What is Healing? Back in 2018/19, when we were living relatively ‘care free’ within the social norms accepted as given, before pandemic-mania began…I was giving monthly talks with the over-all title of ‘Natural Health & Wholeness’ and then a changing sub-title such as; natural skin care; the benefits of essential oils; creativity for health, and so on - at Jersey Library. The most well attended was titled ‘What Is Healing?’ – and it went something like this…by Juanita Shield-Laignel MFHT First of all I asked those present to raise their hand if they were a ‘healer’. One lady stuck her hand straight in the air and another tentatively half put her hand up. I then asked if there was anyone in the audience who thought they were a healer but weren’t sure or anyone who knew they were but, with no judgment in the room, had been too embarrassed to admit as much, or if there was anyone who would like to be a healer, but just didn’t know where to start.
A few more raised their hands – so
in a room of near-on two dozen, maybe a third had owned a personal interest in what they consider to be healing. I then went on to ask, “But what do I mean by the term ‘healing’?” Well I don’t mean the fabled laying on of hands, biblebelt, halleluiah brothers ‘I was blind and now I see’ or ‘I was in a wheelchair and now I can walk’, type of healing which is often what people think of when the word is mentioned. I am also not saying that this is not a thing, for those who indulge in such practices it is very real and I am not here to either corroborate nor decry those individual experiences. I am however, talking about something much more subtle, much more every day, much more innate.
the surgeon may come in and examine the wound he so painstakingly stitched in theatre and sucking his teeth might say “Hmmm….that’s healing nicely, keep up the good work.” Now he doesn’t mean he touched it and
Let’s start by examining the English word according to
bam it’s miraculously better and off you can go, he
the Oxford dictionary:
means, as the dictionary states, the wound is in the
Healing (noun) ‘the process of becoming or making
‘process’ of getting better, of becoming healthy again.
someone or something healthy again; the process of
Although one might argue the very nature of how our
getting better…’
bodies can knit tissue together again, of how our blood
So let’s think about that for a minute. If you visit a loved one in hospital, or indeed are the patient yourself, and let’s say you have a laceration of some kind to your leg,
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will coagulate to minimise bleeding at a wound site, is in its very nature, miraculous! Another analogy we could use is when a loved one dies,
