The Healing Heart
The healing relationship begins with a small kindling of friendship. Building this fire together is what keeps the friendship growing while cultivating a base of trust, openness, communication, a feeling of warmth. Each visit adds some wood to the fire to keep the flames burning strong.
warming up in the hyperthermia bed before the walls are closed in
I was able to start up my hyperthermia treatments again this week and spent 3 hours raising my core body temperature up to 38.9C to induce and hang out in a ‘fever state’ in order to create a cellular environment that cancer cells cannot thrive in.
While lying there feeling extremely hot, it suddenly dawned on me, the logic behind allowing your child to go into a fever state instead of dampening the body’s response to healing when they are sick. The term, ‘let the fever break’ by itself is allowing the body to deal with the toxic cells by killing them off. Of course, it’s a fine line between making sure your child doesn’t overheat for too long and keeping her cooled off with a damp towel. I’ve been there with my kids when they were young and it can be a tough call to know how long to hang out there with them before making a visit to the doctor. For myself today, it’s about finding the level of heat I can tolerate and still remain safe in my body.
Being in a hyperthermia bed and raising your temperature is closely monitored with blood pressure, heart rate, intravenous minerals, and of course temperature. When I get into the bed and the walls are zipped up, my body lets go into a deep sigh of relief. I like this place. I’m back here again and I prepare to sink into another world for a few hours. It really is another world. The body completely begins to relax, the mind starts to unwind and all the commentary running through begins to subside. The skin softens as it heats up and I imagine releasing toxins as the core temperature increases.
An image appears in my mind of all the blood vessels in my body are like small tributaries carrying out the old cancer cells and other toxic material being floated out by tiny water pathways of sweat. My mind does not easily relate to the chemistry and molecular biology that goes on in my body, so I naturally find other ways to imagine how cells can exit out of me. I believe the imagery that comes to one is what works for that person and it's important to trust and just go with it. I’m learning to accept my own imagery for how my body wants to talk to me without analyzing it. To let it flow and today the flowing is all around the sweat.
As I lie in the bed heating up, thoughts swirl in and out of my head, emotions move through my body, and in an instant, a flash of insight shoots through me where all I’ve been thinking and feeling come together with such clarity. Afraid that I might lose this moment, I call over to my doctor to come and be with me. It is in these unexpected times that we have the most unique exchanges.
Today, I talked about the Great Love that keeps recurring between myself and some of my health care specialists. I depend on these people to help guide me and be present to meet me in the difficult places I encounter. The ones who I see regularly every week, we practice together dropping into this space beneath the words, letting go of the expectations to ‘fix’ the broken pieces, the willingness to just be with what is happening now, are the moments where this greater connection to healing begins to open up. I call it a Great Love, an energy that goes beyond the limitations of the physical body and my identification with my Self as an individual separate from another human being.
Having opportunities every week to slow down in my various appointments and tune my mental focus into being open to the healing I can receive from the treatment, whether it is a chemo infusion, hyperthermia, energy healing, bodywork, or having an MRI or some other strange kind of exam; I am allowing for the possibility of connecting to a bigger energy field that exists beyond my walls of my body.
What do I discover in orienting my focus this way time and time again? A regenerative, healing quality that begins to flow through me, that is not bound by time or judgment. It is free of all constraints and comes in as just a pure loving energy.
Life offers me these opportunities to sit with another and share this field of love. This is the ground, the foundational relationship between the practitioner-patient where healing truly occurs. It is in the ‘being’ together, the moments where each of us can suspend the urge to just get the problem fixed so I can move back to the way life used to be. The wise practitioner knows that life will never be the same for the person who is facing a health crisis and they are not trying to rush them back to their old life. For that would be going backwards after so much work had been done to heal the call to crisis.
Over time, a new quality of life begins to emerge and both practitioner and patient together hold open the possibilities of what this new life offers.
When the Great Love energy is flowing, I am now realizing that there’s nothing to do with it, just be with it. Let it in. Allow this divine loving energy to do the healing. It is a purely joyful, happy, detached energy flowing with freedom.
Drop into this river of energy and be supported by the buoyancy of love. This is where I find my strength to be positive, to live with ease and a deep sense of peace. Everything else I do is supported from this inner place of love that exists both within me and beyond.
I often have an image of myself as a tree, roots reaching deep into the Earth, branches and leaves extending up towards the Heavens. My tree was a Magnolia. With the warm weather and sunshine, the Magnolia flowers have all opened where I live. It’s a wonderful reminder of the beauty and strength that lives within me, others, and nature.
Connected between these two powerful forces of energy: Heaven and Earth, I am a conduit for Great Love energy to flow through me. In this flow of energy, I can give and receive in limitless ways. It is not constrained to a finite amount. This is the wonder of it. I am not drawing on my own energy and what reserves I can parcel out to others, nor do I have to worry that I am pulling out energy from others and draining them. When I can get beyond thinking there’s only so much energy to go around, I am freed up to give and receive more. In this way, I do believe there is much to be shared between the practitioner and the patient where both receive the benefits of healing.
Bernie Seigel writes about his experiences as a surgeon and when in despair of feeling like he’s not doing enough for his patients he goes to sit with his sickest patient. “I guarantee that your patients will heal you in the time that you are sitting there, by their strength, their courage, and the fact that they don’t ask you for a cure but are healed by your care.”
I think a big piece of curing happens from the care. If the focus is only about curing, all of the deep caring and love gets overlooked and this is where healing power lies and is unleashed. Siegel goes on to say that “the healing I have done as a doctor has always come back to me tenfold. So who is the healer, who is the healed? This is a question that does not get looked at in medical school…..medical students miss out on the fundamental truths of the doctor-patient relationship – the fact that their greatest resource will be the people they take care of.”
I work in the helping profession as a counselor and have always been on the side of ‘giving.’ I must admit suddenly switching to the ‘receiving’ side of this relationship has opened me up in a lot of unexpected ways. I am receiving so much care, support, and Great Love from my specialists I see weekly that I am starting to feel guilty for ‘taking’ so much all the time. I hope that they also receive something from me in our exchanges. I don't feel comfortable to just be taking from them. I want it to be a two way exchange.
Magnolia's bloom!
I have been shown this inner place of opening up to the energy of Great Love. I now trust to just rest in this dynamic exchange of energy. I talk about this with my key specialists who are from a range of training and perspectives in health: Western medicine, European complimentary medicine, physiotherapy/mindbody healing and energy psychology.
However, it’s not so much about the training as it is about the individual that sits across from me and who they are. “The physician (or health worker) who knows this can tap into a never-ending source of loving energy. Siegel continues, I have learned that I can always be sure of receiving the gift of renewal at the hands of those who might seem to have the least to give.”
Saki Santorelli in his poetic way reflects what I am struggling to find words to express. When “we touch the brokenness and wholeness of being ---our humanity---with less struggle, more ownership, allowing ourselves to be more fully with what is” we arrive in the moment of our whole being.
This journey has become my school of life, my major in diving into a deeper practice of mindful and compassionate meditation while turning towards wholeness and embodying a Greater Love. Offering a vast potential for integration and an opportunity for mutual transformation. Patiently and silently the stillness of love waits for my heart to unfold.