Was it a supernatural healing?
I was recently having a conversation in my head with an unnamed stranger about “spontaneous” physical healing, those times when something resolves suddenly without the expected inputs required for said healing.
I’ve had a few of those experiences recently.
As an example, about seven months ago, I tweaked my back and could barely walk for a couple of days. I could see some of the mechanical causes - I hadn’t slept in two years so I was understandably weaker than usual and lacking stability in some key places - and I was really clear on the psycho-emotional aspects as we’d just arrived in Hawaii and the living situation was overwhelming. Recovery was mostly about moving slowly, doing some self-prescribed rehab exercises, some inner reckoning about the emotional components and, gradually, I recovered.
Only, it happened again, a few weeks later. I couldn’t roll over in bed without searing pain.
Shit.
The next day, I found myself watching everyone else play at one of my favorite beaches, feeling incredibly frustrated to be in this position. I decided to drop INTO the body and see what was there. I placed my hands over the part of my body where the issue seemed to be and moved into that meditative state that enables me to deeply track sensation, emotion and meaning. I could feel something happening, but I would mostly describe it as an awareness growing, not particularly a change. A bit later - five minutes? 15? 30? - my 10 year old bounded over to me and I surfaced to attend to whatever parenting need existed.
It was then, in the requirement to move, that I noticed the pain was gone. No “rehab” necessary. And it hasn’t come back.
As I was reflecting on this experience and several others, I found myself musing on the idea of supernatural phenomenon.
Was this spontaneous healing supernatural? Did something happen that “shouldn’t” have? What about my recent healing from insomnia? Since I don’t really understand why going to Hawaii helped resolve the sleep issues, is it a supernatural healing? What about the time I resolved chronic abdominal pain by placing one finger at the source and another to a corresponding thread at my throat and wept and wept and wept? Is that a form of supernatural healing?
As I mused over this, I realized that I actually consider all of these forms of healing to be entirely natural.
Just like bringing your hips back over your heels can immediately eliminate pain in the feet.
Just like a few rhomboid pushups can make those migraines go away.
Just like sitting less can improve pelvic floor function.
Just like walking more can improve digestion.
We don’t treat those sorts of healings as supernatural because we have been taught to believe that adjusting something at the physical level improves something in the physical body. It’s entirely natural for Input A to lead to Outcome B.
We do treat the kind of experience I just wrote about as supernatural because we have also been taught to believe that the ONLY way to improve something in the physical body is to clearly adjust something at the physical level. It seems entirely unnatural for Input X to also lead to Outcome B.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it might do for us if we could allow ourselves the belief that it is very, very natural to experience spontaneous healing. We’d have to allow that our bodies are deeply impacted by all of the other parts of the self; that there is mystery in any sort of healing; that there is much that is unseen; and that it’s not just how we use our physical bodies that matters, it’s how we inhabit them, too, that cultivates healing.
Sometimes, we need only to cry.
Sometimes, we need only to speak the truth in our journals.
Sometimes, we need only to notice what is actually happening inside ourselves.
Sometimes, we need only to cut an energetic chord.
Sometimes, we need only to visualize a light being placed in the body.
Sometimes, we need only to be witnessed.
Sometimes, we need only to ask or to pray.
Sometimes, we need only to watch the breath move.
Yes, sometimes, it is that. And nothing more.
What practices beyond the purely physical would we devote ourselves to if we knew that this was available? If we knew that not only can the purely physical (if that is even a real thing) be the slowest route, but that sometimes the only way forward involves something beyond the obviously physical?
Would we be willing to cultivate a fluency of ourselves? A fluency of the unseen? Would we become willing to learn the languages of our wholeness and of mystery?
I believe that all forms of healing are profoundly natural. Natural as in: to be expected. Natural as in: your birthright. Natural as in: just how things work.
If we want to have access to this mysterious aspect of life, we’d be wise to reframe our ideas about what fits into the “natural” box and what we consider to be “supernatural.” In my way of seeing, the less we view as supernatural, the more the supernatural becomes available to us as a matter of course.
I’m totally down with outside healers (I’ve been preaching here forEVAH about getting support!). AND! And, there are some of you who are ready to get acquainted with your own inner healers. You know you’ve got some intuitive magic to work on yourselves and are ready to start taking your own powerful medicines. Click that “contact me today” box if you are ready to begin or deepen that journey and let me know what you see as your greatest need right now on that front. xoxo