Healing From the Inside Out

I have wondered that many times!

I have been on a healing journey for several years now, as I’ve been recovering from burnout and other health issues that presented along the way and learning how to heal from the inside out. It feels to me there are very few healing approaches I haven’t tried! I’ve seen doctors, psychologists, therapists, healers and coaches, and consulted self-help books, friends (of which I’m blessed with a circle of fellow healers and therapists!) and, most importantly, myself. But, I wouldn’t have got this far without the wisdom I have gained from some very valuable teachers!

One thing that strikes me as so important in the healing journey is acknowledging our power to help ourselves!

But…It’s also so important that this doesn’t get misunderstood. I would never say to somebody that an illness is their fault, or that if someone tried harder they could be free of it. I know from my own struggles that healing is a journey, and often not a straightforward one, and one that may or may not end in ‘recovery’, but one that should always be guiding us to a feeling of wholeness, self-love, and acceptance. 

It’s not about blame for your illness – I’ve seen awful illnesses strike very good people, including myself and my loved ones, and no one deserves to go through that. But this is about taking responsibility for what we can do. Then it’s about questioning – can we do more for ourselves than we dared to believe was possible?! And it’s always about self-love, self-compassion, and guiding ourselves towards our best chance of optimum health. And how do we do that?

– By getting our mind on board rather than fighting with ourselves
– By tuning in and developing greater embodied awareness
– By learning to trust ourselves and our intuition to tell us what we need
– By learning when to rest and when to push
– By listening to and honouring our bodies’ needs, for nutrition and care
– By learning to pull out of stress and generate our own state of calm
– By learning to direct our attention towards what we want more of
– By getting out of our own way and the ‘fix it’ mentality
– By finding meaning and faith in the experience

When we can achieve those things, our body has the best chance to heal! And every one of those things can be done alongside regular medical practices if you need them. Healing is natural – we don’t need to know how. We just need to lay the groundwork and trust the process. The same intelligence that keeps us breathing, that forms our cells and that can heal a cut, can work miracles in the body – like an aeroplane constantly readjusting its course, the body is always re-calibrating to return to a state of balance.

I have come to learn how important all of the above steps are for self-care in my own life, and I live by those principles.