What is Self-Healing?
~The Broad Brush Strokes ~

Deidre Sommers

So many people come into my office seeking ‘healing’ of some sort or another. Often we begin just with the clarification of what ‘healing’ actually is. For most of us we are brought up in a culture that emphasizes the notion that if something is uncomfortable, than something must be wrong or broken and needs fixing.

The medical approach is often about finding a ‘cure’ or a halting of symptoms, which is often only a temporary cover up of the underlying cause or issue. And so we miss the opportunity of allowing the apparent ‘problem’ to be revealed as the gift that it ultimately is.

There are some cases where of course western medicine is a miracle and is an obvious and true route to take. But all to often we can live in the mistaken mind set that there is something ‘wrong’ with us and thus we are seeking the magic pill to ‘fix’ us. This is not the path of true healing.

The healing journey that I would like to talk about is entirely a different journey. In my perception it is an evolutionary journey, a journey of coming into a more intimate relationship with your deeper self and thus directly with all of life. It is a journey of coming to recognize that each of us is responsible for our own health, happiness and peace. And that in fact when we live in connection and integrity with all aspects of ourselves and the Spirit within all of Life this is our natural state of being.

Self-Healing is a journey of waking up out of the illusions of who you think you are and discovering the truth of your being. True health is the allowing of this truth of your being to fully express itself as the force of destiny through you and the creation of all of your life. Much of what ‘ails’ us stems from a misperception in the mind about who we are. If we identify with the small limited, distorted notions of ourselves and thus life itself, we will suffer. What we struggle with as unwanted discomfort, whether physically, psychologically, emotionally or circumstantially are indicators or feedback from our inner intelligence that something needs our love and attention and is calling for integration. And usually the louder the symptom, the more something has been ignored or denied and thus it is literally calling out the only way that it knows how.

This calling is the call of evolution. It is the body/minds invitation for us to come home to ourselves, to meet our experience with love and awareness, instead of reactivity and fear. For most of us, the healing journey begins by learning how to bring loving awareness to our experience, no matter what it is. To learn to turn towards what is uncomfortable rather than away. As long as we are being self critical or posturing above our experience with conceptual platitudes about what ‘should’ be, we are creating separation within, and our system will not feel safe to open up and release the deeper underlying tensions and mis- perceptions of reality that have been creating our suffering.
Usually this suffering has its roots in unresolved early childhood imprints. If we had parents or caregivers who did not provide the essential foundations for feeling safe and loved in the body and in this world, then the ego often develops ‘coping mechanisms’ or strategies to deal with these un-met needs.

These coping mechanisms or strategies serve our survival and allow us to build our lives, but only for so long. At some point these devices fail to protect us from the realities of life and our relationship to it. Often in the wake of some intense or sudden experience, a loved one dies, a relationship ends, we lose our job or home and it seems that the ‘rug has been pulled out’ from under us. Or it could be that we have a created a lifestyle for our selves that feels internally empty and disconnected no matter how great it might appear externally.

This is where having a coach or a guide can be so useful. This is the main emphasis of my invitation to you. Sometimes it is only in the loving hands and presence of another that we can begin the work of rebirthing and re-parenting ourselves. We can re-learn how to be in this primary and vital relationship with ourselves in an honest, intimate and nourishing way. In my perception all other relationships and circumstances in our lives are a reflection of this primary relationship. By going within, shining the light of our loving awareness and doing the real work of honest feeling we can begin to re-claim the totality of our lives, live the joy of our true nature and express this in the world in a meaningful way.

The Two Hands of Healing

In my own direct experience and having had the privilege of working with thousands of people over the last 17 years I have come to believe that true healing does not occur until the source of the pattern or issue is seen, felt, released and honored for the lessons it has come to bestow. Anything that we have ever experienced as traumatic and is not resolved in the moment, is imprinted on an energetic level in our luminous energy field. The luminous energy field is a matrix of very refined energy which surrounds the body and translates into the body via the chakra system which goes directly into the central nervous system, thus into the whole body/mind experience.

