How do you Define Healing? Thinking about Symptom Reduction vs. Lasting Resolution
Real change is hard work. Think about a time when you changed a habit, really shifted something, and consider all the effort that was involved. Maybe it was something proactive (like quitting smoking) or something reactive (letting go of someone who broke up with you). It required a lot of repetition to sculpt a new way of thinking or willing. Usually, whether the new habit is exercise, eating healthier food, not picking at mosquito bites, meditating, not getting stuck in anger or turning off all screen in the hour before going to bed, we do well for a while, then it falls apart and we have to start over again. Changing something in a meaningful and sustainable way takes time and it takes repetitive practice. Research by Phillippa Lally has shown that there is actually quite a broad time frame for changing a habit (18 to 254 days), with an average of 66 days, and she and others suggests a 10-week plan for really shifting a habit. That means on average that it takes more than two months to transform some part of ourselves.
One way to help reduce the chances of getting ill is to proactively give the body what it needs. Warmth, whether physical, emotional, or social, helps integrates us into a whole. That’s not just a physiologic process—helping others in our community by sharing useful information is a social and spiritual correlate to that process. Right now is a time in the world when we need to think about how we help each other, not just get stuck in fear. Consider sharing this with others in your community.
Avoiding Surgery for Big Tonsils, Gallstones or Fibroids
We get sick in stages: there is a waterfall relationship between the immediate impressions of a situation; to what with time becomes a more chronic, physiologic imbalance; to what eventually becomes a true pathological (illness causing) change. An example: if I have an sudden shock or scare, then heart rate, blood pressure and muscle tone will naturally all go up, but they should all gradually relax and return to normal over the course of a few hours. That would likely change if a shock or scare began to happen every day, then soon the body's steady state changes, it gets reset—perhaps to a place where there are persistent challenges with falling asleep, or painful tight muscles that become the norm. And if my “reset” physiology stays imbalanced long enough we meet irreversibly illness, like a heart attack, a tumor, or high blood pressure that cannot be brought down. Most medical interventions happen in this third stage,though obviously working to change the process earlier (upstream) is a more ideal, and potent place to work.