6 things to do in a healing crisis
When we are in a healing crisis, the crisis is felt in our physical body, our emotional body and our mental body all at the same time. We know it’s time to surrender whatever we thought we were doing before we became ill or injured so we can get in sync with how our bodymind heals and what we need to heal faster. Healing is a process of detoxifying, recycling and regrowing cells and tissues into the healthy whole state we were in before we became ill and stressed. A healing crisis, also known as a Herxheimer Reaction, is when all body systems act together for detoxification, autophagy of dead and damaged tissue, and regeneration. Sometimes, that means we may feel worse before we feel better. Here are 6 things to know that can help you get through a healing crisis faster.
Get in the present moment, because healing only happens in the NOW. if you’re stuck in the past or projecting into some far off future, you’re probably wasting precious time.
Your body needs to detoxify and eliminate toxic waste in order to turn on your own genetically programmed superhealing state. So each of us needs to take responsibility for our own waste management. Get your head around doing a nutritional wet fast. Embrace superfood shakes, cold-pressed vegetable juices, detoxifying herbal teas and coffee enemas. Surrender and let go. If you’ve never fasted before, trust in the healing process and let the path rise up to meet you. But understand that you will have to start the healing process by stopping consumption for a few days to cleanse and renew.
It’s natural to retreat when we are in a healing crisis, becoming quiet, still, and turning inward to surrender to the fact that, for now, we are unwell and need to heal. Deep healing happens in a Default Mode Network (DMN) state of consciousness. DMN is the state of consciousness we experience when we are doing nothing. DMN is the mindbody connection. It is the functional connectivity of your brain and parasympathetic nervous system when you are at rest and you attention is not oriented toward a specific task. The pulse of brainbody connectivity has been measured as a synchronized firing of neurons across various structures of the brain that are persistent—even when in a coma, under anesthesia, or during meditation. Meditation develops this state of consciousness where healing becomes foreground, and doing and digesting become background. So we want to cultivate this state in our lives and create time for it when we are healing.
Envision yourself in the future after your healing crisis feeling alive, vibrant and excited about life. During the healing crisis, it’s important to envision yourself being well and whole again, so that you can help yourself manifest a healing state within. We all have the capacity to heal. But it helps to give yourself what you really need to do it, starting with hydrating with clean water and a proper balance of electrolyte minerals, nutrient saturating with vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, protein amino acids, and good fats, breathing in fresh air for oxygen, and getting sunshine on your skin to make Vitamin D (or hormone D) for strong bones and teeth and stronger immunity.
Share what’s going on. Tell people who care about you that you’re in a healing crisis. Be emotionally honest. Invite other people you have a connection with to share your healing visualization of yourself in the future, and resonate with it. Surround yourself with positive people and step away from people who are chronically negative. No judgment, but people who are chronically negative can’t help you through a healing crisis when believing that you can heal makes the biggest difference of all.
Change your bodymindset about healing. Shift your language from talking about your body as a noun to feeling your embodiment as a verb. When you do that, you become aware of yourself as a dynamic changing organism that is constantly regenerating and creating yourself anew. Your stomach and intestinal lining recycle every week, your skin every month, your skeleton every 3 months, your liver every 6 months to a year, even your genes regenerate about every 6 weeks. So in one year, you’ve recycled about 98% of your whole body. Can you see the opportunity for healing? It’s why holistic practitioners say healing comes from within you, not outside of you.
Healing is a process of recycling and regrowing into a healthy whole state—the state we were designed to be in our DNA. Even damaged genes from environmental insults to our DNA can be cleaned and restored if we create the right internal environment. A healthy you can be created anew. However be aware that the process of healing is really a process of adapting. So be willing to become someone new in the process of healing. When a healing crisis comes, be willing to let go of the past.
People who experience superhealing using visualizations or holographic projection tend to “see” what they’re healing in remarkable detail. Here’s an example from the movie HEAL, where Dr Joe Dispenza shares his story of healing his spine after a biking injury with deep meditative visualization.
During holographic projection, it helps if you have a complete understanding of the neurobiology, structure and function of the parts of you in need of healing. Get to know your embodied self, including all your parts— your bones, nerves, fascia, muscles, organs, glands. Start by understanding how these embodied parts of you communicate with your brain through the Vagus nerve, depicted in the image below. Visualizing the Vagus nerve in 3D is a great way to “see” the emotional bodymind in its embodiment—in its complexity, its organicity, and its connectivity. Even its divinity.
