At one point in my healing journey from Guillain Barre Syndrome, Babesia, Lyme, Mycotoxin Poisoning, Heavy Metal Poisoning, and POTS, my doctor told me he felt that there was something blocking me from healing. He thought something spiritual or in the subconscious mind was getting in the way and causing me to have adverse reactions to things that should be helping.
Although I felt open to this concept, I couldn't quite figure out why or what it was. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a serial optimist that is always hopeful and grateful. I couldn't imagine what negative block could be interfering with my healing.
Part of my issue with this conversation was that it made me feel even more broken. It wasn't just my physical body that was failing me but now there was something wrong with my thinking and spirit too? It felt like my doctor was telling me that my illness was my fault and that really didn't sit well with me. I was trying everything possible to heal so how could some aspect of me be blocking it?
Unfortunately in the illness world people say some stupid things and don't even truly understand the concepts they are talking about. After this discussion with my doctor, it took me a couple more years on the healing journey to truly understand what it all meant and how to apply it so that I could heal.
My doctor was of no help in this part of the journey aside from planting the seed. His only advice was to go to a two-week silent meditation retreat and although I searched for one, the waiting lists were too long so there were none available for at least six months and I wasn't physically able to travel across the world for the ones available sooner.
I thought I would share what I have learned in case it could help you or someone you love heal faster. This is just my personal interpretation of the lessons I learned along the way. I am not a doctor and only have my own experience and personal healing journey to share. Part of what constantly inspired me to push through the difficult days for five years was hoping what I learned would help someone else from suffering, so here it is.
An aspect of how the subconscious affects our health confused me a little because I was identifying them as conscious thoughts. Nobody had ever explained it all to me in a logical way and I still struggle to find resources on this topic but they are starting to appear more often.
Just about every symptom and disease has a "broken" subconscious belief associated with it unless it is a mutated gene like hemophilia. This means you can actually look up what is wired wrong in your subconscious in an effort to heal your disease. The subconscious correlations all tend to make logical sense when you think about them but once again, this can make you feel guilty for your own disease if you don't understand how the subconscious works. I have found some people also resonate with the subconscious connection but then have no idea what to do about it.
One of the most important things I learned about what was blocking my healing is that we basically have no control over the subconscious mind. Do you know how they say 90-95% of our thoughts are exactly the same day after day? Well, those are the subconscious thoughts, the ones we don't control. If I asked you to make a list of the same thoughts you have day after day you would probably be able to come up with a few but not the thousands that actually occur.
I like to think of the subconscious as similar to the operating system on our computer. It is always running in the background but we have no idea what it is doing or how. It is behind the scenes so we don't even notice it. If there is a broken script in the computer programming, we can't see it or identify it immediately but we know we have a virus because our computer isn't operating properly. Our subconscious and bodies work in a very similar fashion. If there is a broken script running in the subconscious it causes dis-ease in the body.
This helped me understand that whatever was blocking my healing was not my fault at all. Health conditions and illnesses come with enough guilt, the last thing you need is to feel guilty that you caused your own illness!
There is nothing broken in your mind or body. This is just how our past wounds and the emotions we suppress tend to manifest in the subconscious mind. Our society doesn't tend to support us actually having feelings. It is always go, go, go and rush to get back on track. A parent or loved one can die and we are expected to be back at work on Monday. We aren't given time to process and grieve the traumas that have happened to us, so we often have to suppress things in order to move forward and keep up with life.
I've honestly never met a truly healthy human who didn't have old traumas and wounds to heal. It just seems that some of us manifest them in the body more easily than others.
A way to understand how this happens is actually through yogic philosophy. The yogis believe that we don't just have one body, we have five! These energetic bodies are called koshas which translates to sheaths. Think about the five bodies as layers of an onion.
Our outer body is the physical body. It is literally made up of the food we eat and is constantly regenerating and healing.
Underneath that layer is the energetic body. This is controlled by our breathing and I think you can generally see this body more subtly. The way someone carries themselves can tell you a lot about how much energy they have. I'm sure you can visually tell the difference between someone who is energized or fatigued.
Underneath this layer is the emotional body. This one is harder to see but we can tell a lot from the microexpressions on someone's face!
Beneath this layer is the wisdom body where the intellect and intuition live. This is definitely one we can't see and some people haven't listened to their intuition in so long that they struggle to hear its whispers anymore.
Our final layer at the core of our being is the bliss body. Our true nature of bliss, love, and joy is who we all are at the core.
Each layer of the body can affect the other layers. If you are experiencing pain or illness then I think you are highly aware of how the physical body can alter your energy, your emotions, your intellect, and your bliss. They are all interconnected and the beautiful thing is that tapping into one can help heal the others. That means we don't necessarily have to address the physical body directly in order to heal.
When we suppress our emotions in the third layer of the body they become trapped. There is a great book called "Feelings Buried Alive Never Die" and the title has become a favorite saying of mine!
As we hide our feelings and try to keep moving forward in the world because of societal pressure, the emotions become trapped and start to fester into the energetic and physical body in different ways. They start to alter the subconscious programming and that is really where the disease begins, way before you have any physical symptoms.
