This blog post was inspired by the women and men I recently met at a Wisdom Healing Chigong Retreat. They REALLY want to heal, and ARE healing. I am humbled by their courage and commitment.

Anyone with an ailment  – physical, emotional, mental, energetic, or spiritual – would most likely answer, “YES. OF COURSE!”

But what does it take to heal?

And is YES the true answer?

The foundational key to all healing is self-love. I know this sounds trite and overused, but it’s true. No one can fix us or make us heal but ourselves.

Do we love ourselves enough to commit to our healing?

To seek out the right practices, guides, and helpers? To allow ourselves to become undone and experience the concealed reservoir of emotions awaiting freedom? Are we willing to take the time? 

Healing usually involves a death.

Not the final death, which often is a healing, but death of our identification with the diagnosis. What happens if we don’t think of ourselves as having – fill in the blank – depression, cancer, multiple sclerosis, lyme disease, ptsd, arthritis, heart disease, addictions, fibromyalgia, etc. –  anymore?  Who are we???

Healing can be uncomfortable.

We like thinking we know who we are, what’s going to happen next, and feeling a sense of control. Are we willing to move out of cultural and personal stereotypes of our ailment/diagnosis and into the “not knowing”?  Can we “loose control” of our lives for a period of time? 

Healing takes courage.

As we travel into the unknown recesses of our bodies, souls, and psyches, we must arrive at a place of non-judgement. Self-acceptance is a necessary ingredient of healing. Are we willing to go as far, inside and out, as we need to?

Healing involves commitment.

I’ve witnessed many miracles in my healing room, yet often they need to be maintained in the person’s day to day life. This is my personal experience, as well. Consciousness can expand, yet it also contracts. It’s a choice to follow through with our healings.

Do we deserve to heal?

I was the last resort for a man with aggressive brain cancer. He came for healings a few times a week for about a month. Then he had another MRI; his tumors were shrinking! Hope was restored to his family – except – when I asked this beautiful man, a practicing Catholic, if he deserved a miracle, he said, “No. That’s for others, not me.” Was he willing to delve into why he felt that way? He was not, and with genuine gratitude, he stopped our appointments. A few months later he transitioned.

When is it time to take a risk and move into the space of “shamanic death and rebirth”?

Where we release our beloved identities and enter a metamorphosis that leads to greater aspects of ourselves? Can we not know who we are for a while?  (Read about Shamanic Rebirth.) 

Death walks hand-in-hand with Rebirth.

Caterpillars becomes butterflies. The vibrant leaves of an oak tree transform into red, orange, yellow, and brown as they wither and fall. Is a bare tree no longer alive? At death, our spirits travel out of form into formlessness, and then return again, traversing the eternal cycle of transformation and awakening.

Rebirth is the natural rhythm of All Life.

Can we walk our healing paths for the pure joy of the possibilities?

Do you REALLY want to heal? Look into and beyond the horizon.

Isn’t the butterfly ready to emerge?

 

My wish for everyone is vibrant health and happiness on all levels.