What Does Healing Feel Like?
At first glance, answering such a large question can be difficult. Often, we either want to reference the past tense, framed in terms of what we are, fortunately, no longer experiencing, or the future tense, looking ahead to a hopefully-improved quality of life. Essentially, it is already-cured or yet-to-be-cured, with little room for residing in the moment. While these outcomes are certainly our hope for anyone suffering from a physical or an emotional ailment, the question posed above invites those of us on the road to recovery to be present and connected with the journey of healing, rather than focusing solely on the destination. Though difficult, such exploration can lead to the discovery of a deeper sense of self and, ultimately, to a greater grasp of wellness. Before charting a course toward such personal exploration and the rewards to follow, however, note that this process does entail a slight learning curve, along with perhaps a little letting go. Essentially trusting into a personal awakening. That being said, if a blend of healing to grow and growing to heal still appeals to you, read on.
The premise of the above question – What does healing feel like? – ironically stems from a commonly overlooked yet distinct contribution to our current circumstances. Put another way, if we seek personal change with a specific desirable outcome, would it not be to our benefit to understand how we got to our present condition in the first place? The truth is that most ailments affecting our lives occur very slowly, often leaving us questioning, how did this happen? The formal term for such a subtly-developing process, whose effects are undesirable or even harmful, is an insidious onset. Within the confines of such a gradual evolution, our minds and bodies do a brilliant job of bandaging us up and allowing us to habitually press on.
Working with patients who experience such vague or slow-to-accumulate sources of pain, I often use the analogy of “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” to illustrate the layering of micro-traumas, the daily bumps and grinds that, over time, accumulate to the point that we find ourselves in need of healing. Such a discussion generally fosters a progressive recollection of how we so often limp through an interval of life, failing to allow ourselves the time, space, or grace to fully heal. What is less evident within these compounding micro-injuries, however, are the ways that, bit by bit, our brain-to-body interactions generate consequential movement patterns or compensations as a form of protection. Essentially, determined to believe we are “good to go,” we allow ourselves to turn a blind eye to the ways our quality of life is degrading and declining, often in real time.
With this unpleasant but all-too-common reality as a baseline, let’s examine what a truer, more concrete path to healing might look like. In the aforementioned pattern of protected movement, one’s brain-body interactions have grown “content” covering up or masking an underlying injurious condition. Content, in clinical terms, means that not only has one’s system generated an apparent solution (referred to as Compensation – limping, shrugging, holding one’s breath), but also become equally resistant to change. Not that it wouldn’t be happier not having to work so hard to not hurt, rather it doesn’t know how to change back to living without also protecting. To cite a real-life example of this process, one patient of mine described her sense of finally feeling genuine healing as follows: “I am learning who I am without pain.”
To further illustrate the idea of being present within or coming to terms with the experience of healing, another patient of mine once said, “It is as if I am climbing a mountain one careful step at a time, and yet I can look back to where I began and can both see – and more importantly, feel – just how far I have climbed.”
The courageous testimonies of these two patients, as well as those to follow, should be taken as examples of living into one’s healing requirements. As therapists, the role we play in this process is critical, and yet there are forms of healing we can neither prescribe nor directly provide. As patients, we have to feel, on an individual level, the transition to healing within our daily lives. This can be extremely difficult, as protecting is reflexive, managed by our Autonomic Nervous System, and very susceptible to not only overprotecting, but even becoming fixated or patterned. As such, once the actual threat (physical injury) has passed, with the help of your therapist, the next and most essential requirement is to resolve the lingering perceived threat. In a sense, the therapeutic approach is much like a negotiation with one’s overall senses, essentially learning to feel and live into the desirable, such as peace and calm, while letting go of the undesirable, such as protective tensions. Put simply, we have to become aware of when we are engaging in a protective response at the expense of more genuine healing, and to allow the latter adequate time and space to unfold.
