What is 'healing' anyways?
Dedicated to Karen B.
I've been asking this question of healing for more than eight years, through my entire time training as a NIASZIIH healer and beyond. I am continuously humbled by the depths of what healing can really mean and what people are truly capable of.
To understand this question of healing, we need to understand ourselves on a biological level. In a simple way, healing is the return to homeostasis, to a state of dynamic equilibrium. It begins by bringing awareness to our experience of reality, of what is real, here and now. This is the first step in healing. Nothing foo-foo about it.
Now let's look at a familiar word, 'stress.' Stress seems to have become normalized in our society. It's so common, it's almost built into the system. Certainly it's going to be there at times, and we rebound just fine! But when any organism undergoes a certain degree of stress, it is an indication that something is damaging (or will soon damage) the biological system.
We (homo sapiens) evolved over millennia with many external threats to our existence which helped hone our nervous system and bodies to become keen instruments able to survive and flourish in any ecosystem. We often hear the overused adage about 'fleeing from a saber-toothed tiger' at about this point in the conversation, and how that evolutionary development shaped us and is responsible for how we respond to stressors. However, let's remember that human beings have been undergoing markedly larger stressors in just the past few centuries than at any point in our primeval past.
It's one thing to run for your life from an animal and still be able to return to your people afterwards, return to a group of people who love you for who you are, and whom you love in return. It's quite another for a person to be torn from their place of heritage, isolated from their ancestry, and undergo horrors inflicted upon them by members of their own family or in-group.
Unfortunately this history has become embedded in our global experience, and we are seeing the repercussions of this damage come crashing down around us daily. This type of trauma lingers, even through generations. People are left torn apart inside because they hold both the abuser and the abused within themselves, and the war rages on. (It is certainly an interesting path to enlightenment and the discovery of our interconnectedness with all things, 'oneness' if you will.)
Often our stress is due to environmental factors. But this type of stress also shapes how our external experiences are perceived. Stress can become internalized and warp our perceptions of what is going on around us, causing us to respond to our circumstances even though that may not be what is really there – we overlay our perceptions on our environment and act upon those perceptions. Thus, we are influenced by our environment and we influence our environment, in a very dynamic feedback loop.
The body naturally wants to be whole, to be in equilibrium and maintain homeostasis. And thanks to our large brains, we humans are able to experience stress far beyond the time of the event. We replay the event in our minds, and we hold it in our bodies, in our fascia and DNA. Healing requires us to be physically present.
This is why the concept of choice is so paramount. It is a choice to connect with life and feel what's there. To feel the good, the beautiful, the blissful in a healthy way we must also feel that which is painful or upsetting. It is through feeling our grief and 'darkness' that we find the light. But that 'light' will not come when we apply it as a band-aid fantasy that keeps us from confronting and feeling our wounds.
It can be very difficult to confront the layers of what we have ignored in ourselves and our lives, confront the pain and the atrocity we have normalized both individually and collectively. We are not machines, though this approach seems to be the denial-of-choice for many as a way to keep from having to feel again. Through entering a safe space, feeling our experience of our own reality, and perceiving what is there, space opens up and we gain perspective, clarity, and our body can respond in kind.
Realize there are no 'good' feelings and 'bad' feelings. Really! Stop judging them and just experience them, feel them, and recognize they are just a communication. Allow yourself to be moved my them in a way that does not cause damage to others or yourself. Discover the communication and allow the energy to move through you. Allow yourself to cry, to shake, to tremble – to grieve. Listen to music. Move your body. Allow the laughter to come, the joy, the clarity. The stillness.
To really feel what we feel without thinking the feeling is the doorway. This simple act can change everything. Be patient with yourself and remember to laugh. These wounds may take time to heal, but they actually can.
In medicine,
Zebulun Browne
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