What Can You Do to Speed Up Healing?

retreat, self healing, natural healing, stress

If you are really ill or in pain, you want to get out of it just as fast as you can. You might find yourself inclined to do just about anything to get quick relief. As you probably know, relief from discomfort or pain is not necessarily the same as healing. You can be experiencing temporary relief, but still need healing.

You can’t rush healing. In fact, attempting to rush the healing can actually slow the process down and cause your symptoms to increase because rushing comes with some degree of tension and stress. When your body is tense, your healing progress is delayed. Bodies heal when they are relaxed.

You experience this when you are not feeling well and go to bed. You sleep and rest so that all of your internal resources are able to focus on healing. When the mind and body are not expending energy to function, your cells can be fully engaged in repair work.

As I share in my book, ”The Root of All Healing,” One of the great ironies of healing is that in order to accelerate your healing you have to slow down. Here is what happens when you slow down. You get in touch with the natural rhythms of Mother Earth. When your body is out of sync it enters into a state of stress that can literally cause suffering known as a Circadian Rhythm Disorder.

In this condition hormones and neurotransmitters are not functioning properly, affecting sleep patterns, appetite, sex drive, body temperature and blood pressure. I talk about this in much greater detail in another article about natural rhythms and healing.

By reconnecting with the rhythms of the earth, you guide your body into a natural and harmonious state. When you are in sync again, healing occurs more easily.

Recognizing the patterns

When you slow down you also become more aware of your thoughts, particularly the ones you attempt to ignore throughout the day. As you pay attention to your thoughts, you can begin to notice how many of them are critical and negative.

This negativity limits your ability to heal yourself. Criticism, resentment, anger and blame keep us locked in a cycle of tension and abuse. I haven’t met anyone yet that was able to heal while negative feelings prevailed in the background.

Because you have actually slowed down enough to recognize the negative thought patterns and their companion feelings, now you can do something about them. This is where you can discover the healing power of compassion.

Compassion is the great healer. When you love yourself as you are, without conditions and judgment, emotional pain dissipates, and answers to physical challenges come more quickly to you. Your self-love attracts self-loving solutions.

But you can’t rush compassion any more than you can rush healing. The heart needs to be gently encouraged to open, with the understanding that your heart can hold compassion for all of your feelings—the feelings that may have caused your illness and the feelings you have about your illness. In the end, the heart is the ultimate healer.

You can’t make yourself hurry up and heal. You can’t will it to happen. You can’t force it to happen. Healing doesn’t happen with pressure.

Think of it as though you were courting someone. You can’t will yourself to love someone and you can’t rush someone into loving you. Love must be slowly nurtured. You’ve got to ride with them through the difficult moments and the fun ones. But when love fills you, the power of love is immeasurable.

This is how it is with healing. You need to slowly nurture it. Relax, rest and lovingly invite healing into your body. Love yourself so well that your healing energy begins to flow and your intuitive wisdom leads you to exactly what you need for your complete healing.