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You, Too, Can Heal a Minor Owie
Two days ago I fell up the stairs. That isn't a typo. I tripped while climbing wooden stairs inside my house. Spilling earl gray tea with silk creamer over at least eight steps, I did save my favorite extra large SF Starbucks mug! The pain as I landed hard on my right knee was breathtakingly intense. So much so that while gripping my knee my bellowing must have sounded something like a very loud and angry drunken sailor. Alone in my house, I figured it would help me not feel the pain so much (which is true - try it sometime).
After I stopped moaning, I looked at my knee and was not surprised to see a ¼ inch welt materializing and a purple and red abrasion where the skin was almost, but not quite, broken open. Throbbing and hobbling, I made my way to the medicine cabinet to apply arnica gel. Glad nothing was broken I was not looking forward to a huge bruise and days ahead of soreness - or worse.
The day before I had just been reminded by my teacher, Lansing Gresham, that healing from an injury takes longer when there is a an emotional component. This is not just a notion held by Integrated Awareness®
(IA®) teachers, but is well known in the world of healing trauma (see Peter Levine's work). If injury occurs while we are generally contented, or really enjoying our selves, the tissue goes about a normal repair. When a negative emotion is attached, such as, a fight with a loved one right before (or at the moment) of an accident the healing time tends to take a lot longer (or doesn't fullly heal). This is because we need to heal the emotional grievance as well. But most of the time we are unaware there is an emotional component so the healing just seems to take a long time.
It did occur to me that there isn't a whole lot of difference between thinking, "what a clumsy jerk I am," and discord with a spouse. At least not to the nervous system. Reminding myself that I am a healer, I plunked down on the nearest surface, the floor at the top of the stairs, and immediately put my hands on my knee with an intention to self heal.
Here is where I diverged from my IA® training and offer to you a possible solution to your own oops and owies. Since recently listening to some tapes about the law of attraction, I knew that the goal was to change my feeling state to a more improved one, hurt and aggravated to at least disappointed or better yet, hopeful. More improved would be contentment or optimism.
Being one who likes to go for the gold ring, I decided to reach for the most improved emotion; love or appreciation or joy. I decided to open my heart to my knee and the pain with no intention at all but to experience the sensation that I consider to be love. I let myself expand my heart area and imagined this love sensation going to my knee. For me, there is a palpable sensation but you could do the same through imagination; love as a color, image, sound, taste or texture. Neurologically it is all the same. It did cross my mind, for one brief moment, that to imagine loving my pounding knee was silly. No sillier than bellowing like a banshee, I decided so I forged on ahead. I loved my knee, my life, my ability to be there with my pain in a new way,and the world at large. I let my heart expand so that I was more aware of the heart sensations than the knee.
After maybe 3 minutes, the pain eased and I went back to cleaning up the spilled tea. A short while later I repeated the process of sending love to my knee for just a few minutes.
I thought for sure I would be limping for a few days. That night I went Cajun dancing with no ill effects save my own or the leader's skills. The next morning, I could feel a slight soreness. When I looked I was stunned to see that there was no swelling, no black and blue, no redness, no abrasion. I know arnica helps but save for the faintest pink spot there was no marking on my skin at all. 24 hours later, I had to press hard to feel that something had ever happened.
I'm sharing this story to remind you that real healing happens when we think, image or "send" love to someone else or a body part. You don't have to know why or how. Honestly, you don't have to believe it works as long as the love is genuinely intended. I am reminding you to send yourself love more often, whether the hurt is physical or emotional.
I do hope you'll learn from my mistake and not feel the need to "test" this theory just to see if it is so. Just try it out next time you bang your hand instead of a nail or feel sad or confused or anxious.
Maybe love really is all there is.
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