we try. We've all heard about spontaneous healing, faith healing, the "placebo effect," the garlic cure, and the list goes on. There is no shortage of "miracle" cures.

Some people will tell you that the ability to heal our bodies is unlimited. I've heard it said that if you want to live forever, contract a serious illness and take care of yourself.

On the other hand, most of us have lost someone to an illness or injury from which their bodies did not heal.

There is this notion that if we just had the right "juju," we would heal ourselves and live forever. And somebody always says that we create our own illnesses and injuries because we need to suffer, or because of our karma from a past life, or because it is teaching us a lesson.

Personally, I think when you incarnate on a rock that is spinning around a ball of fire, you have to expect a certain amount of damage. Things bang around, things break, things get old and wear out. It goes with the territory. Even in a world without war, we would still need hospitals.

And what if you heal on one dimension, but not on another? A friend of mine who has cancer recently said that while he may not survive, he will most assuredly heal. I think what he means is that his body may not survive, but his spirit is doing quite well, maybe even better all the time.

REIKI AND ENERGY HEALING

I'm a Reiki Master and an ordained Spiritual Healer.

I became a Reiki Master initially because I wanted to heal myself. I was suffering. I have post-polio syndrome and it was kicking my butt. My life was more and more about exhaustion and pain, and there was just so much conventional medicine could do for me.

Reiki was a natural fit for me. All my life, I've had the ability to cure a headache or backache just by putting my hands there. And before I learned about Reiki, I would frequently remove the pain from someone else, but end up transferring it into my hands. Sometimes the pain I absorbed would hurt all the way up my arms. And it could take hours to dissipate.

Reiki taught me how to relieve another person's pain without taking it into my own body. Rather than absorbing the other person's energy, the Reiki practitioner channels what I call clean energy from the universe, through their body and their hands, into the other person's energy field.

I don't know why it works, but that clean energy transforms the other person's painful energy back into healthy energy. The energy is literally changed. I can feel the change in my hands.

Reiki focusses on the person's energy by promoting energy flow throughout the body's energetic system. Reiki literally means universal life force. We all have this life force within us. If we didn't have it, we would be dead.

When the energy is blocked, the body's natural ability to heal is impaired. At the very least, it is slowed way down. The challenge is to keep your energy moving freely, like a fresh mountain stream.

You've seen what happens when water gets backed up into a slough and stagnates. Whenever there is an illness or injury, your personal energy flow is blocked, either at the physical location of the injury or at the chakra, or energy center, associated with that type of disturbance. Heartbreak generally shows up in the heart chakra, while a problem with self-expression generally shows up in the throat. Hesitation shows up in the knees. So does arthritis.

When I find a lot of trapped and stagnant energy, or what I call dark energy, I use my hands to move it out of the person's energy field altogether, rather than trying to transform it. Once I've cleared most of it out, I then use Reiki to send clean energy into the area. The combination of removing the dark, blocked energy and adding clean energy seems to work pretty well.

SENDING ENERGY EVERYWHERE

I thoroughly enjoy giving hands-on Reiki treatments. But as a Reiki practitioner, I've also been trained to send energy remotely. Don't ask me how it works, but there is no distance in spirit. I'm able to connect with someone at a distance, sense their energy, and send them energy. I don't get the detailed specific information about the person that I do in a hands-on session, but I get a very strong sense of their overall energy. I can tell who is doing well and who is having a hard time. Sometimes, what I sense is their pain, or their anger and frustration. As I send energy remotely, I can feel the quality of the person's energy changing.

My prayer

To David and Kate, Patricia and Mai, to Chloe and Carla, to Linda and Jonathan, to Shaun and PJ, to Maria and Sara, For Ruben and Lisa, and Cecil and Meghan; To Diane and Zephira, Nisroc and Caglar, to Gary and Dotty and Heidi and Kathleen, for Karen and Mary, to Michael and Alex and to Eric comes energy, clear and simple and full of love. Take it into your field, let it fill up your emptiness, soothe your fears, ease your mind and warm your heart. May it open you to your higher self, and invite higher guidance into your life at this time, when you so need it. And may you heal more fully, more quickly and more joyously into your journey, and know you are never alone.

Distance Healing

At night with my list in the quiet house where everyone else sleeps, I feel you. I feel your stress, your distress, your worry and your pain. Your energy is tight or ragged or weak; it jangles or rumbles of throbs. I stay with you no matter how angry you are feeling, no matter how unfair it seems to you, no matter how medicated and confused you are. I stay with you and send energy into your space. Sometimes it isn't easy to be with you, but almost always, if I just stay with you, it gets easier. Your energy settles down, you relax, you let go, stop fighting, start accepting. The tension eases and the energy starts to flow. And then I let you go.

Just when I think I am wasting time, the dog wags its tail and the cat purrs.