Natural support? You've got it!
How to Mobilize and Support Natural Healing
Posted by: Steve Andreas in: Articles
Three days ago I was walking
in our creek bed, very rocky and jumbled — and ¼ mile wide —
since the huge flood last
September. I carelessly tripped over a large stick, tumbled forward and fell
heavily on my right side, pulling the muscles in my left leg so that I could
only walk by hobbling
and lurching with most of my
weight on my right leg.
My knee soon swelled up, and
the muscles above and below the knee became very sore.
We almost always notice the
sudden onset of an injury, and the same is true of many illnesses.
But we tend not to notice the healing, which is almost
always more gradual.
Our image of the onset of the
injury or illness is usually very vivid, while our image of healing
is typically faint or
non-existent. We may have gotten sick — and well again — countless times,
yet think only of the getting
sick, while ignoring the getting well. People often say something like,
“I’m
always getting sick,” but I have never heard anyone say, “I’m always getting
well,”
even though almost every
“getting sick” is followed by “getting well.”
This creates an implicit bias
in our memory and thinking that is certainly not pleasant,
and probably not useful in
supporting healing. How can we rebalance — or even reverse —
this unconscious bias of
thinking mostly of getting sick, while ignoring getting well?
There is a way to assist in
natural healing that I have used for years, that automatically “kicks in”
whenever I am injured or sick. Initially my internal “film clip” of falling,
and the resulting soreness
and pain, was very vivid in my mind, along with the
present pain and soreness —
and I had no image at all of
healing. So the first thing I did was reduce the vividness
of this onset image by making
it dimmer, smaller, faded, colorless, and farther away.
This reduced its prominence
in my mind, and diminished the possibility of it continuing
to elicit thoughts of being
damaged, what is sometimes called “retraumatization.”
Next I accessed an internal
representation of all the times I have healed from an injury or illness —
everything from a scrape or bruise to a very badly broken ankle in high school
and several hospitalizations
for massive internal bleeding during my stressful college days.
Since I’m 78, I have quite a
lot of examples of healing.
This redirected my attention
from the unpleasant memory of stumbling — and landing — to the much more
attractive representation of the many, many times when I have healed in the
past, implying that my body will also heal again now. Literally seeing this
convincing evidence
of the power of natural
healing was a lot more pleasant than thinking about tripping and falling,
and I
found myself relaxing and breathing more easily.
The ongoing pain changed from
a signal of disaster to become simply a warning
about needing to protect the
injured areas to allow healing to take place.
The composite representation
of healing is one I built years ago, when I was developing
the material for my book
about self-concept, Transforming Your Self.
A quality such as the ability
to heal can be a part of your sense of who you are, part of
your self-concept. It’s
really quite simple to build a solid knowing that your body can heal itself.
Briefly, the first step in
creating healing as part of what you know is true of yourself is to find out
how you already represent a quality that you know is
true of you.
Think of another quality that
you know is true of you, such as honesty or persistence,
and notice what you see, hear
and feel internally.
Although there are many
variations in exactly how people do this, the two main possibilities
are either a collage of
images of examples of this quality (which is what I do),
or a sequential slide show
that presents one image at a time in rapid succession. Each of these has
certain advantages and disadvantages, but they both work well, and they can
also be combined.
The location of this collage
or slide show in your visual field is very important, and the size, brightness,
color, 3-D, etc. of each image is also important. You can find more detail
on how to do this in my book,
and you can read a verbatim transcript of the process
of building a new aspect of
self-concept here.
Once you have determined how
you already represent a quality that you know is true of yourself, the next
step is to use that structure as a template to build a new quality,
namely that your body knows
how to heal itself without your help or interference.
Elicit examples of healing,
one at a time. Since we usually ignore healing,
it may be easier to think of
an injury or illness, and then run the movie of that time forward
until you come to the point
where you realize that it is healing by itself, and you feel normal,
or near normal, again. By
itself this is a useful process, as it changes how we experience
those past memories as well.
Then make this image look
just like the ones in your template — the same size, brightness, color,
3-D etc. — and then put
the image into your template.
Do this repeatedly until your
template is filled with different images of successful healing.
This collection of images is
much stronger and more convincing than a single image.
When you are done it will
then recede into unconsciousness, providing ongoing compelling evidence of your
body’s ability to heal from all sorts of injuries and illnesses.
Someone may say, “Oh, I know
my body can heal itself.” But if there are no experiences represented in a
composite template, it will only be an intellectual knowing that will have no
effect on their felt experience and physiology.
I have a lot of experience in
using this process to alter many different aspects of self-concept
that result in useful changes
in people’s attitude and behavior. I know that people experience shifts in
their state that they find useful, and that it has made my experience of injury
much better subjectively. I don’t know if the process will speed up healing,
but I’m reasonably sure
that dwelling on an injury,
or getting upset over it, will interfere with healing. There is a lot of
evidence that a more positive attitude enhances the immune system and healing
generally.
The process is easy to do,
takes only a small investment of time, and I don’t see how it could possibly do
any harm. I am generally healthy, and I have dodged a couple of recommended
surgeries based on my assumption that my body can usually heal itself.
It is good to keep in mind
that even when surgery is necessary,
it is our body’s natural
healing ability that joins the cut pieces back together.
Over the next couple of days
the swelling and soreness around my knee gradually lessened,
and at a certain point I
noticed that I was walking normally, putting my full weight on my left leg,
no longer lurching and
dragging it around.
In an earlier blog post,
I described several other ways to support natural healing,
including an example of
Connirae Andreas’ natural healing process,
described in detail in
chapter 20 of our book Heart of the Mind.
http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/how-to-mobilize-and-support-natural-healing
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