The Healing Power of Presence
Consciousness as the Ultimate Medicine
It's good to learn specific techniques, but sometimes the simplest things are the most powerful. The healing power of presence may be the most deeply transformative practice you can provide as a healer and a self-healer.
A book I really like, At the Speed of Life: A New Approach to Personal Change Through Body-Centered Therapy, by Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks, promotes "presencing": being deeply, mindfully, non-judgmentally present with yourself or another -- as THE fundamental healing technique.
This passage about the transformative, healing power of presence really struck me:
Problems persist to the extent that we fail to be present with them and with the feelings associated with them. When we can simply be with an issue (rather than judging it or trying to change it), the issue has room to transform in the desired direction."
And this:
Being present has a great deal of power in it: the power to alter irrevocably the structures and assumptions by which we live."
In my practice, I find that that is often true, even in working with people's physical bodies. Long-standing pain can just melt away when a client and I together shine our attention on it. It's certainly true of the energy field as well.
Being with WHAT IS: it can take courage. It isn't easy to move toward pain, fear, anger, sadness, or other feelings that we've spent years or a lifetime moving away from.
But both our energetic and physical bodies have an innate genius for balancing themselves -- maintaining homeostasis through intricate, constant acts of self-regulation. And when we bring consciousness/awareness to parts of ourselves that are out of balance, and for whatever reason are resisting coming back into balance, that deep, listening awareness can help remove the resistance and ALLOW our natural balancing/healing power to reassert itself.
Here's another way of saying it: It's as if we have become cut off from our painful or sick parts, pulled our essence out of them. Directing the healing power of presence to the places in our bodies or energy fields that we have abandoned reconnects us to those ailing, hurting parts. And that reconnection allows our healing genius back in.
Of course I'm not advocating that you try to heal pneumonia or a broken bone with consciousness/presence alone. But here's an interesting thought to try on: What if the main healing ability of our medical doctors lies not in their scalpels and their drugs, but in their being present with us? In our being present to ourselves?
Do this for as long as you like, noticing what you notice. Come back gently to ordinary time, giving yourself a few moments to transition. Know that consciousness is always healing, always evolutionary, and that this simple meditation has brought you into a greater state of balance and harmony. Self-Healing Presence Meditation
I invite and encourage you to take a few minutes to be compassionately present to any place in your body or your life that is ailing or in pain. No thoughts, no judgment, no effort, no direction, no agenda. Just bring your awareness to a place in your body or life that you would like to be more in balance. Just be aware, open, listening. Breathe into it. Breathe into it. Breathe into it. Don't be attached to performance or to outcome. However you do it is just right, and whatever happens or doesn't happen is just right.
Always, to the best of your ability, take this deep, mindful witnessing into your healing sessions with others, knowing that it is the greatest gift you have to offer.
May the healing power of presence enrich your life. Namaste.
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