Abstract
S., a young professional with a chronic non-healing stress fracture, arrives in a state of frustration and hopelessness. What follows is an amazing journey of self-healing and self-discovery, of doubts and frustrations, culminating in a whole new perspective towards body and life. The healing journey is recounted directly by the patient, retaining the authenticity of personal experience. This case holds a special significance for the therapist; for herein he first saw the power of love to heal his body. The case revealed many other intriguing mysteries of the body and its healing process, many of which may have universal implications. The consciousness approach is much more than a mere healing of the body or even the mind; it has the power to evoke change at a much more fundamental level of our being.
A dream disappears
“Joining the armed forces and serving the country was a dream right from my college days. However, the journey I had to go through to achieve my goal was a hard and testing one in many ways. Nothing has ever come easy to me in life till date – however, today I thank God for the way He has designed my life. The journey was one filled with disappointments, regret, depression, doubt and finally, with the grace of God, after immense hard work and the pain of separation from my family, I achieved a lifetime dream when I joined the Academy. However, my joy was short-lived as within two weeks of strenuous military training, I suffered a disastrous heel injury, which prevented me from even walking normally. I was sent back home and told to join the next course after 6 months.
“My visits to orthopaedic surgeons started as soon as I got back home. I visited doctor after doctor – varying diagnosis, varying perceptions, most of them showed doubt about me recovering within six months and I was told that even if I did recover, the chances of me being able to survive the rigorous training at the Academy were very bleak.
“I ran from doctor to doctor, searching for the ‘perfect’ one who would cure me completely within six months and make sure I got though the training. However, with every visit, my confidence began dropping, my pain started intensifying and my dreams were slowly going up in thin air as I realised that I was so near but yet so far from reaching my goal.
“I was on crutches for two months and had to go around in a wheelchair. I just hated it – very often, I used to wonder what the meaning of achievement really was, what great achievers would have gone through when they faced problems in their path. Was this the turning-point of my life or was it the greatest setback I was going to experience, after working seven years to achieve a noble goal? Very often, tears streamed down my face as I realised that life was not exactly going my way. Why was all this happening?
“It was my brother who casually mentioned one day that he had just attended a seminar by Dr. Yogesh, a brilliant doctor (an alumni of JIPMER and ISB), on ‘Consciousness as Medicine’. He told me to visit him once and find out if there was a way-out – something which could be done which conventional medicine could not.
Are you willing to work?
“I visited the doctor along with my mother and was immediately struck by his warmth, his serene, calm and composed nature. He told me to put all my x-rays, MRIs and other medical records inside and asked me a simple question – ‘Are you willing to do what you have to do to heal yourself?’”
(I remember the first visit of S., a young confident man betrayed by his body. He was frustrated by his injury, anxious to get well and to pursue his dream career. He had been to all the big names in orthopaedics, undergone all possible investigations and was confused).
“I answered in the affirmative and he told me that I could heal myself whenever I wanted to – provided I was willing to put in what I had to. He taught me about consciousness and the first thing I understood from this meeting was that my body is an integral part of myself and it was my duty to love my own body and believe in its power to heal. I was giving outsiders too much power over my body. Conventional medicine need not be always right and may not always be more powerful than the ability of the body to heal itself. I was told to first accept the situation at face-value and start loving my foot. The reason I had to heal my heel was simply because it was an integral part of my body and my body had to function smoothly in accordance with the laws of nature.”
(Here was an intelligent, rational young man, who had read all about bone healing, and consulted all the top surgeons. I wanted him to believe that he could heal his body, and for that he needed a solid experience to create trust).
“At the first session, I was asked to close my eyes, calm myself down and follow a mental process. We started concentrating on each and every part of my body – throwing a divine healing light and illuminating it, then using the prana of the universe to spread energy across the body to revitalise it and believe in its immense God-given potential to work miraculously. Once the divine light had been spread to each and every part, we then came down to the foot which was broken.”
(I try to help the client to deepen his awareness of the body, and help him become aware of a state of inner consciousness, which is a self-existent state of peace and joy. In this state, healing and working on the body appears a natural phenomenon. Even when client comes out of the inner meditative state, a sense of peace and joy pervades for some time).
