Healing yourself, your body, mind and emotions are important if you want to have a happy life. You can have lots of money, success, good relationships but if you don’t have good health you can enjoy none of these. Though it’s not only about having a healthy body, mind and emotions because illness begins at a deeper level – in our energetic and spiritual bodies before it manifests as physical illness.
Healing yourself can be on the body level physically, healing the senses emotionally and mentally and how you interact with the world, and healing yourself on a soul level. All these kinds of healing can be achieved through the mind. If the mind is attuned enough for us to connect outwardly to do what is required in the world to heal ourselves we heal outwardly. If the mind is attuned inwardly at a soul level to search our emotions and thoughts and connect spiritually we heal internally.
In Indian philosophies and in the Ayurvedic medical system healing yourself is not only about healing yourself physically. It is also healing yourself on other levels of our being. There are many facets to a human being and our journey through life and that is not only the physical journey but our soul journey. A soul has its destiny, the mind its rational thinking abilities and the mental changes needed for the human to live on this planet.
Healing yourself happens when the mind is calm. A calm mind is able to program the body for wellbeing which leads to such things as lower blood pressure, less inflammation and in short ‘happy’ cells in the body in turn keeping it healthy. The Indian literature speaks of having the ability to sleep well and how important it is to wake cheerfully. I find this is sometimes difficult for some of my clients, especially the waking cheerfully. Many people drag themselves out of bed to go to jobs they hate, long commuting journeys in a state of rushed busy – ness. What happens from this is an overwhelming of the senses which leads to burnout. So the state of the mind is important. It needs to be calm and steady to deal with the ups and downs of life.
In the healing literature it goes on to talk about four aspects of mind. There is the ‘manas’ which is the day to day mind we use in our everyday interactions, ‘buddhi’ which is the discerning mind which determines what is important and what is not, ‘ahankara’ which is the ego, the part of us that has a sense of self and is responsible for self-care and the ‘smriti’ which is the memory part of our mind which is not only responsible for recall but also for the sense of who we believe we are, our values and our beliefs.
If these four aspects of mind are upset in some way healing yourself does not take place and we lose our sense of self. If we lose this it leads to a false sense of depending on the world around us and on the outcome of our actions for fulfilment. This leads to a kind of co-dependency with the world around us which is unhealthy and in turn leads us to be unhappy. The connection between our emotions, mind and soul needs to be nurtured so we need to learn to listen to what is happing inside us so that we don’t end up leading an unhappy life.
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In Ayurveda they speak of two states, ‘bandha’ and ‘moksha’. Bandha is bondage, being immersed in the physicality’s of this world, ‘moksha’ is independence. The same mind can be in bondage or free depending on the state it is in. The same mind can be co-dependent on others and be a mind filled with expectations of outcomes attached to the impermanence of this world (what is often called illusion – the impermanence). This dependence leads to a state of panic and stress when things don’t work out. Alternatively the mind can be calm and realise that life is filled with ups and downs and in the end it is not the little things that matter. There is a reason we say, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’.
Our psychological health depends on this state of mind and the interconnection between our inner self and the outer world we live in. Healing yourself can take place from either within or without. It takes place from without by our inter- reactions with people around us, the food we eat, the supplements we take, getting enough sleep, enough exercise, relaxation, meditation and fun. Healing yourself takes place from within through our interconnection with our soul, clearing our energy, our connection to God, the universe or whatever else we believe in, our religious practices, our values, our stability of mind and how we manage and conduct that calmness. Both of these make up what we call the person and when any one of these are out of balance healing yourself does not take place. It therefore becomes important to find a therapist not only to help you heal outside but someone who can become a teacher, an ‘acharya’ or even a ‘guru (one who sheds light) to awaken that healing yourself within your soul and lead you to fulfil your goals, your dreams and your destiny.
