Sudeva's Healing Arts

The Essence of Healing

What is it to be a healer? Whether we are looking for a healer or working in this field, discovering the answer to this question is part of the journey of healing. Whatever form of healing we are drawn to, some things remain essential. What creates healing? In my experience, the first thing is the rapport between myself and the other person. It is the feeling that we understand each other, that we are in tune with each other. In fact, researchers have found that for counsellors and psychologists the single most important factor in bringing about healing is the relationship between client and practitioner. Just because this is so obvious, it is something we may easily overlook. When the person who is giving you a massage is only touching your skin and not feeling and finding a way into the depths of you, you soon become aware of it. When the counsellor is repeating a formula learned like a parrot, practicing ‘empathy’ rather than living it, you soon want to run away instead of opening up to him or to her. When the doctor is more occupied looking at the computer screen than looking at you, you wonder whether your situation is truly being understood. Out of such disconnections errors easily arise. Connection, rapport, and empathy: the ability to be in touch. Having realised the importance of this, the next question is how does the one in the role of the healer remain truly connected day in and day out? Time pressures, our own varying moods and those of our patients and a multitude of other things are there to distract us. As soon as we see ourselves or those we serve as a problem to be fixed rather than a being to be met and explored, we feel separate. This sense of separation keeps us away from that experience of wholeness in which healing can happen. Holistic healing is a beautiful concept. We all know that sense of oneness with the universe that can spontaneously appear on looking at a beautiful flower or going for a walk in the wild. In that experience, in that sense of wholeness, healing happens. Mostly we lose touch with ourselves as healers when we give in to the idea that something needs to be fixed rather than healed in partnership with life: harmonising and renewing what had become tired and out of joint. This may be more obvious when one is working with herbs or massage but it applies equally to the doctor choosing a drug to prescribe and to the surgeon in the operating theatre.

Healing cannot be aggressive, or it fails in its purpose. The challenge is to help the other to remain vulnerable and open. There is no need to defend oneself. It is easy to understand this in the context of counselling and other talking therapies. When the client feels that the therapist is digging for an answer there is at least a subtle sense of being under attack and a corresponding need to back away and to close off. This is why we may clearly understand someone’s problem and still be unable to offer anything truly useful. Simply explaining to the other person what is going on very rarely works on its own. When our experience is of being told what the matter is or of being fixed, the natural response is to move into a defensive posture. And we really do not like feeling pushed. What is to be done? The simple answer is to be authentically loving. If that were obvious to us all the time, we would not need much more. The arrow of healing must go in as well as out, like Cupid’s arrow. One cannot heal another unless one is ready to heal oneself. The bodyworker needs to feel balanced, to feel his or her feet on the ground, before approaching the client. In energy work, I can feel the electrical currents that run through the client also running through my own nervous system. In counselling, it is obvious that I cannot bring understanding to an issue that I am not willing to face in myself. The true healer needs to become less interested in probing and enquiring and more interested in exploring from a space of receptivity and love. Developing the ability to be open to the other, to allow what is needed to happen rather than trying to force it along, is of the essence. There is a beautiful story I have heard of the great Sufi mystic Farid. A king came to see him and to ask his blessings. He brought to Farid’s tent a present, a beautiful pair of golden scissors. Farid took the scissors and looked at them for a while. He thanked the king and gave them back. Farid said, “These I cannot use, a needle would have been better.” The king did not understand. He thought surely if you can use a needle, you will need scissors too. Farid told him that a needle puts things together while scissors cut things apart. He explained that he was working with love, bringing people together and teaching them to be in harmony. This is an exquisite metaphor for even when the surgeon has to pick up the knife he can do it with the attitude of bringing things into harmony. Farid’s work was to bring his disciples to awakening, the deepest kind of healing.

One can simply be with another person, not holding onto knowing all the answers but taking a big risk, the risk of allowing oneself not to know. Then they can open up and find the answer they are looking for within themselves. Even when one is able to see what the issue is, this becomes an asset only when it is not insisted upon. Paradoxically, the answer lies in non-doing. Listening to one’s inner voice is only possible when one is not busy figuring out what to do and it is only when one surrenders to that deep knowing that one can be of real help. How many times have I been busily trying to understand someone’s problem, getting in my own way and in theirs? Sit back and relax and the answer may come by itself.
Is it really difficult to work with another in this way? Actually, it is the only way. One key is staying present to oneself. In any relationship one is lost when the focus is on the other rather than on oneself. Keep coming back into your own body and feeling inside yourself, feeling whatever it is you find within. It may feel like emptiness or fullness, or something else entirely. What a relaxation it is when one realises that one does not have to have all the answers. One can let go and allow existence to do its part. It is a little scary. Often one is just too busy wanting to get it right. Naturally, one does need to know the techniques and to learn the skills of one’s profession. The herbalist needs to know what plant is good for what before trusting his or her intuition to decide what is best in this particular case. This little exercise can be very helpful before a session, whether you are the client or the practitioner. Take a moment to stand upright and inhale a few deep breaths. Then bend forwards with your hands on your knees and exhale until there is no more air you can squeeze out of your lungs. Stand up again and stay relaxed until you really need to breathe. The breath will come in on its own and totally fill you. This is a great way to empty oneself before a session and then to become charged with energy. You can repeat it three times.

Healing is an aspect of love and love flows only when one is not getting in the way of it. As soon as there is an effort to love, love disappears and misery soon jumps into its place. We have all experienced this, even as children. “Come on, don’t you love mummy. Tell her you love her.” Oops! Not right now, maybe later. If the child is allowed to say that she or he does not feel loving in this moment, allowed to tell the truth, soon love does return. In telling the truth, we feel whole again. Health comes through wholeness. It is synonymous with wholeness and the two words come from the same root. Holistic healing is bringing the human being to a state of wholeness. This wholeness is always present but we often lose touch with it. It is not always experienced as physical wellbeing. We are all going to die and one day the body will be beyond healing. True wellbeing is always available and it is what it says it is: recognising the essential wellness of one’s being.

Sudeva Hawkes works with Counselling from the Heart and Tibetan Pulsing Healing in Fremantle, Western Australia. His interest in healing and in being has been supported and inspired by the Indian mystic Osho, Isaac Shapiro, Rahasya, Gangaji and many beautiful others.

Some Resources: www.songoflife.com.au(Sudeva’s website) www.Gangaji.org (Gangaji’s website) www.LivingUnity.com (for trainings in the healing arts) www.Osho.com (one of many websites offering the wisdom of the Indian mystic Osho) www.IsaacShapiro.de(Isaac Shapiro’s website)