I am often asked, how do I know that I am getting better? How do I know when I’ve begun healing?
Healing is not linear. If you’ve only just begun a path towards healing and self-awakening and realignment or you’ve been doing it for years, one thing we all eventually learn is that healing is not a linear one size fits all process. Just as our imbalances, illnesses, ailments or sufferings are individually nuanced and complex, so is our healing. And we all need healing because we all have something imbalanced, stuck or broken inside us.
We are multilayered beings. We are made up many bodies. Anyone that tells you that you are just a physical body or that you are this or that disease has reduced you to an insignificant passing mistake. And we may be insignificant and we may be passing but we are not mistakes—that is a scientific and mathematical impossibility. I digress.
We are many subtle and dense bodies at once. At the very least, we are spiritual, mental, emotional and physical beings. And we may be broken anywhere and everywhere on that matrix. It follows then that our healing from this brokenness will also be a multi-layered and multi-dimensional experience and a never-ending process. So long as we are alive we will experience discomfort and pain on that matrix. Healing then also becomes not just a process of ascension whereby we continue to move into our higher and healthiest self and purpose but it also becomes a healthy system of patternized coping skills and tools that needs continued modification, development and sharpening. Don’t give up! Essentially, healing is the making and using of tools that bring us health and balance on all the dimensions of our being. And all of us need help finding, making and using those tools.
Because of this dynamic and multi-dimensional aspect to realizing your highest healthiest self, healing can be messy and difficult. Many people will often find that when they truly begin healing their symptoms may temporarily get worse before they get better, what we call an aggravation in homeopathy and a healing crisis in traditional medicines like Ayurvedic, Chinese or Prophetic/Sufi Medicine. [Side note: also true of all of these systems of medicine is that there is no such thing as incurable diseases, a person is curable or not curable not a disease.] Some people will experience symptoms of detox during these aggravations/healing crises. A good support person or health doula as I like to call myself, would continue to support you through these difficult times either with their own specific skills or with referrals for other kinds of therapies. For example when detox and physical symptoms arise, my clients and I are often able to reconcile the discomfort with additional homeopathic, natural remedies and foods, or practices I suggest to do at home. Sometimes, recommendations for rest or just giving them permission to rest or take a break is all that is needed.
Since healing is a journey that is more like a maze, healing can also uncover dormant wounds or ailments that need addressing. I often find that people who are quite physically ill or have been living with a chronic disease for many years, that as they begin to heal from their physical symptoms they are then asked to start looking at and addressing underlying mental/emotional problems as well. I had one client who had a history of gallstones and gallbladder disease and once we were able to get her gallbladder, liver and other organs back into better function she was then able to begin addressing the more difficult mental/emotional work that she needed to do. I often find that especially in people with stuck patterns (meaning that some things might get better but other things kind of just linger or don’t seem to budge) that there is usually some kind of mental/emotional trauma that needs to be dealt with. Illness and brokenness are here to teach us after-all.
It is for these reasons that my clients get a lot of recommendations from me. I not only offer my own skills and services but when I identify some kind of specific issue that requires support I’m not able to give, I refer out. For example, I often make referrals for womb therapy, trauma-informed mind/body therapies (somatic, cranio-sacral, chiropractics), spa therapy, spiritual/psychological therapies, energy healing, traditional/ancestral medicines, herbalists and the list goes on. I have thankfully built a great network of practitioners in many of the healing arts and I usually give referrals I’ve actually worked with. Many of them work online and offer distance support and services.
I have found from a lifetime of working on my own inner healing (I’m kind of just hard wired that way) and 10+ years of working as a practitioner in the healing arts, that the best approach is a synergistic and dynamic template of individualized care that is guided and facilitated by the intuition and skills of a practiced companion, or a practitioner in a time-tested healing art. Developing a complete plan for healing is much like putting puzzle pieces together.
For example, I first like to identify what are the core imbalances or disturbances in a person’s energetic body or constitution as well as in their physical make up. To heal a person’s whole system would be to address and bring stillness and balance back into one’s energetic body, where dis-ease originates in Homeopathy and most traditional systems of medicine. I generally use homeopathy to bring balance back to the energetic system and one’s constitution. And to bring balance back to the physical body I find that Hair & Tissue Mineral Analysis + Nutritional/Mineral Balancing is best. With an HTMA test we can find out your mineral levels and ratios, which gives us insight into how specific systems and organs are functioning as well as any metabolic or cellular dysfunction or imbalances. I like to think of homeopathy as healing from the top down and HTMA + Nutritional/Mineral Balancing as healing from the bottom up. Because metabolic dysfunction and nutritional balancing is at the core of human imbalance according to traditional systems of medicine, I incorporate my learning as a student of Prophetic/Sufi Medicine in my recommendations and guidance in this area as well.
Thus, I have found that as health doula, or as a facilitator of healing, that my support needs to be multi-dimensional and dynamic. I need to be able to perceive the changing needs of my clients and address them with effective suggestions and recommendations. I need to be able to see that as this client’s liver function increases that suppressed mental/emotional distress may become more apparent to them. And I need to be able to support them through this process be it by my own methods or that of my colleagues. It is honestly and sincerely one of my most favorite things to put together a holistic plan to help support and nourish a broken person into wholeness.
May your healing journey be eased, guided and supported.
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