On the Healing Experience

I’ve partnered with Karen for over 4 years now. She first approached me in April  2011 and wanted me to help her become more at peace with herself. At the time she also disclosed that she had an inoperable brain tumour resulting in epilepsy (Grand Mal) with severe vomiting type migraine headaches and seemed to stress easily due to the trauma she had experienced as a young child. 

Karen responded well to the mindfulness coaching approach. The reflective practice before and after a coaching session, along with supportive emails between sessions, provided her with the kind of support she needed to feel safe and open to herself and to me, as her life coach. 

Over the years, we began to supplement coaching sessions with distance healing sessions over skype – I am a Therapeutic Touch practitioner and teacher. Karen, herself a former nurse, requested healing sessions only in times of great need. Her primary focus was to develop lifestyle management best practices to help her achieve her goals. Of a total of 127 sessions offered over the 4 years of our professional relationship only 14 or 11% were distance healing sessions. 

The interview questions below were sent to Karen in advance of an interview I conducted with her using skype, to flesh out and unpack the answers to the questions she had provided, in advance. 

I want to acknowledge Karen for her emotional strength, her intellectual curiosity and rigor and her generosity of spirit to face herself, explore and discover what’s there and have the courage to share it. I believe this interview between healer and healee can be healing for the reader. I want to thank you, in advance, for your openness and your own desire to learn, to heal and to grow. I would be delighted to receive your thoughts and reflections after reading this interview. 
 

A Healer interviews her Healee

 

Julia: What, in your case, prompts a request for a healing session? What kind of issues?

 

​Karen: There are 2 reasons why I seek a healing session. For severe headaches (migraines with complications) either building up to going out of control or headaches which are now full blown with nausea, extreme pain, and distorted vision and knowing I am out of alignment after a really bad shock or traumatic event, where I’m unable to ground or steady myself and feel a growing sense of panic.
 

Julia: Thanks Karen. Can you tell me what’s different in you (what changes) once you have a healing session confirmed before it starts?

 

​Karen:  The knowledge that a healing session is coming up starts to steady me a little if I’m requesting the session for when I feel out of alignment or ungrounded.

If for a headache which is building and threatening to go out of control, a feeling of relief that help is at hand emerges. If the headache is out of control, non stop nausea and agonising pain I am grateful, but the wait for it to start takes all my control to just hang in there.
 

Julia: How do you prepare for a healing session, Karen? Is there any action you take on a regular basis?

 

Karen: In preparation for a healing session, I try to calm myself and work on my breathing. Most importantly I try and stay in the present moment​ not going into the future and wonder if it will be much longer, or wondering “what if it doesn’t work this time and I stay like this (in pain, throwing up “forever” or for much longer’) etc. There already is a “Please do not disturb” notice on my front door.

For the healing session itself, I make sure I have handy a glass of water and a box of tissues; a pillow, rug, throw, blanket; a basin in case nauseous and ​lip ice (my lips can become very dry when with a headache). I make sure I’m disconnected from Facebook, have the phone tunred off and in answer mode (when I remember) and adjust the lighting in my computer to minimize screen glare. This, I’ve discovered, is imperative for me when with a headache in a healing session with you.
 

Julia: So, Karen, what do you notice happening in a healing session?

 

​Karen: Something which I used to describe as magical and now concede is mysterious. I meet with you through skype with the cameras on which helps me feel instantly better connected to you, and also comforted/settled by the visual connection, before the unmistakable feeling of actual connection happens.
 

During the next hour or however long the session may last I experience exponentially a greater and greater feeling of peace, alignment, well-being, and flow taking place within me.

I have found the best thing for me to do is to open to you, ‘let you in’ and then I follow what and where you guide me, and the magic (for want of a better word) noticeably starts to happen after a short while of being in this feeling of deep relaxation leading to a sense of peace and well-being and something which by now I know is ‘blissful flow’.
 

Julia: That’s a wonderful description, Karen. Thank you. How do you connect with me as healer – how do you sense the conditions for healing to be established? 

 

​Karen: In the very beginning of my healing sessions with you, I experienced a great deal of resistance – my mind was very active with an overwhelming sense of curiosity. I wanted to learn what was happening. I wanted to be sure that what was happening was going to be OK – that I wouldn’t feel unsafe in where we were going and what was happening.

A huge part of what happens, I discovered, is a sense of opening – a trust in you, as healer and trust in the healing process. That is what allows me to open up, which allows me not to have to engage my mind and lets me give myself over to you – to trust you. As I open, my mind quiets.

