healing ways - a series of healing stories

The Nature of Illness

In modern times with a dominant allopathic healing philosophy, illness is seen as detrimental to health and a problem to be cured quickly, efficiently and usually by expensive pharmaceuticals or surgical procedures. Holistically, illness is something far more valuable. It is a message from your inner being or from your soul which indicates an area of your life which is out of alignment. If it is 'cured' by some form of chemical or physical intervention, the core issues which have caused the illness will remain and will cause more, possibly different illnesses.

Many common forms of illness result from negative emotions. It has been said that there are only two basic emotions - love and fear. All other emotions derive from these. For example, a loving husband and father feels he must protect his wife and children because he has a deep-seated love and fear for their safety. Therefore he carefully plans what they must do so that he can feel they are safe and protected. If they do not follow his plans, then he fears that he cannot keep them safe, and this causes great concern and frustration, which may lead to anger and violence. Thus we have the situation where a husband and father seeks to control his family out of his love for them, and may physically harm them if they reject this control. So the basis of his anger and frustration is fear and love. Similarly joy and happiness stem from love of life or others. While a person is expressing these strong emotions, it is likely that they will not lodge in their body and cause illness.

However, in the above example, if the husband and father attends an anger management course, for example, and learns to keep his anger bottled up inside, then he will 'stuff it down' and it can start to do him real harm. Any emotion that is not fully expressed in a healthy manner can cause illness. Louise Hay (Heal Your Life) and Annette Noontil (The Body is the Barometer of the Soul) relate physical symptoms to emotional and behavioural factors. Some of these are obvious, e.g. a sore throat when you are afraid to speak your own truth; a sore back when you are lacking support.

However, some illnesses are not so obvious and may not have behavioural causes which are simple to explain. Some illnesses may be manifested in your body to provide you with a 'wake-up call' that all is not well with your life. As an example, I am finding in my practice that people who have symptoms of CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or post viral fatigue syndrome) or ME (myalgic encephalitis or myalgic encephalomyelitis) have a huge fear of being born into this lifetime. Clearing out this fear allows them to clear out the illness and live life fully once again.

Regardless of the cause of your illness, and it may in fact be an injury from an 'accident' as well, you can choose to ignore it and carry on with your life as you are living it, or hopefully you will pay attention to it and take steps to clear out the causes of this illness, allowing any emotions associated with it to leave, and accept the learning that the illness has brought you. After that you are able to really heal and are better able to follow your life's purpose. Therefore, illnesses and injuries are gifts from the Universe which bring you learning, allow you to clear out your repressed emotions which have caused the illness, and may allow you to discover your purpose in this lifetime. Only then can you really heal from the illness or injury.