Below is an excerpt from my new book, Overcoming A Mysterious Condition. In this chapter, I discuss avoidance in healing.
There are many ways that we are avoiding healing. We can chase pretty rainbows all day long, but if it is keeping us from going deep inside, why are we doing it? That’s a question we need to ask ourselves constantly. We need to be brutally honest with ourselves.
There is no room for us to be complacent in our healing. We can’t avoid things and expect to heal. Yes, at times the journey gets long and difficult, but it is then that we must learn how to reach out. Sometimes we need a rest, but in those moments, we have to be honest with ourselves and truly see the big picture. Otherwise, there’s a good chance we are avoiding everything we need to be doing.
Avoidance In Healing Is Not Helpful
Avoidance is something that does not allow us to become aware and conscious of what is going on in the body. It keeps us from connecting with the innermost healing parts of life. If you’re walking through the jungle and you know a tiger is hunting you down, but all you want to do is gaze at the beautiful sky, there’s a good chance the result will not be what you want. The same goes for avoidance.
Healing is not easy. I won’t claim that it is. It is a process that sometimes makes you want to give up in frustration and anger and despair. Sometimes healing is exhausting and difficult work. Avoiding it and acting as if it does not exist is not going to help you heal. It will prolong it. The longer you avoid it, the more it will impact your body in physical ways.
We may think we’re getting away with avoidance of our healing, but in the long run, the body will do whatever it needs to so that it gets our attention. If we continue to avoid and ignore, numb, and disconnect, it will bite us harder in the hope of getting us to wake up.
Here are some things you can do to help yourself stop avoiding, and to connect consciously with your body and life around you:
Stopping Avoidance In Healing
- Spend some time outdoors listening to the birds and feeling the rays of sunshine on your face. Feel the wind or breeze on your skin.
- Spend time playing with animals, where you can see the joy in them and connect deeply with something that is life-giving, not life-draining.
- Focus on your breathing for 30-seconds or a minute, in various times during your day. Observe your breath. How shallow or deep is it? How fast or slow does it go? Can you notice your breath or do you find you are almost holding your breath? If you spend 30 seconds observing your breath, you will see quickly how much it can change.
- Take ten deep breaths in through your nose and on the last breath, hold it in your chest for as long as you can. When you can hold it no longer, allow your body to deflate like a balloon. You might even notice a slight vibration in your body when you do this, which is normal. It is stress releasing from your autonomic nervous system.
- Take time to be in the moment with your body and mind, shut off from the outside world. Leave the phone in another room and lie there silently observing what you feel in your body. What do you sense? What do you feel? Be the observer and notice all that is taking place.
The more you can take moments out of your day and stop to connect and feel, the less you will avoid. Yes, you can do mantras and positive affirmations, but connecting deep within the body is the key to long-term peace and joy in your life. It is how we unlearn the practice of avoiding healing.
Avoidance In Healing Vs. Feeling
The more we feel and heal, the less we are avoiding and numbing. If we have spent a lifetime avoiding healing, we will not change this overnight. It will take time. Even once you begin to feel, and stop avoiding your healing, there will be times that will take you into survival mode. For most of our lives, it has become the default go-to-place for how we react to life.
Avoidance tricks us into thinking we’re getting somewhere, but if we’re not careful, it will drive us over the edge of the cliff. We need to start noticing how much we are avoiding, because that is the only way we’ll understand that we should not rest where we are, but keep walking forward on our path.
Resources – Avoidance In Healing
Check out some of the mind body guided meditations that I have recorded to help you feel, rather than continue more avoidance in healing.
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