The feeling of not being alone in a severe headache, feeling frightened, is, for me, an amazing door opening into the next step. ​If I didn’t trust the healer or the healing process, my mind would be continually active, unsure, doubting, curious, wanting to control, not trusting.

If I’m able to open (sometimes severe pain seems to close me off tight), but if I’m able to, I try to give myself to you right at the beginning. Open to you. Allow you in….. In case I can’t open because I’m in too much pain, some healing may still be possible. The real deep healing for me requires mental quieting and trust.

It’s when you, the healer, are peaceful…it is your calmness and peacefulness that makes me want to be like you….the calmness you are, makes me want to match the feeling you’re projecting to me…and then I am able to open, to allow the healing connection to happen.
 

Julia: So, my inner calm and quietness, inspires and awakens your desire for it – you recognize what you want in me and desire to make it your own – what a great insight. Thank you, Karen. What have you noticed happens first, second, third?

 

​Karen: ​If I am able to quieten myself, cease thinking, just open and wait, it is then ‘that something truly wonderful’ happens. At first I thought it was my imagination, but after many, many, many healing sessions I absolutely know it is not. It is the awareness of the connection which takes place.

​However first, I think a feeling of gratitude that the session is starting, and with that feeling I think the second feeling is of some more relief creeping in. I notice how totally present you are and how calm you are, and this makes me wish to match it. Thirdly, it is at this moment I am usually aware of how you seem to be tuning in to me.​ I believe it’s the knowledge that I am no longer alone in trying to help myself and to no avail, that I now have someone who I can for a while share the load with as we work together … not that I feel I do any ‘work’ other than keep myself open, receiving and following. (And what a pleasure that is when connection has happened)!

In deep healing for me two things happen. Deep healing for me is opening to the deeply vulnerable place within us and just allowing you, as healer and healing to help. To start with, this is very difficult, but as you get to truly relax and feel total trust in the healer, it becomes possible. For this I am deeply grateful Julia. There is truly exquisite relief in this healing.
 

Julia: How do you respond/what have you learned about yourself in and through the healing experience?

 

​Karen: I’m only aware of the depth of healing at the end of the session. The most important way I respond is to become aware of you and to simply ‘give myself to you’, and follow your lead. I notice my inner attitude and self-messaging changing from

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t cope. I don’t know if I can go on. I don’t even know if I want to. I’d like to cut my f*@#ing, bloody throat. I don’t even know if I believe this is going to help.”

To a state of wonder and total openness with self-messaging that goes like:

“I can do this. I feel strong enough to do this and I believe that I can.”

At the end of the session, I feel very much better, more relaxed and peaceful.

In that feeling of peacefulness is healing in which a gentle, quiet strength emerges. Not only do I feel better, more able to cope, more positive, even with pain and nausea, a persistent sense of well-being, a sense of myself as a whole rather than a bunch of disjointed, frightened parts emerges and stabilizes.

Peacefulness gives me the ability to open to an inner place of strength.

Through peacefulness, everything regarding healing seems to come together… the peaceful feeling brings hope and with it belief in positive change and I am able to release the negativity. The healing session facilitates that process.

Healing seems to me to be a movement from negativity to positivity… …and somewhere along this continuum we come to the place of Peacefulness where we come face to face and connect with our inherent healing potential, The Healer Within, as you call it.

Up until now, I thought of this connection as “Yes, it is so! This IS – the Universal support that’s always there.” Aha!

Now, I get it! Now, I’m equating the Universe with The Healer Within. They are one and the same! Now, (chuckling) THAT is what I mean by deep healing! 

“I remember when you told me “that tumour in your head is not you. Don’t identify with it. What you identify with, you give attention to…you empower. Focus on what you want. If you want to heal yourself, then focus on the whole…on your whole self. You have the inherent ability to heal yourself, we all do…and while the outcome is always beyond your control, your intention is yours to create. What do you want?” 

It changed the way I think. I began to believe that I might be able to. I now believe there’s a chance that I can do this.” 

Up until now, it seemed all quite extraordinary, magical even. The Healer Within is a new concept for me. We’ve entered into new terrain.
 

Julia: What a great discovery, Karen. Let’s take a moment to savor the ‘taste’ of that new thought “The Healer Within and the Universe are one and the same.” That’s a powerful insight. Pause Getting back to our interview on the healing experience, can you tell the reader about the length of an average healing session?

