Healing the inside

I've had to drift away into my own little land of self healing lately after experiencing some health challenges. It has been a daunting time and a great reminder that no matter how well life may be going, surprises can come along without any notice and change everything in an instant. How we choose to cope with these events is individual, but our mindset and the choices that we make can have a huge impact on the outcome of our situation.

In my article Awakening the Heart I discussed an experience from my yoga retreat where I had to view myself as a child and as a result of this experience, I felt like I needed some inner healing and in particular, healing of my inner child. A few weeks after my yoga retreat, I went to see a medium (psychic). I chose to pay the medium a visit after losing my dear Nan (who you can read about in Live Your Life with Meaning) last year. I felt like I hadn't had much time to grieve for her and felt this might be a good experience to help me heal from the grief of losing her.

When I had my reading, one thing that the medium mentioned, with my Nan and Grandad spiritually present, was how they felt I was in need of some inner healing. "Yes", I thought, "This was something that I learnt on my recent retreat". It felt like a little more confirmation that I did indeed need to work on healing my inner child. So I set about work and started off the process by emailing my mum with a few deep rooted questions. Some questions I got answers to and others I realised I would never have the answers I was looking for, but either way, I felt able to let those things go.

I gave myself a pat on the back. Good work! I questioned "Am I healed yet? Or is there more I could do?". And then I noticed a DVD out of the corner of my eye sitting on the shelf. It was as though it has been sitting there, waiting to be watched for years. I had even carried this DVD through an international move when I had thrown so many others away. It caught my eye and I had this feeling sweep over me that this DVD had been waiting until right that very moment for me to put it to work. The DVD was called 'The Shadow' by Debbie Ford. I switched it on and followed the exercises one by one.

'The Shadow' teaches us that we all have a dark side as well as a good. And that dark side is our shadow. The DVD educates on how we should not be ashamed of this part of ourselves but should instead embrace it and put it to use in ways that are useful to us. So now I had dealt with my demons and accepted my dark side.

A month or so later after after having attended a few medical appointments, I found out that my body was unwell. So there was in fact more of me that needed inner healing than I had first thought. I needed to heal both emotionally and physically. My emotional pain came from my past and from the loss of a wonderful women who had played an extremely important role in my life. And my physical pain, I wasn't even aware of until the combination of symptoms were pointed out to me and linked together.

So I can tell you that I have been working very hard to heal my inside in every kind of way. I listened to my inner voice, I listened to my nan and grandad, I listened to my body when it chose to communicate with me and I listened to myself, to my voice of reason that repeatedly tells me to never give up and always do anything and everything possible to achieve the best outcome. 

When I was given a diagnosis, I realised just how important my health is. Without it, I would not be able to participate in any other part of my life. For me, my health concerns were physical, but health problems can be both mental and emotional too.

If you were honest with yourself and took a huge unbiased view of yourself, which part of you do you think needs healing?

When I decided to heal myself, I decided to go full throttle. I questioned about my nutrition, I educated myself so that I could understand what the tests being done on me meant. I looked into alternative medicine and treatments. I allowed myself some rest time. I allowed myself some time for meditation. And of course, I continued yoga!

If you sense that any part of you is in pain and needs some healing, think about the ways in which you think you could go about healing yourself. Do a brainstorm and write your ideas down. And then take those ideas and make them actions. By allowing every part of you to heal, you are allowing yourself to become the fittest and strongest that you can be and with this strength and energy, you can truly accomplish anything that you desire.