The Art of Healing Yourself
"There is a correlation between our state of wholeness and health and our capacity to help others heal. This is why the root of our desire to help others heal must be focused on our personal commitment to heal ourselves."
- Lorin Parrish March
The Becoming
I had just opened my binder at Healing Arts Institute for the first time and this quote leapt off the page at me. It startled me because at 18 years old, I had never really given the idea of healing myself any thought, only that my purpose in life was to help others. In truth, I largely ignored it after the shock of it passed, being so young and married to my bad habits that I wasn’t willing to give up at the time. From burying traumas that I didn’t want to deal with to putting absolutely no time and effort tending to my physical needs, healing myself was the furthest thing from my mind when I began learning massage therapy.
I loved being in massage school, probably even more than working in the actual profession. I think most therapists feel that way, especially if their school was as dedicated to the healing arts as mine was. The sciences fascinated me, the artistry of bodywork took me by surprise, and the various emotional and spiritual epiphanies led to an incredibly profound experience. Not to mention, when you’re in school, you basically get bodywork everyday and what’s not to love about that?
Upon graduating, I decided I was going to live my most thoughtful and health forward-life. I would eat vegan food, I wouldn’t drink or smoke, I would do yoga everyday, and I would meditate and pray all the time. I’d love to tell you that was how it really was, but if that were the case, this would be a very short post.
Healing is an Ocean
If I’m being really honest, healing myself is a concept that has been weighted differently depending on where I’ve been at in my life. Healing is like treading the waves while standing in the ocean, and you can see a clear horizon for miles, but you always have to be on the lookout for the next big crest. Sometimes, the water laps calmly and you can appreciate how far you’ve come, and other times you get completely wiped out by a wave you didn’t see coming. The work constantly flows and evolves around you. I feel as though healing in all aspects behaves like this - mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s all smooth sailing until you get knocked off your course, and you have to stop and assess how you’re going to continue on in this life. And it never really ends. We must adamantly work on ourselves until the end of our time here in order to be our best selves throughout our lifetime. But the question is: why?
When I first began working in the field of massage, I was horrible at creating emotional boundaries. I would constantly become too attached to what my clients were going through and become invested in their struggles, and I would end up taking that home with me. I was completely dismissive of the idea that I needed to heal my own inner world in order to show up for my clients and to not let their feelings affect me. I had convinced myself that I was just a compassionate person and I liked that about myself and didn’t want to lose it, but eventually it pained me so much that I had to leave the profession for a while. That was my first big wave. Subsequently, I spent a ton of time putting effort into my spiritual and emotional growth. I hiked, wrote poems, journaled about what kind of a person I wanted to be, the values that I wanted to take with me, the things I’d experienced in my childhood that affected me, and so on. So the wave of healing focused at that time on my internal world. But my physical health declined. I did drink and smoke, vegan eating lasted about two months, and instead of exercising I did a lot of lying around. And eventually, when that was no longer sustainable, the wave crashed again. This time, though, the focus had to be on my physical health so that I could survive and maybe even feel good in this body. It’s very hard to do massage, a very physical job, when you’re not working on your physical health. And so throughout my life and career, the ocean of healing has grasped me and flung me around in one area or another, and will continue to do so until the end of my time.
The Truth - Answering the “Why”
Can I be frank here? Healing sucks. It is a never ending up-hill battle and for so long I have been annoyed at the glorification of it. It requires a great deal of self-actualization and the relinquishing of the ego. It demands massive amounts of vulnerability and a tolerance for pain. And at the end of one journey, you can almost always identify another place to go that needs work.
But it is in those intense, stormy waters where we find that resilience, the brutal truths, and our truest desires. That is the beauty of healing; when we have nothing else to do but move through the grief, anger, pain, or discomfort and become some new version of ourselves. We can then show up authentically, do the things that most align with who we are, speak from places of love and whole-heartedness, and live exactly the way we want to.
Is it worth the pain? Is healing yourself worth the time, money, and bravery needed to truly accomplish it? Yeah, I think it is. For a long time, “why bother healing” was a means to an end for me. It was so that I could show up for others and be a better provider. But now I see it also has to be for me. So I can be my most authentic self and show up in the world in the way I was divinely designed. I had no idea how good I was supposed to feel, or how much easier it is to align your decisions with your path once I’d dealt with the all the weight on my heart that was holding me back.
How Massage Helps You Heal
Just this last year, I revisited the above quote and it resonated with me in a whole new way than when I’d read it for the first time in 2016. It didn’t startle me, it melted me, as though the truth of it had guided me throughout the last decade. I worked through my own healing and assisted countless others in theirs as well, and I have become a much more intentional bodyworker and healer due to that.
I love massage therapy. I have never been able to give it up, even when it was emotionally or physically wearing on me. I believe my healing was meant to facilitate healing in others, and it is my commitment to continue my journey while assisting in yours.
Massage therapy can help you in numerous ways. It can provide stress relief and rest as well as physical healing and pain management, and that is the piece of the puzzle that I can offer to you. We all have our doctors, therapists, personal trainers, dieticians, chiropractors, spiritual leaders and so on that are a part of the team, keeping us healthy, and assisting in our healing journey. I’d like to be a part of your team, helping you heal yourself with the deeply impactful modality that is bodywork & massage therapy.
