Part 1
You want to heal and you begin to understand the natural process of healing. You start diving into natural healing methods that help you relax, let go, and activate energy. You take high-quality supplements that really help you feel balanced and actually help with many symptoms. You start to feel better, sleep better, and have more energy. You feel so excited that you are on a healing path now and look forward to all the positive changes that are coming your way.
Then the detox symptoms begin in your body and mind.
Old residual toxins in the body and old traumas start to rumble and send up tiny bubbles. You start getting sick. A random infection sets in or a bout of strange diarrhea comes on. You begin waking up with anxiety and your energy crashes in the evening. You feel extra sensitive to certain people and bouts of brain fog come and go throughout the week. You are wondering what is going on! You are supposed to be on a path of wellness and supposed to feel better and better and better.
And so, here we have a typical example of the healing process actually working but most fail to realize what is really happening...and they start to shut it down in desperation and confusion.
What just happened? In a nutshell, the issue is about resistance.
The most challenging stage of healing to navigate through is the resistance phase. This phase is guaranteed to arise if the healing is actually working. This is where most fail in their noble attempt to heal and change for the better. Resistance is the ultimate block to healing, like a massive insurmountable wall. The problem is that to actually heal physically and emotionally, one has to move through the resistance that is actually sustaining the imbalance, tension, dis-ease, or blockage. To push through the resistance means you have to feel. You have to feel what the resistance actually is.
What do we resist? We resist pain and discomfort. Physical and emotional trauma is born from pain. Unhappiness, anger, grief, and fear are all uncomfortable feelings that we do not want to feel and when we do, our usual first reaction is to not want to feel those feelings. So we tense up, alter or hold our breath, distract ourselves, or look away...in other words, resist.
So the true healing process is a natural progressive series of stages that culminates with a peak experience of the actual discomfort that was suppressed or blocked, to begin with. This is the key magical moment. If we can not resist and let the energy or emotion flow as it is meant to, then the block clears, the toxin is released, or the trauma becomes just a bit less charged.
Now it's one thing to understand this process...it's a whole different thing to actually put this process into practice. The habitual tendencies and reactive states have to be rewired. This takes training and practice. Only then can one cycle through the healing stages with more grace and with less resistance.
How does one practice this very thing of becoming less reactive to one's discomfort and pain?
One of the most effective time-tested approaches to really transform the parts of ourselves that have been so conditioned to resist our discomfort is with a proper practice of meditation with mindfulness. The key word is "proper" here as most meditation methods do not directly address the reactive self and general, popular mindfulness does not usually go far enough with its true potential and scope. It's really about applying the principles of staying neutral to stress which is called equanimity. Meditation with mindfulness was developed for this exact purpose.
To Be Continued in Part 2