My Primer Of Healing Practices
My primer of healing practices takes me back to my childhood. My thoughts
drift back to listening to others and observing my environment. As an adult now,
I still claim both of those activities as key ingredients to healing. I also
add the activity of listening to myself and observing myself; both activities
of self-awareness.
Through my graduate school training and also my introduction to principles of
New
Thought in my spiritual life, I add to my primer of healing practices the
awareness that the body~mind continuum is one united entity and that balance is
the key to health and healing. If I overly use my body to the exclusion of my
mind I am hurting myself. If I overly use my mind to the exclusion of my body I
am hurting myself.
I am constantly amazed and amused at the timing of these awarenesses. They
happened so close together back in the 70s as though my Higher Self knew these
realities were related. The focus of my graduate school training was Gestalt
Therapy, which emphasizes the importance of the body and mind functioning as an
integrated unit; making the point in particular that if we are cut off from
our feelings we are cut off from our very life. In much the same way New Thought
emphasizes that our bodies are temples of Spirit and our minds are powerful.
We can literally create health or disease by the thoughts we dwell on
constantly.
The next level of my primer of healing practices includes my dreams,
meditation, reading, writing, drawing, talking, and exercise. Through these mediums I
pay attention not only to my body and mind but to my inner and outer life. I
had a very important dream recently which I now understand was speaking to me
again of the importance of balance; of how to be truly independently healthy;
to sort out that which is mine to do, and that which is not mine to do. To say
the very, very least I consider this awareness to be one of the key elements
in my primer of healing practices.
The awareness that as I continue to heal my own life and do my own work I
will be able to lovingly, responsibly, compassionately relate to all others in my
life is very precious to me and very freeing. Recently I have come to new
levels and depths of awareness of what this really means and how I am to function
in carrying out this new pattern of relating to others. I have intuitively
and intellectually understood this pattern for a very long time and now it has
finally broken through to a much more visible and consistent way of doing!!!
My dream tells me the pattern is still very new and delicate, so I understand
that
practicing the new pattern is important. That awareness reminds me that
another key
ingredient in my healing primer is practicing these new developmental skills.
If I want to lay a new pattern in my soul and in my new way of being, then
practice is important. I playfully remember that age old adage that “practice
makes perfect.” It's true!
That saying also reminds me of another ingredient for my healing primer and
that is
imagination. As I practice imagining myself in a new way of behaving I
strengthen that skill and that pattern. I remember the first time I heard that
research shows that people who practiced active imagination were just as successful
at doing the skill as people who actually physically practiced doing the
skill. That was an eye opener!
I cannot leave this topic of healing practices without specifically
mentioning the
importance of knowing when patterns of behavior have outlived their
usefulness.
As children, we often learn patterns of behavior that simply help us survive
physically.
This pattern often translates to behaviors like being physically and
emotionally invisible to stay out of harm's way. To reach an emotionally functional,
joyful, transformative adulthood these childhood patterns have to go! To reach
maximum potential, it is imperative to learn how to compassionately and fully
express our feelings in emotionally stressful situations.
It is imperative to have boundaries of what is and is not acceptable and to
be able to state them clearly and unwaveringly. It is imperative not to play
roles of “victim”, “martyr”, “codependent caretaker”. It is imperative to be
fully ourselves; to live our dreams, not just relegate our dreams to the realm
of fantasy, and not to live our lives through others.
The last two ingredients in my healing primer are the will to cultivate an
indomitable
spirit and the presence to know that we are worthy of living a bountiful,
joyful, healthy, loving life with happiness and peace--- beyond our wildest
imagination! That truly is the essence of healing; to embrace the reality that our
emotional, spiritual, physical world is far greater than we ever imagined
until now.
This awareness serves as an invitation to: