This is a true story about a conversation between a young boy and his mother. The boy and his family had been downtown for dinner at a restaurant with some relatives. As they sat down in the car to head back home in the evening, the boy seemed anxious and eager to get going as quickly as possible. The mother asked him why he felt anxious, whereupon the boy answered with surprising clarity and self-awareness: “I want to get home as quickly as possible, because if we get home late, I will fall asleep late, and then I will be tired the next day, and then I will oversleep on Monday morning, and then…”
When the healer was healed at his own retreat…
Physician Gabor Maté needed to be healed by the Shamans before he could participate at his own retreat. The Shamans also taught him about the importance of taking care of his own well-being and healing his own traumas in order to truly help his clients. Any deep healing, he realized, must address our whole being, i.e. not only our physical body, but our emotional, spiritual, and energetic dimensions too.
Be a wise gardener of your mind
Your mind can be likened to a garden where you plant seeds of beliefs and associated thought patterns. These seeds of beliefs eventually grow into flowers of emotional and physical experiences. Hence, it follows, that some thoughts are like ‘weeds’ that grow into painful emotional and physical experiences, while other seeds of beliefs are like the seeds of beautiful flowers, which eventually become expressions of compassion, peace, joy, beauty, and freedom.
Stress-related physical pain
For the last eight years, I have been deeply interested in the causes and symptoms of stress, particularly physical pain. Stress-induced pain can be experienced in almost any part of the body. Some persons get headaches and migraines, while others get aching arms and legs. Still others experience pain in the neck, shoulder and back, while many have recurring pain in the stomache.