What ever issues are vibrating in the LEF as unresolved will keep attracting the exact situations, relationships, and experiences needed to activate the old trauma. Because there is an innate intelligence here that wants resolution and integration. Have you ever noticed that you keep attracting the same kinds of relationships or the same kinds of issues show up in your work or at home. Or you are plagued by a core sense of not being good enough, lovable or worthy of really creating what you want in your life. Or you sabotage it every time things seem like they are going in the direction of your choosing. The cancer goes away, but it comes back, or you tend to struggle again and again internally with the same issues. Anything that shows up more than twice can be seen as a pattern and thus as an indicator that there is a deeper place to go to discover the root source that is calling for love, illumination and integration. Until the ‘issue’ is fully seen, fully felt, and fully illuminated with your consciousness it will not ‘go away’.

So this hand is the energetic aspect of healing. We must open to the journey on an energetic/emotional/cellular level. We must clear and bring the light of our awareness into these areas of density and stagnation, (where there are strategies and defense mechanisms operating, there is energy bound up which is not free to move in healthy self organizing ways.) again whether this shows up physically, emotionally, psychologically, circumstantially or likely some combination of all of the above.

In my healing arts practice I have many tools in my ‘bag of tricks’ to facilitate and support this process. Though mostly this is accomplished by creating a sacred and safe space together and by bringing the purity of our intention and our love to the moment. One of the by-products of this is a clearing of your core channel or central nervous system, as this dense, stagnant energy is freed up, your core energy is available to naturally connect with the light of source within you and all around you, allowing you to more gracefully take your next steps in conscious participation with evolution. Informed less and less by your history and more and more from a place of conscious choice.

The Other Hand

The other hand or aspect of true healing, I believe is the direct experience of meeting your Infinite Self. The pure awareness that you have always rested in before you were born, and again after you leave this dimension as a body/mind/personality. To directly, tangibly feel this freedom of who you are, beyond the confines of the mind, of time, and of everything you have believed to be true about your self and life liberates a tremendous energy. A tremendous energy is ignited and activated. It is the current or life force of the awakened heart.

This current, this force can then begin to inform your life by streaming into your body mind the pure light of your soul, unencumbered by all of the inertial patterns created by false identification with all the limited versions of yourself. I believe that the direct experience and reconnection with this vital energy, is what is behind all of our human longings. It is the source of our original innocence and perfection - of true perception. It is as though all of your perceptions of the world and yourself were in black and white without this activation and then the light switch gets turned on and you are able to see in full color.

Without this connection strong and fully activated, it is difficult to trust others, our creations or ourselves for we are living only in the domain of the mind, of duality, of our small child self who is still trying to get those needs met of so long ago. We can still be the mother, the wife, the teacher, the husband, the friend, the vulnerable one, the scared one, the ecstatic one, all of the flavors of feeling, form and emotion move through…it is just that from the center, we can see from the inside out…we can see with our true eyes, the eyes of the heart which can dance in all of the paradoxes of life and truly celebrate our contradictions, our challenges, our heart-brakes and victories…Because from here we know ourselves as the silent core of spacious awareness in which all phenomena of our experience arise and dissolve inside of . From here, we can perceive reality, without question, through the eyes of pure love.

The Two Hands Come Together

This is the integration of true self-healing. Without both of these hands coming together we do not experience true freedom. People can spend 30 years meditating and knowing themselves as God and yet have not really integrated their shadow, and so it still hijacks their behavior in unconscious and disruptive ways. There is evidence of this all around us. This is sometimes known as the spiritual bypass…

And then there are those who spend 20 years in psychotherapy processing their childhood and never really have a taste of true freedom. Never really have a direct experience of whom they really are and what it is to live from inside the true perception of the heart. The ongoing journey of course is the ever-deepening embodiment of this love, which is our true nature. To allow all aspects of ourselves and our creation to come into harmony and balance with this healing current or breath of life. As, one of my teachers, Adyashanty always used to say, “Its love coming back Home for itself, ALL of itself.”

Enjoy the Journey.

~

Deidre Sommers is a facilitator at Spa College. She can be reached at:
Tel: 1.415.515.2657
Email: deidre@alchemyoftheheart.com
Web: www.alchemyoftheheart.com