12 Practices for Optimal Healing

Much attention is given to what we can do to stay healthy.  Healthy diet, regular, exercise, stress-reduction and lifestyle changes all prevent the onset of chronic conditions or limit their causes.  But healing is not the same as wellness, and healing is different from healthy.  Healing has several meanings and the one I’m going to focus on here is healing as what we do and how we experience moving from illness to health.  Healing includes the changes we make, the people we include, the practices we undertake and the container we set for diminishing our experience of illness in order to return to the freedom of health.

Thus, healing can be enhanced and maximized.  There are 12 practices that I will offer that stimulate healing, enhance symptom reduction and hasten movement toward health.  These practice are:

• Movement

• Nutrition

• Relaxation

• Meditation

• Affirmation

• Emotional Release

• Love

• Forgiveness

• Care

• Nature

• Water

• Safety/Security

Movement:  Our bodies are constantly in a state of both stillness and flux.  In our quietest moment, we continue to experience the rise and fall of our breath, and the beating of our hearts.  Movement is essential to life and for healing, movement is an essential aspect…moving our bodies, moving our bowels, moving our minds.  Learning just what our being needs to heal through movement is a lifelong lesson.

Nutrition:  So much has been written about proper diet, and indeed, food can be vital to healing when focused specifically on what foods are necessary for  what types of healing.  Healing nutrition is powerful

Relaxation:  Just as movement is part of healing, so is relaxation.  Often symptoms are an expression of excess. Modern life can reach a frenzy of activity and our bodies break down.  Learning how to relax, sleep, and have resourceful low energy time supports release and healing.

Meditation:  While you may think that relaxation is meditation, I’m suggesting that learning how to focus your mind, calming mental patterns and enhancing deeper mental clarity and focus is extremely healing.

Affirmations:  What we want to see happen makes a big difference in our experience.           Affirmations begin with setting our intention, then focusing our thoughts to that outcome.  Learning how to use affirmations to heal offers a valuable tool for times of aches and strain.

Emotional Release:  Often times, like it or not, illness is due to pent up feelings that haven’t had a chance to be heard.  Listening to deep seated feelings and learning to release them will always healing.

Love:  How much is our experience of healing intertwined how we feel about ourselves and how others feel about us? Loving ourselves and taking care of ourselves is love.  Many feel that all healing comes from these sources of love.

Forgiveness: How often are we holding onto resentment when we get sick?  How is our physical or emotional state keeping us a hostage to the very love we need to have to heal?  Learning to identify what we are carrying around and do the difficult task of forgiving those around us is powerful medicine.

Care:  Many people, upon reflection, remember a parent or person caring for use during illness.  Are there persons who care for you?  When you are sick how does care help you heal?  When others are sick, do you step up and care for your loved ones?

Nature:  The healing power of nature is special.  From sunlight, the beach or simply a room with a view, the natural world is healing.

Water:  Seems pretty simply but learning about just how powerful water is in healing surprises many.  Remember, to keep drinking!

Safety:  Perhaps you may not notice how the conditions for healing require the environment to be safe and supportive.  Some people like a very neat environment, others company, and everyone wants and needs their space to be conducive to healing. THe qualities of our space offers a sense of safety that provides the necessary conditions for healing.

The 12 practices for Optimal Healing.  No you don’t have to do them all! But, I invite you to join me over the next twelve months as I explore these practices, offering you the opportunity to take these practices and use them for yourself.

Many Blessings,

Joel