The Source of Healing Lives Within
Society conditions you to look for healing outside of yourself. You naturally look for medicine of all kinds in the external world, whether they be drugs, plants, exercise, therapies, or any treatment modality you can think of. To be clear, all of these things can be great medicines and utilized to great effect at certain times; however, when you approach healing as something that takes place outside of you, you may naturally come to it from a place of brokenness needing to be fixed. From this belief, you give your power away to your medicines of choice and may become dependent on them because you do not believe the source of healing lives within. This is a limiting belief. You have the power to heal within you. You simply need to clear the blockages in your path to this intuitive power and conviction. Medicines facilitate the process but they are not the source themselves, they are only tools. If you believe you need yoga, meditation, or a pill every day to heal, consider the idea that these things only facilitate, guide, and awaken your innate healing ability. You are the healer, not the things. Once you start to wake up to this idea, you begin to relinquish your dependency. The medicines no longer remain things you need, but become things you call into your life out of love for yourself and your desire to transform. You can learn to honor the various medicines you call in, while also remembering the source of power within you.
The best way to access this innate ability is to create the optimal environment within your body for the inner work to take place. Worry less about how the healing will take place and focus more on clearing the blockages in your way. Like an air traffic controller, you do not need to fly the plane, you only need to clear the runway for takeoff. You are an energetic being and all energies you take in - from people, places, food, substances, etc. - matters. The journey may not feel so good at first because as you go toward the light and clear away the external energies that no longer serve you, the first thing to show up is the emotional trauma that has been holding you back. From a westernized medical model, the first line of defense against challenging experiences is typically to manage them, numb them, surgically remove them, or generally make them go away in the quickest fashion. However, with this approach you never learn what they have to teach you or the reason they are showing up in the first place. Furthermore, with such external remedies you may never learn to see the power within you to be with, move through, and transform the experiences that are showing up. If you never give yourself the chance to summon your inner resources, it only makes sense that you would doubt you have any at all.
If the body has the capacity to produce fever in order to fight infection, it is not a stretch to think it has the ability to process and release emotional trauma and rewire the brain. Unfortunately, society does not arm you with the tools to recognize what is showing up within you and how to be with it, which is why more psychoeducation is needed in this area. Healing modalities, as long as they are used intentionally to support your own growth and expansion, are of immense benefit in supporting you to activate what already lives within you. Movement, meditation, visualization, and journaling are examples of worthy practices that aid you in changing your inner state and readying yourself for healing. When you sit down to meditate and allow challenging emotions, thoughts, or physical sensations to surface, you are welcoming in the old and outdated patterns meant to be altered. Something as seemingly simple as a daily gratitude practice and breathwork helps you refocus your attention on what is most important without disavowing or denying challenging experience. By continuously reconnecting to the expansive harmony of your body’s natural rhythm, you are able to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, bring safety to your experience, and upgrade your body on a molecular level. Contrary to traditional forms of medicine, you do not have to sacrifice or delay one aspect of healing in order to welcome in another. You do not have to suppress natural fighting entities in order to kill off an toxic intruder. Traditional medicine serves a valuable purpose and these words are not meant to make you choose one or the other. The worlds are only here to invite you to see the deepest source of healing is not a pill, a machine, a technology, or a healer’s hands, though those things do help. The journey starts and ends with you and you are powerful beyond measure.
One way to recognize your influence is to see how easy it is to remain stuck despite using all sorts of healing modalities. Look around you and see how many people are still holding onto their traumas, still trapped in grief, anger, shame, and despair despite years of therapies, pills, energy work, plant medicine, exercise, meditation, dieting etc. If the healing was truly in the modality, would it not have worked by now? If you know people like this, they are evidence that no modality can do the work for you. It is not to say that these modalities are not incredibly useful for those individuals even if they remain stuck in certain areas, it is a practice after all; it is only to call your attention to the fact that healing happens when a source within you is ready. Ready to open, ready to let go, ready to release, and ready to practice with intention. If it takes 5 years, 10 years, 50 years, it does not matter. That is not the point. The point is that when true readiness happens within you, you begin to know on a deeper level that transformation is coming and it does not matter what modality helps you get there. As the proverb goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Your readiness is what sets off the big bang of healing within your universe. If you find yourself always seeking the next transformational healer, book, podcast, drug, food, or shampoo that is going to change your life, I invite you to reflect on the place this seeking comes from. I identified as a seeker for many years so please do not misunderstand my words. There is nothing wrong with seeking; however, I invite you to recognize the place your seeking comes from. If it comes from a place of lack, you will always be chasing things to fill you up. If you begin to recognize that maybe, just maybe, you have the power within you to heal, you can begin seeking people, places, and things that guide you to activate your own power like keys that fit within your treasure box, unlocking the healing treasures that lived within you all along.