“I was told to treat the foot like a small child and give it the love which an innocent little baby deserves. We then went deep into the foot by opening it mentally and understanding what exactly was present inside – the portion which was broken seemed like a black patch. I was asked to spread the divine light over the patch and remove the black portion, to talk to my foot and comfort it, understand what it exactly wanted.
“The first session was so refreshing and so different from all my previous meetings with doctors. For the first time, I actually felt a sense of calm, a belief that my foot may actually heal. I began to understand that with the conventional doctors and their plan of treatment, this problem could take years to heal. One important takeaway I got from the first session was that healing is just a state of mind. Loving the foot, using the prana of the universe and the divine light and not allowing the pain to recur mentally was pretty much all that I had to do to heal myself. For that, I had to accept the situation as it exactly was and realise that the power within me to heal myself was in fact greater than any other force in the world. I started seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”
(S. was very receptive with his body and that was a good sign. During the session he realised how stressed he was and had the beautiful experience of seeing the stress physically move out of the body. The first session is also important in many ways – the client must experience something deeper, so that belief and trust can develop).
“Over the next couple of days, I practiced the process several times a day and each time I did it, I moved one step ahead mentally in my healing process. I started gaining confidence in my own body, started becoming mentally stronger that I did indeed have enough God-given power to heal myself.
“There were times when doubt used to enter my mind though. However, as and when a negative thought about the healing process came in, I sat down quietly, focused on the foot and did the process for a couple of minutes thus ensuring that the healing was very much within control.”
(In the second visit itself, there was much improvement in his gait. However, S. had undergone another MRI, met a specialist and was feeling much worse after that. The specialist had commented that the healing cannot be faster than the ‘law of nature’, and all that he could do was take rest. S. revealed that he had lost confidence in his own healing. He could no longer concentrate and the pain increased and so did the frustration. The specialist’s suggestions were working on him adversely, and slowly the anxiety and restlessness took over retarding the healing process.
In the subsequent sessions, I focused on working on the doubts, the negative beliefs and anxiety part. It was interesting to see how he was able to perceive the action of negative beliefs and anxiety on his body and the healing process, and saw how on removing the doubts, the healing actually starts).
The path to recovery
“ I went to the doctor for a few more sessions and we worked out the process again – slowly graduating to using the process while walking and making sure the prana of the universe which my mind had put into the foot was so strong that the pain could not recur. In a matter of weeks, I started walking comfortably without pain – though I had to be conscious of the foot each and every time to make sure my mind did not get carried away with thoughts of doubt or pain. I realised that healing the mind was in fact paramount to healing any part of the body and that conventional medicine was really not required to treat my problem (though I really have nothing against conventional medicine and have the utmost respect for doctors). Within a few more weeks, I started slow jogging and by the time I had to leave, I was all set for an exciting career ahead.”
(The healing in fact was a long journey and often frustrating too. For the pain seemed to recur frequently after few days of pain-free period.
It was during one of these sessions, when we were trying to unravel the mystery of the recurrence of the problem, that it suddenly occurred to me – ‘Love your feet’ – and there was a dramatic inner change in his feet, as if a whole big burden had suddenly dropped off. From that point onwards, the healing took a different meaning, a subtle change in his perspective towards his body, his feet. An attitude of, ‘Why are these feet creating a problem for me?” changed to ‘Poor feet, they must be suffering with pain – what can I do to help them?” Earlier, getting back to training was the main agenda, now the focus slowly shifted to loving the body and taking care of it for its own sake. An attitude of using the body was slowly shifting to a deeper appreciation of the wonders of the body and a love for it).
“Today, I am living a dream. I am on my chosen path, and am indebted to the doctor who has taught me such a simple yet profound process. I found a new way to good health. I realise that healing is in fact truly in the mind and that loving the body, accepting it for what it is, is an integral step towards healing it with the power of the mind.
“The power of the mind to heal the body is in fact one of the most potent powers in the universe, if used the right away. I am fortunate that I was taught to use it the right way. Today, through my own experience, I hope to give the reader a sense of hope, a sense of belief in his or her own self that healing is very much within oneself, that the body is indeed capable of healing itself when conditioned the right way. If my experience helps even one soul in getting rid of his or her problem, I would consider myself truly fortunate. The good work done by this doctor should not stop with me – just like God’s Grace never ceases; it is eternally being transferred from human being to human being in this journey of life.”