Every trauma we have been through is stored in the subconscious and is held by who we were at the time of that experience. This is often referred to as our inner child. Trauma experienced in our younger years can keep us emotionally stunted on a subconscious level to the age at which it occurred.
Although we can't truly control the subconscious mind, we can access it through meditation, visualization, tapping, repetition, and hypnosis. This is great because there are a wide variety of techniques to address the subconscious so I feel like everyone can find something that will resonate with what they need to do for their own healing. Unfortunately you can't control or manipulate your subconscious to heal anymore than you can yell at your computer and have it start working properly.
During an aromatherapy training, I learned a technique called the forgiveness protocol that helped open up the emotional body and limbic system to heal. I expanded this practice for my own use from just essential oils to a meditative practice where I would relive the event I was working on forgiving by visualizing it and everything that happened.
When I would go through my weekly forgiviness practices, I would reflect back on old wounds in an effort to forgive myself and the other person. I would tap into the inner child and what she truly needed during that incident that she didn't get, and I would give it to her. For me this was most often words I wish I would have heard so it was quite easy to tap into what I needed to heal the inner child, which would ultimately heal the wound.
The forgiveness protocols changed my life in unexpected ways and taught me a lot about myself and my clients. I began to realize that the reason most of us struggle with self-care and putting ourselves as a priority has to do with worthiness and forgiveness.
The forgiveness protocol alone was not enough to heal me though. Although I felt cleaner and lighter in my headspace, my health actually continued to decline which caused a lot of frustration with the whole concept that the subconscious was blocking my healing.
Further down the road I realized the only thought that I was consciously aware of that was blocking my healing was that I wasn't sure if it was possible. Everything I had read about babesia was that it was incurable and at best you could get it into remission. The lyme, EDS, and POTS support groups felt like one big world of misery and suffering. It was nice to know other people were going through similar situations but it made healing feel hopeless at times.
I had moments where I was convinced I could figure it out and heal and I also had a little voice whispering "what makes you think you are so special that you can heal from this but others can't?". Ultimately I had my doubts and that was interfering with my healing.
I started to remind myself that we are always regenerating. One summer I mangled my toe quite badly bicycling in flip flops and having one break when I went over a bump sending my big toe straight down into the tar. Months later you couldn't see any trace of the trauma that occurred. I know my body is continually healing, it proves it all the time from a scraped knee to a big bruise. I was continually planting this little seed of hope into my meditations.
I started to dive deeper into learning about epigenetics. This taught me a lot about how much our environment impacts our genes. When they say "laughter is the best medicine", it is actually quite true. In one study scientists found that diabetics who spent an hour watching a comedy show instantly turned on positive gene expression of 23 genes that changed their blood sugar levels without an insulin injection, just through the process of moving into an elevated, joyous mood.
This information really inspired me to be more mindful about my environment. I would listen to even more uplifting or calming music, I stopped watching the news and any violent shows, and started watching even more documentaries about healing and energy.
I was learning more about the subconscious, energetics, and visualization from all the documentaries I was watching. I learned about how strongly visualization affects the subconscious and will help whatever you visualize become a reality if you fully believe it. I had learned about the Law of Attraction nearly a decade beforehand but had generally only used it in my career life and hadn't even thought of using it for healing. Although I had seen the proof it worked in my career, I was still a bit skeptical that it worked in all areas of life.
I started working on visualizing myself fully healthy in the future using all five senses. Every day in meditation I would visualize myself running somewhere along the beach. I would listen to the ocean waves crashing on the shore, hear the birds and the trees gently rustling and swaying, feel the gentle wind, the sweat glistening on my cheeks and shoulders, and feel the vibrant energy of being healthy coursing through my veins.
One day a couple of weeks into doing this I realized that my dad had figured this out on some level in his healing journey. His doctors gave him six months to live from brain cancer right after I turned 7 and yet at that point he promised to see me graduate from high school. I think that visualization for him was what helped him survive for fifteen years. I have a letter from one of his doctors that said he was still alive because he was stubborn and determined! After this realization came to me, it gave me all the clarity and determination I needed to know that I could beat the odds too. That is the moment I went from doubting I could heal to fully believing.
I had a lot more holistic wellness knowledge, meditation experience, and visualization tools than my dad ever did. If he could do it then I could do it. Once I made the decision that I was 100% certain I could heal, everything else seemed to quickly fall into place. This isn't to say what followed was an easy process as it required setting tough boundaries with loved ones and making major life changes, but it only took a couple of months to get on my feet and regain my health after five years of struggling to survive.
I learned so much on my journey to wellness. It has been about one year since I made that shift to truly believing I could heal. The lessons are still unfolding and I am diving even deeper into learning about energy and healing the past so that I can help my coaching clients on a whole new level.
Illness is a wake-up call. It is a sign that it is time to heal and that you can't suppress these wounds and feelings any longer. If you continue to ignore it then your life will be occupied by chasing a physical cure for a spiritual or emotional wound. You will most likely remain ill or perhaps you will find a helpful medication to put a bandaid over it temporarily until it manifests into an even bigger disease in the future.
You hold the keys to your own healing. It is time to stop turning to doctors to heal you and find the healer within.
If I opened your eyes to a different perspective on healing, please give this article a heart and share it with someone who it could help!