“The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.” - Robert Pirsig
As Pirsig poignantly stated in his cult classic, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” the peace or healing you may find by seeking outside yourself may be the peace or healing that lived within you all along. And sometimes you need to climb the mountain! My point is not to say you do not need healing modalities, it is to say that the intention you bring to a given space, modality, substance, or experience is what ultimately allows you to transform or stay stuck. Much research has been done on the placebo effect for example, which, rather than seen as devoid of healing property and intentionally rooted out in studies, should be harnessed for the wisdom that it conveys. The brain can actually be convinced to activate healing within you simply based on the power of suggestion and belief. What a miracle!
So, what is this treasure box of healing within you that can rewire your brain, activate immune functioning, release emotional trauma, and heal pain? It is likely not just one thing. From my perspective, which involves my own training, healing, and witnessing experience, there is a deeper, more spiritual readiness that takes place within the emotional body and mind - some form of connection to a deeper truth within you. When this part of you begins to say “Yes” to the experience of healing, you may find yourself open to healing modalities that you had previously not considered or scoffed at, and they may have something to offer because you have already set the stage. Now all you must do is invite them up to the mic to share their gifts as you allow yourself to receive their medicine. If you notice resistance to seeking beyond what you have considered helpful in the past, reflect on what limiting beliefs you may need to be let go of in order to move forward. What possibilities are you still not ready to consider for yourself? This is the edge of your knowing - the realm of fear and doubt. It is not a comfortable place, but it is a fertile place - a place of transformation. When you are brought to the edge of your brain’s logical understanding, it triggers all the limiting beliefs holding you back, keeping you stuck, and maintaining your perceived sense of safety. From your brain’s perspective, suffering is safer and more comfortable than journeying into the realm of not knowing. Your doubts may say that this can be true for others but not for you, or that you are too weak or too dumb, or that science has not proven this yet, or that this is simply “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” victim blaming, or, or, or… the list goes on. You may simply not believe in it at all. I invite you to challenge your doubts for the moment - what have they ever done for you anyway? - and simply choose to consider that you are no different than me, and we are both capable of profound healing within. The more you allow yourself to sit at the edge of your knowing, the more you will breathe life into the voice that has always been there guiding you to answers beyond what your eyes can see and your mind can know.
I know that some may interpret my words as unreasonable positive thinking blaming sufferers for things out of their control. Please know this is not about blame or shame. I myself was a sufferer all my life and I do not consider myself fully healed, though my experience has qualitatively shifted. My words are only an invitation to crack the door open for your mind to consider the possibilities of hope and joy that await you. A powerful healer once told me I am a naturally hopeful person. The statement resonated deeply and brought me to tears because I had become so jaded and cynical from the layers of suffering pervading my view. Trust me, I know how easy it is to fall victim to the brain’s messaging and to the societal conditioning of those around you that do not understand or who are not yet prepared to take healing into their own hands. The placebo effect and the power of suggestion works on a societal level as much as an individual one. Your brain is quite susceptible to the conditioning and messaging you have been receiving all your life that you were meant to live in chronic pain, panic, or despair. Your brain has years of past experiences to support the message that you are not meant to heal. But just because you have been conditioned to believe such things does not mean they are true. I know I may sound like a conspiracy theorist at times, but I truly speak first and foremost from my own witnessing experience. The path of healing simply begins with a willingness to be surprised and to practice. Consider that you are not meant to understand exactly how the mystery of the mind and body work, but if you are willing to sit with not knowing in the ways you have always been taught and to not depend on the things you have always been given, you allow yourself to open to what is possible beyond the limits of your conditioning. With practice, you open the doors to the greatest medicine at your disposal - the immense power of the human spirit.