5 Steps Toward Healing
Take the Journey.
Healing is a process that we often desire to reach the end of. There may be conflicting information on what is best for your specific needs or you may have already spent years trying different healing methods without success, leaving a feeling of being overwhelmed and disempowered. From my personal experiences and working with clients and teachers around the world, I’ve summarized five key steps to healing, including action items that you can begin to integrate today.
1) The Power of Acceptance & Forgiveness
In the book, “The Power of Now”, Eckhart Tolle affirms that all healing begins with acceptance. Acceptance brings you into the present moment, relieving you from the “what ifs” of the past, the guilt or shame of what could have been done differently, and the anxiety of what the future holds. Once acceptance is present, you can begin to forgive yourself and others, eliminating the negative emotions that can trigger and hold you hostage.
If you cannot accept, negative emotions and thoughts continue to loop like a broken record player, creating a story that reaffirms and continues to trigger suffering. This may be from a feeling that acceptance means they must embrace suffering and in turn will not heal. However, acceptance is not condoning suffering, it simply accepts the present moment of what is, regardless of what was and what will be, allowing the space for healing to enter. This empowers you to take action in the present moment, to release the loop of suffering and embrace what options are here for you now.
In the documentary The Living Matrix, Arielle Essex describes her journey living with a brain tumor. After 10 years of working to alternatively heal her brain tumor, she began to recognize that by having this tumor, she had completely shifted her life in a positive way. She noticed that in resisting and being angry at the tumor, she was resisting and being angry at a part of herself. She knew by being angry at a part of herself, she would not find peace and allowed herself to move into a state of acceptance. Within 6 months of accepting that this was a part of her life and may always be a part of her life, the tumor disappeared.
Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len was a therapist in Hawaii who was hired to work with criminally insane patients at a mental hospital. His therapeutic work was based on Ho'oponopono, which essentially works with forgiveness and taking responsibility for what is happening to and around us, understanding that we are all connected. While working at the hospital, Dr. Len would lay out his patient’s files and without seeing them, would ask for forgiveness for perceiving others as crazy, ill or violent. The hospital began to see many positive changes after the arrival of Dr. Len and after a few years, the entire ward was cured. These are just two of many incredible examples of healing that arise from acceptance and forgiveness.
Watch an interview with Dr. Len here.
2) The Energy of Gratitude
In the story of Arielle Essex, we not only see the power of acceptance, but also the power of gratitude. When she realized how having the tumor had taken her on a journey that she never would have taken without it, she began to feel gratitude for all that she had experienced because of the tumor, rather than continuing to resist and be angry.
Just like acceptance, gratitude also brings us into the present moment. In the documentary, “The Shift”, Wayne Dyer describes how he expresses gratitude upon waking in the morning. I always recommend this practice to others. This small task can be challenging if there is no space in the mind for thoughts of gratitude. Our minds our controlling our every emotion and action, often living a life that is reactive rather than proactive. If we do not take time to consciously make space within our thoughts and emotions, then we cannot fill that space with gratitude, peace or love. Both acceptance and gratitude are energies that are nourishing for our bodies. Just like a plant needs water and sunlight to thrive, the human body needs peace, joy and love within our thoughts and emotions to feel nourished and healthy.
Watch the entire movie, The Shift, here
3) The Power of Perfection
The teachings of many spiritual masters speak of remembering your perfection to ascend beyond the physical form. Humanity has become obsessed with perfectionism in a way that is controlling, anxiety ridden, and fearful. The opposite of this is divine perfection that the masters teach.
Author and Teacher Bill McKenna teaches a simple but profound healing method. While either in the presence of the person, or from a distance, he holds them in thoughts of pure perfection. While doing this, he may also hold water and then have them drink that water. Using this method, he has seen numerous people heal.
Author Masaru Emoto studied the effects of how thoughts, emotions, words and music affect water. He discovered that water that received loving thoughts, prayers or music created dynamic and beautiful crystals. In water that received negative comments, thoughts or music, the crystals were less formed, less perfect. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water.
Both examples demonstrate that perceiving divine perfection is a powerful tool in healing.
