When I think about my own journey with healing I see a line graph of spikes and dips with the baseline creeping up over the years as an undiagnosed systemic illness and high stress infiltrated my life. The buildup was always slow with plummets into forced healing my body or soul mandated. It was a cycle of burnout or sheer fatigue until my body would say “no more.”
I am not unique. Most of us ride this slow wave of more, more, more and then crash into required healing. It may look like a physical illness forcing us to slow down and nourish or a spiritual crisis pushing us to reflection and more gentleness. We don’t think about healing until the body and soul are desperate for it.
As I have continued to recover from surgery this past year I have thought a lot about what it would look like if instead of these slow builds and crashes we saw healing as a daily, even hourly practice? Like the thumping of our heart. I picture the waves of an EKG, a delicate pattern of contraction and electrical stimulation. The rhythm of healing on a scale that parallels the blood pumping through our veins. The ebbing and flowing that matches nature’s waves.
Mostly, we see healing as a one-time event. It’s a reaction to injury. We have a cold so we eat soup and take a day off. A heart is broken? We nourish it with friends and chocolate. A broken bone is cast and then the expectation is that we get back up and move on. The healing salve is given only in response to the pain – a little for a little pain, a lot for a lot of pain.
Paying attention to what we actually need is a kindness to ourselves. Maybe we get more rest, seek the support of a close friend or other healing activities like mindfulness, prayer, gentle movement. But why is it that it takes feeling bad (sick) for us to do the things? And why do we only offer kindness to ourselves until we start to feel better? We move on and slowly disconnect from the body neglecting any need to heal until we once again feel the pain of injury.
How many times have you healed after injury – physical, emotional, spiritual or all of the above? I can see in my life the times I have dedicated to healing. I set boundaries, or my body set them for me. I embraced radical healing out of necessity. I had to or I would get sick(er), burn out (more) and lose myself (more). Slowly, I would start to feel like myself again. My energy would pick up and I would loosen my boundaries, skip my healing practices and push myself too hard. I neglected my daily healing and then found myself right back in a place of desperately needing healing, feeling frustrated that I was back there again.
At one point in my career as a psychotherapist I worked primarily with young parents. During this time I noticed an interesting theme. Many of the young mothers I saw would confess a secret wish to be mildly sick. They were embarrassed to say this and always clarified, nothing serious, just something so I could rest. Typically this was a broken arm or something non-life threatening that would mandate . . . healing. They wanted that sweetness of healing that happens just on the other side of needing major intervention. The permission to rest, to nourish and to strengthen.
I want to bottle that sweetness and bring it to my life daily. Before the major intervention. I want to shorten the cycles from months or years to days or even hours.
So, here’s what I’ve started to do. Every evening I think about what I need healing for from the day. It may be some sore muscles from a workout or a hurt from a stinging comment. I scan my body and heart looking for the places that could use some healing to feel whole again. Then I bring intentional healing to that thing. It may be a salt bath, journaling or sometimes it’s turning my brain off with entertainment. If I don’t get to it, I keep at it until it feels time to move onto the next thing. The difference is healing is woven into everything for me now. Healing is no longer in reaction to a crisis. It is a constant thought and a conscious daily action.