As both practitioners and clients, an over rigid goal of ‘healing’ can obstruct a deeper experience of presence, connection, soul-fullness and health. If we are driven to practice a very disciplined healing regimen, motivated and maintained through control and fear (and fear of our pain), I am not sure if a deeply holistic experience of health, peace and happiness is possible.
The external control found through a disciplined healing regimen and the potential benefits of a strict diet and intentional lifestyle practices is great but certainly no substitute for a deep sense of belonging within oneself. On the surface it can look excellent, but inside we might still feel lonely, alienated, filled with self hatred or just a background feeling of lack, loneliness or discontentment. When fear, appearances and results/outcomes rather than a compassionate relationship with our experience drive us, there’s always an element of rigidity and control, a disconnection from truly being with and belonging to ourselves. This blocks the deeper opening and blossoming of the individual, and keeps us from feeling at ease in our circumstances—whether they’re painful or not.
I deeply believe in cultivating healthy living as a way to know ourselves and our world more intimately; to flourish. But true healing, I’ve found, lies less in ‘fixing’ and rigid routines or clinging to a fantasy of self, desired experiences or health that could ‘eternally protect us from suffering’ and more in grace: blessing our exeperience as it is and building the capacity to be with what is. In leaning into discomfort—being okay with pain, grief, heartache, or injury—we find freedom.
In our quest for ‘healing’ (from a fear based unconscious attempt to control life and avoid suffering), we can sometimes perpetuate the internal disconnection that may have contributed to our physical imbalance or dis-ease. We abandon ourselves here, now. In scrambling to attain “health” or “wholeness,” engaging in the lifelong socially normalised practice of disowning the parts of ourselves that are suffering or feel “inconvenient.” These abandoned parts don’t disappear; they often resurface later, shaping our lives from the shadows of our unconscious choices. And these disowned (and often culturally ‘devalued’ part of our being, of our wholeness), deserve to exist as they are -and if we do not allow this then we will live distorted versions of ourselves and lives.
In fact we can deprive ourselves of the huge learning opportunity to develop compassion, surrender, humility and acceptance by fixating on getting rid of the conditions through which life elicits and teaches these qualities (again, not that i am advocating for being a passive victim of circumstance, just to not be a victim of control and fear either!).
Surrendering to and accepting where we are—especially if that place is sickness, intense emotional pain, or physical limitation—is a hard, often painful process. But resisting what is, resisting and trying to out step or ‘fix’ life as it unfolds, is far more painful. It gradually closes our hearts, leaves us brittle, and cuts us off from the present moment, ourselves, and each other.
We can become so attached to our ideas of who we are, what we need and how we should operate in the world (and what ‘gets us’ the external validation, love, esteem that so many of us, disconnected from an inner sense of love and wholeness, crave) that when our bodies or minds don’t conform—when symptoms arise that disrupt our vision or plans—we turn on ourselves with aggression. We attack and ‘fix’ ourselves with tools and strategies rather than being with ourselves. Approaching healing relationally rather than as self as an object to fix so that it can be used again in our quest for outsourced peace, joy, love and happiness… it not only heals us individually, it heals us collectively and bites back against the disconnected, dehumanising capitalist and individualistic paradigm of our times.
When we make our salvation dependent on the external (the body, circumstances) rather than the internal (presence, acceptance, compassion, growth, faith) we lose ourselves in fear and control. This creates suffering, and disconnection. Even in health, there’s an undercurrent of anxiety: we know our equilibrium is fragile, impermanent, and subject to change—not a stable foundation for happiness, peace, or security.
When we objectify ourselves and make our salvation about fixed, perfect mental emotional and physical health—rather than reverence for the greater intelligence underlying all things, acceptance, self compassion, inter-being, faith and a gentle curiosity about the roots of our symptoms—we build our house on sand. From this place, people often devise creative but extreme methods to achieve “perfect health,” only to become obsessed or unwell in the process. In a sense, we act as mini-dictators, trying to control reality, ourselves, others, our bodies, the past, the future—endlessly. Or, we can choose to relax, let go, receive with gratitude, learn, and grow.
One path is fear-based, creating suffering through its fixation on avoiding suffering and insistence upon a given set of circumstances. The other is grounded in connection and reality, with openness, possibility, and kindness woven into it. It allows us to experience and dance with life, to relate to it, to love it—and to love ourselves—no matter what we’re experiencing or facing.
When we bring this attitude to our lives and decisions, including how we create and maintain health, life simply feels more joyful.
Reach out with any comments or questions.
With love,
Elise