Why would one ever want to thank an illness? After all, illness is often distracting, discouraging, depressing, even painful. What good is there in that?
Most people feel this way – I certainly have over the years – and they do anything they can to relieve their symptoms. Yet, most approaches to alleviating health issues are just “band-aid” cures that relieve symptoms but don’t usually heal the underlying cause. True healing treats the source of an illness so the symptoms don’t reappear or dive deeper to create other problems. At the East West School of Planetary Herbology, we teach energetics of herbs and diseases just for this reason: so you can treat the root of an illness.
But what if the root cause to your health problem is not physical? What do you do then?
In over 30 years of my clinical practice, I have found that the source of many health issues is not physical, but actually emotional, mental or spiritual. My own health issues have proven this over and over as well. To that end, I have studied many methods of healing for over 40 years and in that time and through those studies have learned one major lesson: to heal a chronic health issue, it’s necessary to seek its true source and embrace rather than banish it.
Most of us try to sweep stuff under the rug, take an easy pill or find quick cures so we can get on with our lives. But true long-lasting healing means going into an issue, not around it. And yet – and this is a big YET – embracing and going through a root cause does not mean re-living past traumas and wounds. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to heal an emotional issue on the emotional level or a mental issue on the mental level. Rather, to heal our core issues it’s necessary to take them to another level entirely. And what level is that? The level of the universal story.
So what’s a universal story? It’s a metaphor, myth, archetype, or image that contacts forces common to everyone regardless of gender, culture, race, religion, politics or nation. They are original models, pure essences of energy, elemental ideas and universal principles from which others are copied.
Metaphors, myths, archetypes, and images are grander themes that influence us all. They are found everywhere – in songs, art, poetry, literature, fairy tales, folk tales and dreams. They tell a bigger story of enduring truths and timeless teachings. We relate to their various characters and situations as life themes common to us all. As well, they reflect our potential depth, for when we contemplate them we evoke their powers. In short, they are the universal stories by which we live our lives, just like the hero’s and heroine’s journeys.
To use a universal story for healing a health issue, first determine any recurring patterns behind your condition and then choose the universal story that best fits this pattern. Next, process it through ceremony and ritual. For example, drum, dance or dialogue with your universal story; set up an altar; create some form of art with it such as a poem, painting, or song; do a ceremony with fire, water, earth or air; take a power walk or night walk; or perform severing, burning, tearing, or burying with it.
This is how you can learn why you’ve had chronic irritable bowels, recurring sinus infections or “incurable” depression. This is where you learn the teachings and lessons of your asthma or hepatitis; even more, you open yourself to receive the gifts of your illness. You’ve had this illness for some reason, and if changing your diet and lifestyle and taking the proper herbs don’t fully heal it, there’s a deeper emotional, mental or spiritual cause to clear. This is the key process used to dig out that root so it doesn’t return.
To receive the teachings, lessons, messages and gifts from a chronic illness that’s long caused you pain and difficulty is an amazing experience, one that actually changes your life by creating subtle to major shifts. This is where gratitude plays a starring role. To swing your perspective from “go away” to “teach me your message and gift” creates all the difference in how you approach and heal illness. The latter method is what leads to lasting healing, full resolution and ultimately, major life growth.
I’ve certainly undergone this process myself repeatedly. For the last 40 years I have personally experienced the power of this healing approach and helped others to do so, too. To that end, I finally wrote a book teaching the simple steps to shifting your illness from a recurring problem to a healing ally. Called Metaphor-phosis: Transform Your Stories from Pain to Power, it includes not only a complete toolbox to make your invisible stuff visible so you can transform your life, but also my 40-year story of how I healed my own health issues through this process.
If you want to learn the full method for healing the emotional, mental or spiritual root causes of chronic issues, Metaphor-phosis is just now being printed and we are taking early orders. Go to my book’s page in our store to receive discounts on early orders as my gift of thanks to you!
May you learn how to thank your illness so you can fully heal and move further into your full potential and authentic self!
Find out more about this amazing healing process at Lesley’s Metaphor-phosis website, including great tips found on her blog and upcoming classes.
And don’t forget to ‘like’ Metaphor-phosis on Facebook!