Healing Ourselves

Healing Ourselves 

            Our bodies are the most efficient healing systems imaginable. In fact, they may be the only ones; that is, when we allow ourselves to heal. Forgiveness is the key to allowing all our great health to blossom. And the most important forgiveness of all? Forgiveness of ourselves.

            When I was only twenty-two years old, the doctors sat on the edge of my bed and quietly pronounced that I had two weeks to live. That was thirty years ago, after four years of being constantly sick, and weakened by blood loss from ulcerative colitis. Either I, or my colon, had to go. Instead of dying, I elected to have a complete colectomy. But there was still work to do. I had to gain back some weight before the surgeons could be confident enough that I would survive the eight hours of surgery. Despite 100mg of prednisone daily, up until then I had only been losing weight. So there had to be something more. Turns out, there was. That something more was my stand for my own health through the will of my mind, in alignment with my body, regardless of drugs. As I lay there, arms bruised from so many failed IV attempts, devoid of evidence, and with nothing but faith, I steeled my mind to tell my body to get well. After a week, I jumped from a hundred and ten to a hundred and thirteen, still down from one sixty-five, yet good enough to give my operation the green light. I was out of time, and out of options, so I took the best one I could see in front of me.

            That was more than half a lifetime ago, and the great health I have experienced since then has been nothing short of miraculous. Six black belts later and staying healthy while running around playing with my two young children have all taught me many lessons about how to stay healthy. Because after my surgery, I wanted to know what had saved me, and why. That research pointed to one thing; that part of what had saved me was my mind. Without the combination of everything that exists along with our bodies, giving a pill to only the physical part of us, won't work. We have to believe in what we're doing, or what we're doing won't believe in us, whether it's aspirin or major surgery. If I hadn't believed whole heartedly that my surgery was going to radically change my life for the better, I might have followed in the footsteps of those who regularly attended 'maintenance' support groups, filling their minds with all that they could not do after a colectomy, rather than the possibilities for new life and freedom. Turns out I lucked out, too busy with being free from the debilitating effects of my disease to attend those meetings.

            Our bodies are astounding in their abilities to heal, and instantly. After a fire walk one year, cruising over fifteen-hundred degree coals, I was at home, buoyant and ready to take on the world. That was, until my ex-wife came over to drop off the kids and said to me "Where are all your blisters? Everyone gets blisters when they fire-walk." I had been too happy and too ignorant of this 'fact,' that was, until she mentioned it. Immediately, my feet started to feel like a torch was being held up to the bottoms of them, and blisters started to form. Not ten minutes later, but as soon as she had spoken. I ran to the bathtub to immerse my feet in cold water, plunging them in again and again until I remembered that I didn't have to buy into 'common knowledge,' that it was my mind that had the final say in my being healthy. I shut off the water, looked at my feet, and said right out loud, "No, I am not going there." Just as fast as they had appeared, I witnessed as those blisters literally disappeared. They were gone, never to come back again. My feet immediately cooled down. I thought, "If my body can do this amazing thing, what else can it do?" The possibilities were endless.

            I found out from that experience that it isn't necessary to be sick in order to get well. You can just start being well, and then continue on getting more and more robustly healthy as time goes on. Even aging is beginning to appear to be a state of mind. But you have to work at it. You have to read inspirational books, listen to uplifting tapes, and hang around people with the same mindset of robust health as you have. They're there, and they show up when you look for them. I run around so much with my kids, that they fall down after a while and I'm still going, often working into the night long after they've gone to bed. Even the old requirement for long periods of sleep has transformed into an option nowadays, a choice to make, rather than a need. The key to all this health? Forgiveness. I had to forgive my ex, and forgive all those who in any way I perceived had hurt me. All of them, with no one left out, and most importantly, including myself. Because if you really think about it, who, in reality, ever hurts you nearly as much as you hurt yourself? Who is inside your mind, making you and things around you wrong, other than you? Childhood trauma, biased stories, and judgments also had to go, along with any current adulthood makewrong. If I had held onto it, all that negative energy would have eventually killed me, literally. When my feet had started to feel like they were burning, without forgiving my ex for her words, those blisters would have just gotten worse. It never matters who's right or wrong, the only thing that matters is how we feel. Forgiving simply feels good. When we feel good, we do good. The formula then, is simple: feel good, be healthy. Makewrong feels bad; feel bad all the time, and you also get the results of doing that. Not forgiving just doesn't feel that good. And as always, the most important person of all to begin your forgiveness healing process with? Yourself. Now that's something you can feel very good about, and the best part is, right away too!