What Healing Really Is (and How to Allow It)

“Healing” is a commonly used term these days, especially within the realms and circles of my work. It seems that everyone is seeking or offering some form of healing, whether that be for the body or mind, and with good reason.

While pain and suffering are part of the packaged deal that comes with our human suit, we also live within a societal system that doesn’t provide the proper structure or space to manage deeper emotions or experiences that are natural to life.

Our work demands, errands, and bills don’t stop just because we are going through a difficult time. Perhaps in the old days we could wander off into the forest to process our pain and return anew, but not now.

So the question becomes, how do we heal? And in order to answer that, I believe we need to dig a layer deeper and ask ourselves the question:

What does this word “healing” mean in the first place?

What Healing Is — And Isn’t

Healing can often be misinterpreted as a single moment everything goes from imperfect to a state of perfection. In reality, healing isn’t a moment that happens, healing is a process that takes place. In other words…

Healing is a state of allowing.

Now “allowing” doesn’t include in its definition what it is that is being allowed — it just is. To allow is to be in a state of flow.

Allowing means dropping resistance to what is, and as a result, offering an opening and invitation to whatever needs to be. If something needs to be felt, it can be. If something needs to be understood, it will be.

Allowing means moving beyond the fear of what we might feel, and opening to the process of experiencing it for the sake of transforming our pain into peace.

Now ironically, opening up can sometimes be just as painful (if not more) than what caused us to close in the first place! But that, my friends, is where the power to heal truly lives.

Dropping The Armor

When we anticipate that emotional damage or physical pain are in the air (whether this is real or perceived), we quite literally brace ourselves. Our body will enter the stress response, resulting in our muscles tightening, pupils dilating, and our minds fixating on the threat at hand.

Being that we are wired for survival, it makes absolute sense that part of our nature would be to instinctively contract in order for us to avoid experiencing pain.

But being in a state of bracing, avoidance, or contraction is not a state of allowing, and therefore cannot result in a process of healing.

In order to heal, we have to open ourselves to a state of allowing.

This means that yes, we are going to have to open ourselves up to feeling it. But this also means that through the process of releasing what has been held, we have now created space.

And in that space, we can receive peace, insight, joy, and freedom.

It’s Only a Moment Away

While our life’s circumstances are not always up to us, how (and how long) we experience pain within that is entirely up to us, based on how long we remain in a state of contraction.

Life can provide some extraordinarily painful experiences. But the more we resist the process of allowing our feelings to be felt, the longer the time stamp we place on our suffering.

I am always amazed by how quickly deeply painful emotions can be released once someone makes that choice to open fully and allow what needs to be processed through.

It is a beautiful thing to witness pain that has been carried for years (and would have been carried for many, many more) be released in a matter of minutes.

And the real stunning scene is the look of peace, openness, and joy beaming from the faces of those who bravely allowed what needs to be released to go, and opened to the freedom that was there all along.

Your Turn

My question to you is: For your own process of healing, what can you allow today?

Perhaps you can allow something that you’ve been carrying to be released from your protective grip. If you want to hold new experiences, you’re going to need to open your hands (and heart), right?

Maybe you can allow the anger — and grief beneath it — that you have been suppressing to rise up, any amount, and be acknowledged so that you can create space for peace.

On the flip side, maybe you can allow yourself to recognize how beautiful your life actually is, and how well everything is truly going for you. And don’t just recognize it, allow yourself to truly feel it.

Or maybe you could allow yourself to feel gratitude for what you DO have, despite the fact that your life might not match the blueprint you had planned for yourself by this time/age/date. 

Whatever it is, open up, and allow it.

Life is in constant motion, and we do ourselves a disservice to imagine that things could ever be different for us when we are not opening up and allowing those new results or experiences to even happen. 

Somatic Practices

In order to support your process of allowing, I would love to offer you a couple somatic (body) practices. The first is a practice shared by my dear friend, Debby Germino, who is a somatic and meditation coach. The second is shared from the brilliant author, Mark Nepo.

Practice One:

Imagine that your heart is directly paired with and represented by your hands. Whether you are sitting, standing, or lying down, close your fists tightly, representing a closed heart.

At the slowest pace you can, slowly, gently begin to lessen your tight grip and open your hands.

As your hands slowly open, imagine your heart in union, opening ever so slowly along with them.

This process can equally initiate experiences of relief as well as grief. Allow what emerges to move through you in your process of healing.

Practice Two:

A simple technique you can wire into your life, is to imagine every time you run a sponge underwater, that the sponge is your heart. 

Feel the sponge’s state of firmness so easily soften, and know that you, too, can soften just as easily. 

Simple as that. 

Opening Into Freedom

Enjoy these beautiful practices and know that I am here, as always, to hold space for you as you allow your own personal transformations to take place. I am also here as a reminder that you can hold this beautiful space for yourself, as well as others.

It takes courage to open up and can sometimes be painful to feel, but I can promise you that what is on the other side of those difficult emotions is going to be so incredibly worth it.

By allowing yourself to heal, you allow yourself to experience what it truly means to be free.