Healing. A light-hearted experience by Gabriela Binello

To heal. Healing. Two words that I hear very often.

Some people associate curing with healing. Some people establish certain differences; mainly, curing will always depend on external assistance and healing will focus on all the layers of the human being (a process which definitely will include emotional and deep psyche stuff). This is the reason why we can talk about healing without curing. Though, however, we cannot think of curing if we hadn 't healed before.

Every one of us have been sick once. Every one have suffered once. Since the moment we are born, we know the finite reality of our body. Yogis, in their search for answers which lead to understand why we suffer and how to dis-engage from that, found some technics (basically, the control of energy, apart from other food and lifestyles habits) which “slow down” the natural decay of our human nature. However, it is possible that the main “key” of yoga in our modern society does not only deal with anti-stress technics or -best case scenario- mind control. Maybe, that key can open one of the doors that locks the true potential of Yoga; its ultimate goal: heal-ing¹.

Yoga understands each human being as a unique combination of what it WAS (generational history background; its “genetics”, if we had to find a correlate to west's approach), IS and WILL BE².  We are what we were and will be. We are what we were, according to the “heritage” we bring (8 generations back). And we are what we will be, according to what we are going to do with what we bring; our unique opportunity to draw another map within a territory full of past traces and impressions. All this process being played every moment in a non-sequential progression of time.

The translation for this could be: we can write our own destiny. This is not easy, it is more than obvious but, is it worthy trying?

From this perspective, what does yoga propose? Basically:

1. only when we experiment a profound feeling of acceptance, we will start healing. Acceptance of what is happening right now, of what we bring; that which still forms part of what we are. Quitting from the useless battle against “the other” (which includes: “the illness” that can limitate my actions, the legacy of each family background, the traumatic experiences, the actual-context-relationships or whichever person or situation that leads me to a “ever-lasting-suffering-status”; even a very small and hidden part of ourselves).We can spend the whole life fighting this battle; in many cases searching or doing all kind of therapies or treatments that focus on the past or on providing us band-aids for our wounds.
2. That acceptance is NOT resignation, depression, dullness, abandonment, conformism. The difference between this two is only understood when we experiment a very simple and profound feeling of opennes, lightness and fluidity.

All of us have experimented any of these sensations once without -even- stepping into a yoga class (just to think on deep, profound and healthy relationships, contact with nature, art or even sparkles of this openness that catch us by surprise). So then, what yoga proposes are tools that help us to  “remember” that state. Tools, technics that guide us in our walk towards openness, lightness and fluidity. Until one day, maybe, we can rescind those tools because we do not need them any more.

In sanskrit, one of the words that define “illness” is vyadhi (Vy-adhi). Vyadhi, or one way of naming illness in yoga, is the disconnection with that which is deep within us.

Another word that could be associated to “illness” in sanskrit is duhkha (duh-kha); the constriction or pressure within a space that should always be free, fluid.

Each story is unique; each person deals with its own and specific combination of past-present-future in a timeless time. It does not matter which technic or tool we use to dis-engage from suffering. We would only start healing when we reconnect with that experience of INTEGRATION with our intimate self within. And we would know that this is ACTUALLY happening because we would feel light and fluid.

How can we start then? Well, it could be useful to take the external tools and PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE throughout our own experience. This implies the luck of magical solutions from outside but only tools (I also include deep links with teacher and teachings) that will only be appropriate when we make them resonate with our true essence, our true intelligence (which is just a spark of THE Intelligence and THE Truth). For this, yoga also proposes us to go and look for some “allies” who know how to play the game of acceptance:

--apeksitvat: the profound desire of knowing. Of knowing us.

--sraddha: the conviction that the light within us will guide and give us strength to “scuba dive” -even- in a deep sea during a new moon night...

--svatantram: the independance to discriminate and follow that personal light.

--Isvara pranidhana: the trust and surrender (humility) in a Higher Intelligence that supports us.

And there is much more...

But each of us, in our unique and sacred personal language, would have to recognize and translate these words.

Then, we would have started to heal.

1 I understand the “ultimate goal” of yoga as the discrimination and understanding that liberate us from suffering. In this perspective I am bringing out the idea of healing: YS I.29; YS II.25; YS III.35; YS IV.34, among others.

2YS III.14; YS IV.12; YS IV.14.