Reflections of a Healer~ by Dr. Joanmarie Vanaski, ND, DHom, CNT
While doing research on healing and the mechanisms of healing, I came across an article that intrigued me so much I immediately knew I had something I could truly resonate with. I had already been thinking about the necessary tools that afford us (as Naturopaths) the opportunity to heal others for quite sometime anyway, so I was happy to add another facet. Before I reveal the excerpt of the parts that drove such wonderful points home for me, I just have to say how humbling it is for me to discover additional true knowledge for the benefit of health and wellbeing and how it can be applied for the sake of the person who is ill.
It is important to me to continue to live in the two worlds as both an Apprentice and Teacher, continuing the journey while at least aspiring to be a Master. Having both feet in these two worlds just keeps me curious and fulfilled at the same time. The more I learn about the art of being well, the more confident becomes my journey forward. My priority is always, like any other healer, to give my best. That being said, The article I am referring to really brought home how synergistically connected healers are to those who seek us out. The word that really jumped out at me first was the word “connexional”, defined as something that connects, joins, or relates; links or bonds, a relationship or association that carries a logical sequence in thought or expression; coherence.
I love that word because it means EVERYTHING, all-encompassing, while expressing the capacity and potential to heal! My hope is that it inspires YOU as well......
Here is the excerpt~
Healing is related to wholeness, and wholeness is experienced in connection with others: “A healer is somebody who’s going to help you make those connections between each other and everything around you, to be whole is always to be whole in the presence of others.” Life narratives are social constructions, stories fashioned in connection with others. Continuity of care supports [those] connection. Through continuity, both patient and physician come to know one another as persons. In the process of healing, the physician becomes part of, is connected to, the patient’s life narrative. It’s possible to be in health and to be healed without being cured. Healmeans “to make sound or whole” and stems from the root, haelan, the condition or state of being hal, whole. Halis also the root of “holy,” defined as “spiritually pure.”
Even though it is the patient who must find the meaning that transcends his or her suffering, the physician can catalyze this process by sensitively attending to and engaging the patient in dialogue regarding the patient’s suffering. By forging connexional relationships, grounding treatment choices in the person rather than the disease, maximizing function, and actively minimizing suffering, physicians strengthen patients with the goal of maintaining intactness and integrity. In the process, medicine recapitulates its service ethic as “a work of the heart and soul”
~excerpts from
The Meaning Of Healing: Transcending Suffering
Thomas R. Egnew, EdD, LICSW
