When You Know You Are Done Healing
Photography by Maria Siriano
There is much discussion about healing and being healed in the “wellness” space. Many yogis and health practitioners often grapple with their own healing while offering healing practices to others. Some may wonder if they are fit to even teach healing modalities if they are not fully healed themselves. Are we ever fully healed? Are we constantly healing? I have asked myself these same questions and it feels exhausting. It feels unattainable. I will forever be on this path searching to be healed by myself or my teachers because there will never be an end to healing. Of course, this framework is tiring! I grow weary even thinking about continually having to heal again and again as I live this messy yet beautiful life encountering all of its challenges.
What would it be like to change our perspective or definition on healing? Would we be able to feel more at ease if we looked at healing ourselves differently? I am playing with the construct of “I routinely need support from myself and community as I grow through life” rather than “I need to constantly heal myself.” That slight change in nuance somehow feels better in my body. It doesn’t feel like a race I have to win or an accolade I have to be given. It feels more like preparing for a walk, knowing I might trip and need some help, but I will recover and continue walking eventually.
And with all this said, do you know how healing it is to witness someone actively healing? The wisdom that has helped me move towards a place of well-being has been collected from those who have been on the path before, or those who are learning things for themselves, too. It has not been learned from those claiming to be fully healed, or fully “over their own suffering,” because we know that it’s impossible to avoid all pain in this life. However, it’s not impossible to smooth out the way we process suffering in our bodies. I believe that not only can we do this for ourselves, but we must do this together.
I will admit that there is an immense amount of pressure to feel as if you have to heal all on your own, or that you have to source all of your happiness inward instead of getting it from someplace else. It is really important to practice connecting to our own hearts and finding our own kind of peace within. It is also really important to practice being in communities that feel safe for you to know that you have support outside of yourself. It is acceptable to want to hear someone else tell you that everything will be okay. It is acceptable to want someone else to affirm your feelings and hold your hand as you walk forward reluctantly. These are all ways back to the heart. These are all ways we routinely require support or “help with healing.”
This new construct is only scratching the surface of what it might look like in a world that could even recognize or allow this. Our world is ridden with layered trauma after trauma, and we are being bombarded with that information at all angles at all times. For me it feels like I cannot even catch up to the possibility that a community could truly routinely support itself. Yet, I do see it. I witness this type of support in my yoga classrooms, in my friendship circles, in my family room, in the wilderness with my dog, in my Reiki shares, and sometimes in a random hostel far away from home. Hope does dwell in my heart for this kind of healing. Not healing in the sense of unachievable kumbaya type of harmony, but healing in the sense of showing up messy, injured, tired, hurt, over and over and still being welcome. May we always feel welcome to receive support because that certainly feels like something I want in my life forever.