4) The Role of Values
Your values are being enacted unconsciously every day. By outlining your values, you begin to see what is important to you and what makes you feel fulfilled. It can be eye opening to sit down with others and discuss your values. This can shed light on how you differ and why one or both of you may feel upset if your values are not being acknowledged or fulfilled. This empowers you to not only understand yourself and others but is also key in understanding what gives you purpose in life. By doing this, you may find that your purpose isn’t your financial or creative accomplishments but nurturing others, communicating effectively, or sharing wisdom and knowledge.
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankle wrote about the importance of feeling purpose in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”. This profound book recollects his time spent in several Nazi camps. He describes how even in places like these, when so much suffering abounds, purpose is essential. He writes, "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
5) Putting the Mind/Body Connection into Action.
Most of us are not raised to see our bodies and minds as sacred temples to be nurtured and honored. Rather we are taught to see the opposite, a broken-down mess. We often find ourselves waging an inner war, upset at our thoughts, emotions, or physical bodies do not look or function the way we desire. An integral step to healing is to re-create the intimate mind/body connection. This also brings us into the present moment, accepting where and who we are. It allows us to find ways to feel gratitude for our body and mind while providing the much-needed nourishment that we have unconsciously deprived ourselves of. If all the thoughts and emotions that fall under the umbrella of love (gratitude, peace, kindness, joy, etc.) are nourishing for our bodies and minds, then their opposite (all suffering) is toxic.
Although this all may sound very simple, it requires a commitment and an awareness to make the change. Dr. Mario Martinez, a licensed clinical psychologist and author of “The Mind Body Code”, traveled the world studying those who lived to be over 100 years of age and found that beliefs play a key role in the health and longevity of a person’s life. In a talk that I attended of his, he also described scientific studies on how our thoughts, emotions and beliefs can rewire the neural pathways in our brains. Dr. Bruce Lipton’s book “Biology of Belief” also covers the science behind the power of belief and how it affects us at a cellular level. When we develop our mind/body connection, we become aware of our unconscious beliefs and perceptions that are creating our reality and how many of those are no longer serving our well-being.
Here are some practical actions you can take today to find healing.
Meditation & Hypnotherapy. If you have never meditated before, you can find a meditation class either online or in-person. There are many forms of meditation and any of them are a good start. Meditation and Hypnotherapy create a state of being that connects you to your subconscious mind which communicates to you in pictures and emotions. Accessing your subconscious mind assists you to uncover and change unhealthy habits, beliefs and perceptions. Whether you like mindful meditation, sound meditation with sound bowls, or movement meditation like Qi Gong, there are many ways you can experience these healing states of being.
Visualization. Our minds often run on autopilot, envisioning what we do not want, while creating resistance and suffering. Meditation and Hypnotherapy create fertile ground for planting the healing seeds of visualization. In an interview, Hank Wesselman describes shamanic journeys that he teaches to others for healing. One journey is a visualization that guides others into their personal place of power and healing which he calls The Sacred Garden. Within the visualization, everything in the garden represents something in you or your life, everything in the garden can be communicated with, and the garden can be changed by you. In one instance of this visualization, a woman who had cancer visualized her garden but rather than being the beautiful garden she kept at home, the garden was completely overgrown by vines. Hank suggested she bring in a team of spirit gardeners to remove the vines. She continued diligently to visualize the removal of the vines multiple times per day. It took her three months of visualization to remove all the vines. Shortly after completing these visualizations, her cancer went into remission.
Gratitude & Values List. List all the things you are grateful for and your top 5-10 values. Continue to review them throughout your day, connecting to the loving emotions that gratitude and purpose creates. You can journal at the end of the day all the things you are grateful for and also meditate or journal on how your values were enacted and if there are things in your life that may need to be adjusted to accommodate and support your values. This begins to rewire your neural pathways to make positive thoughts and feelings a habit and, according to Biologist Bruce Lipton, positively affect your body on a cellular level. Watch a complete lecture given by Dr. Bruce Lipton here
Dream Journal & Therapy. Dreams also access your subconscious mind. Begin recording your dreams daily, as soon as you wake up so you don’t forget them, even if you only remember bits and pieces. This assists in creating more vivid dreams and remembering your entire dream. Then, you can begin to practice Lucid Dreaming which means to become aware you are dreaming while in the dream. You can use Lucid Dreaming to get answers to questions, to manifest things in your life and have conversations with spiritual guides. This may take time to learn but is a very powerful healing tool.
