Here is my take on chronic pain and the unfolding journey to healing –
Journey to healing
The journey to healing is one that unfolds. It happens in its own time. Our best move is to do what we can to feed, water, exercise, rest the body, learn to handle the habits of the mind, and allow the healing process to happen. We can encourage it, but any attempt to control it on our part will only serve to get in the way of the healing process itself.
A culture of instant gratification
We live in a culture today of instant gratification. Life is fast-paced. We are up against deadlines and can feel pushed to ‘make things happen’. Indeed, a motivating cheer I hear today in personal development and leadership forums is, “Make it happen!” I am all for taking action steps, but our healing space is not the place for this kind of energy. Healing is not a process that can be forced. We can only feed it and accept the rhythm of the power of healing. The innate wisdom inside us knows the path. Healing is not a linear process; it is an organic one that follows its own meanderings. It is our job to allow the path to unravel before us.
Healing in its own time
Imagine that you are in a rose garden you have just planted. It is early spring, and you have completed taking bare-rooted young rose bushes, painstakingly covering them with loamy soil rich in organic matter and watering them liberally. You are so excited about your new garden. The newly transplanted bushes develop young green shoots and expand into branches filled with beautiful green leaves. You marvel at the vigorous life force expressing itself through these plants.
We can lose patience with the healing process
One day you see pink flower blossoms sprout all over the new bushes. You marvel at the thought of the heady fragrances that are soon to lace the air with sweetness. But you are so intent on smelling the essence of a rose that you lose all patience and proceed to open a developing rose blossom. The blossom does not have that wondrous smell you were waiting for. In your push to rush the growing process, you ended up getting in the way of the growing process altogether. This is what we do with our healing process when we anticipate and judge how it will be.
We aren’t doing the healing
Understand and realize that WE aren’t doing the healing. We are doing what we can to help the healing process move along and hopefully not rush the process. The problem with trying to rush our healing is that we end up standing in its way, much like when we tried to rush the rose blossom to unfold before its time.
The journey of healing chronic pain is a process of unwinding
Further, my experience has shown me that healing from chronic pain is a process of unwinding. It takes time for us to develop the syndrome of chronic pain. I observed that I wound myself up in tension the longer I hurt. It was as if I was a giant toy top, getting wound up little by little, but most assuredly tighter and tighter. In my recovery, I have noticed a gradual uncoiling of tension inside of me. I get just a little calmer each day. I feel as if I am journeying down a long unwinding road. It is not a straight road. It has its own twists and turns, valleys and hills, and it is always outstretched before me, beckoning me forward.
Healing unravels in its own time
The trek through healing is a passage that unravels in its own time to its own rhythm. Doctors can clean a wound, stitch the torn skin together, and give us ‘orders’ to help optimize our healing. It is the body that holds the mysterious and profound healing power. Your healing will happen in perfect time and right on schedule, just maybe not the one you expect. And herein lies one of the great lessons healing brings us: patience.
Give yourself a break and let the miracle of healing unfold
Give yourself a break. Love yourself and bow to The Mystery living inside of you. It is Divine Energy that is directing the whole show. Once you have paid your entrance fee by doing the work needed to set the best conditions you can for healing sit back and allow the miracle, your miracle, to unfold.
-Excerpt from my book “The Way Through Chronic Pain: Tools to Reclaim Your Healing Power.”
