David Lawson - Self-Healing - The only introduction you’ll ever need

To heal ourselves we need to be willing to notice our thoughts and beliefs, notice what motivates us and gives us energy, notice what de-motivates us and depletes our energy. It helps to notice the images, inspirations and insights that we receive. Noticing gives us power and helps us to take positive action.

So many of us put up with the unsatisfactory or unhealthy elements of our lives because we do not realize that we have the power of choice. We tend to believe that life is something that happens to us regardless of our wishes, dreams or desires, and we often picture ourselves as victims of circumstance doing our best to cope with the hand that we have been dealt.

When we learn that we have a choice and that we have a right to exercise that choice in all areas of our health and happiness, we discover that we have the power to make wonderful changes.

To heal ourselves we often need to choose new ways of thinking and acting. This includes choosing new ways to look at life, choosing to let go of anything that no longer supports our health and happiness and choosing new directions that will enhance our personal development. When we exercise our choice we create new options for ourselves and we take charge of our destiny.

Some illnesses and many problems are created as a direct result of our basic fear of and resistance to life. Even the most positive, go-ahead people may fear or resist some areas of change. In contrast, some of the healthiest people I have met have been those with a great willingness to adapt and learn new ways of approaching life.

To heal ourselves we often need to adapt to changing circumstances: adapting to different environments, adapting to changing needs and desires, adapting our approach to obtain the best results in all situations, adapting ideas, techniques, treatments and philosophies. When we are willing to adapt we remain flexible and open to solutions that go beyond our previous expectations or experience.

When we continue to listen, notice, choose and adapt then we are able to create and re-create balance within ourselves, allowing our passage through life to be as healthy and happy as it was always meant to be. This is particularly important when we need to respond to the message of illness.

While it is always preferable to stay balanced and prevent illness from occurring as much as possible, the advent of illness can be a gift, especially when we choose to look at our situation positively and with love. It is true that we may not feel that our illness is a blessing when it is painful or uncomfortable and when it inhibits us from living life to the full, but we still have it within our power to turn it into a beneficial gift rather than a curse.

Illness always brings a message. Physical symptoms tell us that there is something we need to learn about ourselves and something we need to change. The message may be a predominantly physical one. If we have a backache then the message might be that we need to learn to move in a different way or that we need to learn to stand correctly. Listening to your body and noticing aches and pains early on can allow you to choose new ways of correcting them by finding out about, for example, appropriate exercise, therapies and postural training. Even if you begin to take heed of the aches after some damage has already occurred, there is much you can do to improve the situation and prevent further deterioration.

With physical symptoms, however, the message may also be emotional. The backache that requires us to move, lift and stand in a healthier way can also require us to look at the cause of the emotional tension that is contributing to the pain or discomfort we are experiencing.

Alternatively, the message may be a mental one: perhaps we are viewing ourselves and our lives in ways that rigidly adhere to old patterns of belief that no longer suit us. Rigid thinking is one cause of rigidity within the body; the pain may be telling us that we need to change the way that we view our current situation.

Physical symptoms all tell us that there is something that we need to know and, in many cases, something that we need to do to heal our lives. It is similar with emotional problems, accidents, break-downs of communication, challenging relationships and periods of crisis or disturbance. Everything contains a message and everything is a gift if we remain open and willing to use it as one.

Many natural healing traditions work by aligning the head, the heart and the voice. Native American and other indigenous cultures from around the world have systems of healing that are passed down from generation to generation. They include the use of natural medicines, sacred rituals and an understanding of human nature that so-called civilized cultures are having to relearn. An essential understanding of human nature includes the knowledge that when the head, the heart and the voice are in conflict then there will be an imbalance, and disease or disharmony will follow.

The head is, of course, our unique collection of thoughts, beliefs attitudes, judgements and opinions; the heart is our wealth of feelings, emotions, instincts and physical sensations; the voice is our expression, our communication and our creativity. The modern world places a strong emphasis on the head. We live at a time when the pace is generally getting faster and the technology that we are using makes it necessary for us to update and expand our knowledge constantly. Our educational systems are more concerned with the acquisition of facts than they are with teaching us to express ourselves properly and to be in touch with our feelings and intuition.

It is true that the numerous advances in technology, science and human knowledge are miraculous gifts. If used with wisdom and awareness they can transform many areas of our lives for the better – but we need to keep ourselves balanced in order to develop that wisdom. For each of us individually, keeping our heads, hearts and voices in alignment is the best way that we can negotiate and transcend the stresses of modern living.

SUZANNE’S STORY

Suzanne was a woman with a very passionate, expressive nature whose instincts compelled her to respond to life with emotion, compassion and sensitivity. When she first came to me for a healing and counselling session she was feeling stuck and frustrated. Nothing seemed to be working for her in her career or personal life and she had regular periods of depression. Sometimes her depressions would last for weeks; she described them as being marooned from life as if she were living on some colourless desert island, disconnected from the rest of the world.

Experiences like this can be very common. Many of us have felt cut off from other people or cut off from ourselves. Listening to this sensitive person talk about her life I became aware that I could hear different messages coming from different parts of her being. I shared the idea with Suzanne that we all need to have our heads, our hearts and our voices in alignment, and asked her to tell me what she was feeling in her heart.

Suzanne told me how she was often easily moved to tears – anything from a beautiful piece of music to the simplest gesture of love would bring tears of joy, sadness and release. She also told me that during her periods of depression she sometimes lost her ability to feel anything and that would distress her. At times she would have the pain of emotion sticking in her throat. Indeed, she regularly suffered from a sore throat and occasionally lost her voice completely.

I asked her what she thought about her emotions and Suzanne told me that she loved to have them but that she was afraid that they might be a bad thing. She thought that it was not healthy to be too emotional. When she was a little girl Suzanne’s father had told her off for being ‘too sensitive’. He had told her that she ought to control her emotions because to do otherwise left her open to being taken advantage of by other people. He had given her the idea that to be strong and self-reliant meant hiding her sensitivity away from the world.