 

​Karen: I never have any idea how long they are at the time. Time is irrelevant, and it doesn’t enter my head! Only afterwards do I become aware, and although they seem to vary the average one seems to be about 60 – 75 minutes. Roughly.​
 

Julia: Well, how does the average healing session end and how do you know when it’s finished?​

 

Karen: Julia, I don’t know​. (I want to say with great sadness :)) but that wouldn’t do here)!

​I think I feel as though I sort of come back from somewhere….I don’t quite know from where though. That makes it sound very Woo Woo and it’s not like that at all. I’m following you, so if you let me feel it has finished, it is then I become very consciously aware of the difference (ie with my whole being) of how I’m feeling and so it suddenly makes sense that yes, the healing session is now finished and I am always ready to lie down and rest or sleep.​
 

Julia:  What do you notice is different or has changed (before/after) upon completion of a healing session?

 

​Karen: ​The difference in how I feel is very marked. I feel peaceful, relieved of things felt at the start of the session, or a marked lessening of their power and strength. I feel as though ‘my bucket’ has been emptied from overfull and spilling over, to just an inch or 2 at the bottom … or completely emptied!

I also notice that nausea has almost stopped. While I may still feel nauseous, am not in the non stop cycle of throwing up. I feel very much more peaceful and relaxed, and so more positive. This ceasing of active nausea is a magical thing to me and one which to me, as an ex nurse. is astounding! However, this now means I can take my prescribed pain medicine which alleviates pain and at last I can sleep and so I start to slowly recover and feel better.

​Pain, which has never been completely eliminated by a healing session, nevertheless seems less severe by the end of a session and while unable to sleep before a healing session, I am ready to sleep right after.

The fear I experience before the session ‘that this will never end’ is not present by the end and the inability to keep pain medication down before the session is commonly no longer a problem after the session.

If I’ve come to you Julia for a feeling of being ungrounded and feeling out of whack or alignment with no anchor then after the session, although still shaken by whatever it was that decided me to ask for a session, I feel more grounded, am able to breathe more freely, knowing that I am aligned once again – that wobbly feeling gone!

As with healing for headaches and pain, a feeling of peacefulness and calm follows and I experience a feeling of health restored in my body and an increase in my ability to cope. No more panic….that literally just melts away.
People are increasingly remarking how peaceful a person I am.

I used to be insomniacal 🙂 All my life I’ve had real sleep problems which I’ve attributed to many things including such things as suppressed anxiety, never showing my deep feelings, night duty for way longer than what we, as nurses, were expected to handle, etc… but now I sleep well. I go to sleep late, but sleep extremely well when I do, with no trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. I believe this is entirely thanks to the coaching and healing work I’ve done with you. 

 

Julia: I’m glad, Karen. Thank you! Do you have any other comments or something you’d like to say or share?​

 

Karen: Julia – what happens in a healing session is something very beautiful, very special. I don’t know exactly what it is but I do know it is real, beautiful and special. I know we are working with the Universe and I treat our sessions with great reverence.
 

Julia: Thank you, Karen, for sharing your thoughts and thank you, reader for reading through to the end. After writing an article, I like to let it sit for a while to let it settle and see it with fresh eyes when I reread it before publishing it to my blog. 

 

Reading through and reflecting on this interview, I realize how my work continually renews me….the healing and transformation it enables awakens intuition and opens us with awareness to connect with ourselves, the other and the Universe. 

It gives me great joy as I witness Karen and others release their suffering, shift their focus and grow in hope, peace and strength, making such enormous strides by taking small steps and committing to building a healthy life through foundational mindfulness practices. It is truly an honour and a privilege to do this work.

Inviting Karen to read this article, she writes,

“Firstly, to read something like this about myself left me quite emotional, but in a very heartfelt and beautiful way, and so I thank you, and also because it in itself has been so healing.  

Secondly it made me realise that unknown to me there is still possibly, (not 100% sure about this but it feels like it) the sort of vague ‘left-over-traces’, of a seemingly deep hidden layer of mild/gentle self judgment of not really really really being good enough.  

The intro you have written about me has been healing in itself, felt by the release of tears, allowing me to a) look at myself openly (because I now realise with an unwavering beginner’s mind) I read what your wrote, just feeling it and not thinking it … and b) not only seeing how you, someone I deeply respect sees me, but in truth how I am.

It is only the child within me who has healed so greatly, perhaps nevertheless looking at her almost faded-to-nothing-scars and remembering.

And so this in and of itself has been extremely healing, and thank you Julia.” 

“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?” Rumi

 

Written by Julia von Flotow and Karen Berdou