I went on a walk recently with a newly licensed physician friend who was feeling some disillusionment about her chosen profession and generally feeling lost in life. And I found myself sharing with her how I have grown to love the territory of transition. Not because I relish the pain and discomfort that comes with feeling disoriented, like we are no longer who we were, yet we are not quite sure who we are now. And not because I delight in the impatience and confusion that comes when we feel as if we have lost our ground, and it seems to be taking a really long time to find a new one.
I know how common it is during these transitional periods for significant illness to arise, to have symptoms of all kinds flaring up. We may feel emotionally sensitive and stormy, tending towards depression, anxiety, and stress; relationships may be strained; and we may have a host of physical complaints such as exhaustion, insomnia, digestive woes, chronic pain and tension. I know from personal experience how devastatingly hard it is to surrender to navigating this terrain.
And yet I still have come to love and celebrate these times because I have seen in myself and others how these transitional periods are the birthplace of our own transformation and awakening. They are growth spurts, akin to a seed sprouting and pushing its way through the earth to emerge in its new plant form above ground. Supporting others in consciously descending into these times, heeding the feedback of the symptoms, and integrating and re-aligning with their own emergence – this is the heart of my work as a healer.
Medicalized awakening
Somehow in our modern day health care system, we have medicalized awakening. Our relationship to health has not been integrated into our individual and collective evolutionary journey, so it’s no wonder that these intense transitional periods become medicalized, diagnosed and compartmentalized into a problem to fix. When the paradigm we are embedded in views our symptoms through this lens it’s really hard to not focus on the medical diagnoses we may have been given and how to quickly resolve the discomfort. This outcome is sadly all too common and stunts the opening that is happening and shields us from listening to the inner guidance being revealed.
No matter how evolved we may consider ourselves to be, being present to debilitating illness, symptoms that spin us out of control in our lives, has us touch into the paralyzing fear that is linked to our very mortality. Our predominant medical system models the removal of this discomfort, seemingly at all costs. We distance ourselves from the inevitability of death, of our own fragility, and thus separate ourselves from the essence and intelligence of our own life force. I wonder what a medical system would look like that could embrace the larger evolution at play? What if it held the paradox of working to reduce suffering, while honoring the perfection of the transformation, sacred healing and potential for awakening in these mysterious transitional moments?
Transformational Healing
I bring these perspectives from a place of gratitude for all I have come to embody through my own painful journey of shedding, over and over again. I wonder sometimes what my healing journey would have been if I had not felt called to dive deeper than the physical medical diagnoses I was given. It is in some ways an impossible question to answer, and it brings me right back to how nourished, aligned and alive I feel now.
Navigating the transformational terrain of health has been like a sacred pilgrimage for me, evoking an ongoing surrender and trust in life. It has been at the core of my path of awakening. I have intimately come to know the territory, the obstacles, and what it takes to move through life with more ease and aliveness, feeling greater alignment and coherence within, with a more empowered discernment and confidence in my capacity to nourish myself. Simply put, I have learned how to love and care for myself, and I keep deepening in that learning each day. I feel blessed and honored that my mission is to share my own transformative and awakening journey; what I am learning to embody myself is my medicine and teaching.