Now, let’s talk about you. The questions to follow are intended for both patients and their respective therapists, to hopefully foster a collaborative pursuit of true healing. As such, to help you make the most of this experiential opportunity to nurture either one’s own or another’s healing, I would ask you now to simply ask yourself, maybe for the first time, this exact question:
What does healing feel like? Make note of where your mind initially goes. When posed a question of any type, we are not normally inclined to spend much time on our initial, instinctual response. This question, however, is meant first and foremost to either invoke or reveal an existing-yet-currently-unperceived feeling.
Allow me to provide you with a few guidelines:
How often? I would encourage you to repetitively ask yourself this question, literally as often as it comes to your mind.
Once you have asked yourself this question, you should attempt to tune into your full senses for personal reflection of what healing, for you, feels like. Initially, this process will feel vague. You will be inclined to race, in your mind, to the results that you have long been hoping for. And while yes, we all want the results that we hope for as soon as possible, this method is about learning to take the necessary steps to get there.
This is a personal discovery process: in a very literal sense, no one else can feel what you feel. Even you may not feel like you are healing at first, as your body may still predominantly be in a state of protection. Thus, such a gradual and yet essential process of discovery will ultimately become your primary point of reference, like a compass, to navigate your personal path toward optimal healing.
By tuning into your senses, you will hopefully be able to ground yourself in the present, and it is within the present that the experience of healing becomes tangible.
The more attuned to this process you become, the more you will discover when contemplating the above question. In my experience, this revelation came while devoting myself to the same therapeutic exercises I prescribe to my patients. Suddenly, a eureka moment unfolded, and I was able to reach deep into my thoracic spine to therapeutically touch on a persistent stabbing pain that had eluded me for years. As is often the case, such a healing experience was personalized for me, a feeling I could relate to. It was as if I was gently pulling a weed from the earth (the source of pain from my own body) and as it gave, I felt a remarkable calm come over me as I lay there, suddenly capable of simply breathing without pain. The experience was a teachable moment for me in many ways, both as a patient and a therapist, reminding me in such moments of profound relief to be both grateful and growingly content. Each of these personal choices to be grateful for our healing capacities, as well as being content in knowing we are on track, fosters an even deeper promotion of being present and aware.
As the following patient illustrates, the gradual dialogue with yourself ultimately generates a spiritual knowing from within: “The joy, the excitement, the levity of spirit, all things positive and how it makes you smile from within. It wasn’t long before I noticed how often I was asking myself, ‘What does healing feel like?’ It was then that I realized that I no longer needed to answer the question. I was asking it almost subconsciously, because I was aware that where my thoughts go my energy flowed. Just thinking it elicited those same strong positive emotions, as if the healing were set into motion and a sense of peace, calm, and trust embraced me.”
Ultimately, healing reflects multiple competing forces. What is essential in this journey to restore oneself to a personally optimal place is to become both physically and emotionally sensitive to the fluctuations between healing and ailing within any given time. In the case of one such patient, he voiced an acknowledgment of becoming aware of when his condition required the support of his cane to preserve his progressions, as well as the confidence of knowing when to challenge himself and leave the cane behind. Within such expected fluctuations of reverting and progressing, one’s personal experiences of healing will often be revealed. As mentioned in the beginning, such exploration can lead to the discovery of a deeper sense of self and, ultimately, to a greater grasp of wellness. To bring us full circle, as offered by our final patient testimony, “Having tasted the relief, I knew, despite the intermittent regressions, the possibilities of full healing are within me. It is as if my body can now perceive the connections to move well.”
To nurture one’s path towards such progressive levels of healing, encompassing mind, body, and spirit, I often utilize the expression “where life becomes therapeutic.” In other words, for all efforts intended to heal, whether it be through direct care, personalized therapeutic exercises, physical or mental activity alterations, diet, or sleep, we must, as regularly as possible, seed and water such favorable influences at every given opportunity.
Ultimately, true healing is an experiential, energy-requiring process, in which space is created through a caring relationship with ourselves. A process of expanding consciousness that results in a sense of wholeness, integration, balance, and transformation. A sense of fully being – just being, a wordless knowing.
