The 12 Stages of Healing
Whether you’re suffering from physical, mental or emotional pain and are seeking to get on the healing path, we invite you to read our latest blog series, ‘The 12 Stages of Healing.” The series starts with Stage 1, which is Suffering and ends with Stage 12, Community. Our doctors share their wisdom and encouragement to help you move through each stage toward achieving the healing you seek. Each blog concludes with a special breathing exercise and affirmation for that stage of healing.
Stage Eight is the stage of emptiness, vulnerability, and possibilities. The feelings of emptiness, calmness, and aloneness may seem uncomfortable at first, but they set the stage for deeper exploration and movement. Author Marc Allen once wrote, “To be alone is to tune into the sacred being of yourself.” The beginning phase of Stage Eight provides us with this opportunity. By experiencing emptiness we can become open to our inner rhythms and finally come “home”.
The Transition Zone & Status Report
Emptiness is often confused with nothingness or nonexistence, but it’s much more than that; it serves as a space of freedom and transition. Freedom comes from the fact that we haven’t attached our conscious reality to one particular perspective. A college professor once said, “Create an emptiness and it shall be filled.” By creating emptiness, we form a kind of vacuum that attracts people, objects, and experiences to us. This, in turn, gives us opportunities we need for our continued growth and healing. In Stage Eight, our feeling of wholeness combined with our emptiness is very powerful. During this stage of healing our bodymind is saying, “This is okay. Somehow I asked for this new state of being.”
Emptiness Without Self-Tyranny
Emptiness is a primary goal of many spiritual seekers and is achieved by different means. Most often, it is sought through the denial of food, materials, physical relationships, etc. Fortunately, there are other ways to achieve a state of emptiness without having to experience repression or ripping ourselves away from comfortable attachments. The beauty of it is that the mere reality of being in our natural flow will create the resolution through discharge (Stage Seven), leading to the emptiness of Stage Eight. If we follow our natural rhythms inherent in the different healing stages, whatever we no longer need will gently fall away.
Maximizing The Stage Eight Experience
Everyone’s spiritual path is different—and The 12 Stages of Healing honors this fact—but there are a number of simple practices that can tremendously enhance our movement through Stage Eight. First, it’s a good idea to partake in religious teachings since it can be very beneficial for healing. Spiritual energies are especially strong during holy day periods such as Christmas, Easter, Ramadan, the Wesak festival, Yom Kippur, etc. A second powerful religious practice which can benefit our health is prayer. Prayer from Stage Eight comes from a place of wholeness and a connection to our inner rhythm. Whatever an individual’s personal prayer is, it uses tone vibration to help unify a person’s wholeness with the wholeness of the spirit. Even the repetition of a mantra (a holy word or sound) can be beneficial and powerful. A third religious practice which is valuable is yoga because it involves disciplines such as physical exercise, deep rhythmic breathing, meditation, and devotion. Fourth, it’s a good idea to consider self-nurturing. Many religions offer meditative retreats or transformational weekends. These kinds of experiences help us honor ourselves and often result in a spontaneous transcendental experience.
Seeking Help
In this stage of healing, various therapies are recommended that can bring further integration and wholeness. Art therapy, music therapy, energetic sound, and light therapy are all valuable possibilities. Other recommendations for this stage of healing include chiropractic adjustments, Rebirthing, craniosacral work, and other healing systems that seek to empower the bodymind’s natural rhythms, inner knowledge, and the experience of wholeness.
Trusting The Change
Part of Stage Eight is experiencing revelations that “just feel correct”. These revelations may lead to life-changing decisions that may seem radical, frivolous, or naïve to an outside observer. But in the eyes of the person doing the healing, they’re reinventing their life as feel as though their senses have been reawakened. It’s critical to trust the process (and ourselves) as we make the most of “magical” encounters and events.
Making The Heart Connection
Finally, Stage Eight provides the opportunity for us to become integrated with our heart center, where we learn to truly love ourselves and those around us. We begin to hear our internal rhythms, often for the first time in our life. This inner listening brings with it self-acceptance, wisdom, and love. Stage Eight is the portal to the higher stages of healing, which are connected to Divine Light, spiritual enlightenment, and the deep understanding of our connectedness to all life.
Stage Eight Exercise
While sitting or lying comfortably, place the second, third, and fourth fingers of one hand on the lower portion of your breastbone. Then place the second, third, and fourth fingers of your other hand between your eyebrows. Bring both elbows far forward in front of you as comfortably as you can. Breathe in through your mouth, and slowly exhale through your nose. Continue for one to two minutes. Visualize your breath being directed outward simultaneously through the two points you are touching.
Stage Eight Declarations
“I wake up to the rhythms of wholeness.”
“I take counsel within myself.”
“I experience the fullness of my emptiness.”
“I reunite with my whole self.”
“I pay attention to myself.”
“I trust my rhythms.”
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