What is Self-Healing? And 9 Self-Healing Exercises.
Whether you’re looking to heal a recent heartbreak, traumatic event or your inner child, self-healing can be intimidating and overwhelming to some. It sounds like this vague concept that involves addressing heavy emotions.
Where to start? What does it entail? Will it even solve what needs you want to heal? Some may even feel “unqualified” to heal themselves. However, nobody can know yourself better than you; therefore, who’s better equipped to get the healing done than you?
Here are a few steps to starting an ongoing self-healing practice:
1. Understanding what self-healing is and what it is not
The idea of self-healing can be intimidating to some because this vague concept entails dealing with heavy-duty emotions or a never-ending task.
Ultimately, self-healing is about bringing into balance and kick-starting your internal recovery system, which you can achieve by tuning into your needs in mind, body and soul. However, you can only tune in by trusting yourself or put it another way by tuning into your intuition. How to tap into your intuition. Ensure you distinguish between your intuition and your ego: Intuition always leads us to become more integrated. The ego is fear-based and will do its best to keep us where we are.
2. Make space and time for your healing process.
You’ll need to make time to prepare a safe space to self-heal:
Time
Firstly, making time to heal doesn’t necessarily require a month-long sabbatical unless that’s what you need. In fact, it’s arguably more beneficial to dedicate yourself to a daily or even weekly practice to build up a habit. Consistency is far more enriching than faddy, stop-start approaches.
Secondly, you’ll need a clear headspace to identify what needs healing. You’ll better equip yourself to identify and address what needs healing by being more self-aware. One of the best ways to cultivate the requisite stillness is through meditation, but I know this is only for some. So, even walks in nature, a long bath, or simply sitting for five minutes with a cup of tea is sufficient.
Living space
Everybody is different, but for some, the state of their headspace reflects in their living environment. You might notice that when some people are internally unsettled, their chaotic living environment reflects their state of mind.
Working from a calming ‘blank slate’ will be far easier.
What’s more, you can kill two birds with one stone, as some find cleaning a meditative practice; it can be a time to think. Also, getting rid of clutter that brings back difficult memories in itself can be healing for some.
Make sure you love your living space; it doesn’t have to be perfect or perfectly clean, but if there’s anything that reminds you of a bad period in your life, let it go. You can always pass it on to someone who can benefit from it.
What do I do if I don’t know where to start decluttering my home?
After your decluttering process, we strongly suggest cleansing your space. How do I cleanse my home?
3. The Power of Now
In the past few years, “being present” has become something of a buzzword. Being present starts with clearing your headspace and head clutter. You might have heard that being overly organised is detrimental to our intuition. But remember that everybody is different. Some find that being too organised cramps their creativity and intuition. Others find that being organised and not worrying about the mundane unleashes their intuition and creativity. Figure out what works for you.
If you’re the latter type, transferring your future plans onto paper in a planner or being highly organised will allow you to free some headspace to receive healing intuitive messages. A little structure won’t harm the soul. Maybe having a regimented routine is what you need to be able to listen to yourself.
4. Raise your vibration and clear up your energy
The higher your energy or vibrational frequency, the lighter you feel in your physical, emotional and mental bodies. Raising your vibration doesn’t work like a magic pill that makes all your difficulties and challenges disappear; on the contrary, it usually makes you more aware of what is out of balance, but it makes you much better equipped to deal with these issues. Here are some simple but highly effective methods when you want to know how you can raise your vibration:
- Interacting with nature
- Eating a clean diet.
- Listen to upbeat music.
- Do a digital detox
- Practice yoga
- Try breath work
- Practise gratitude
- Cut energetic cords that no longer serve you or drain you. Need help cutting cords?
- Protect your energy space
- Cleanse energetically using your cleansing method of choice (sage, palo santo, aura spray, or incense)
- Surround yourself with good people, good thoughts, good ideas, good ideals, and good music.
5. Take all the time you need to self-heal
Don’t place unnecessary pressure on yourself to fully heal in a short period of time; give yourself time. The road to recovery will take time, something you will need to work on consistently and continuously—it’s about the journey rather than the destination. One helpful way to think about it is not as an arduous and grim mountain climb; instead, see yourself standing on a balance board, whereby you’re becoming more aware and sensitive of where to push and where to pull back for greater equilibrium.
Self-healing is a process and spiritual practice. It’s a practice that teaches us to listen to our intuition before accepting external feedback.
6. Identify what needs healing
To self-heal, one must first identify what needs healing.
- Journaling: What needs to be acknowledged, addressed, and processed? You can start by taking some time to be alone and journaling. Map out areas of your life you feel need to be healed. What emotions come up? Separation, loss, grief, guilt, fear?
- Self-healing guided workbooks: If journaling on blank paper sounds overwhelming, working with prompts in guided “self-healing” workbooks might be helpful for you. Plenty of workbooks and guided journals in the market, composed by experts in healing, could be incredible. A map of what aspects of your life, rather than yourself, need healing is a great start. Guided journal prompts are an excellent way to dig deeper.
- Tracing the roots of your limiting beliefs: You can start by listing what you wish to manifest and then asking yourself what limiting beliefs are preventing you from manifesting. Your limiting beliefs could be rooted in a self-concept that needs healing.
- By Chakra: If you’re familiar with the Chakra system, you can identify parts of yourself that need to be healed by classifying them based on their Chakra associations. You can start healing from the root chakra up, healing your foundational base needs, and moving upward to the higher realms. Here is another technique I use:
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- Place your hands over a given chakra, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths to settle yourself.
- As you tune into your energy centre, ask yourself what impressions you’re receiving. This guidance might come through as images, shapes, words or feelings. Allow them to flow without judgment and without trying to rationalise what they mean.
- Take time to journal the messages you received and reflect on what they are directing you to.
- Use Tarot to tap into your subconscious: Perform a reading on yourself, all by yourself, and listen to yourself.
- Get a past-life reading or try a past-life regression session: You may need to heal old wounds you’ve been carrying throughout your lifetimes.
Allow yourself to feel; it’s okay to get emotional.
7. Acknowledge what needs healing
Be mindful of how your soul’s wounds manifest in your day-to-day interactions and reactions. Acknowledgement is an integral part of any healing, whether assisted or self-led.
By being more self-aware of the issues that need healing, you will be more able to better articulate your issues to a therapist or practitioner should you wish to see one along your healing journey.
Don’t fall victim to the “toxic positivity” trap. Acknowledging negative feelings will not make you manifest more negativity in your life. Owning the negativity and purifying oneself of it is required for manifestation.
Know that it’s okay to feel your feelings.
8. Address the wounding
Once you’ve taken time to feel your feelings, there are several things you can do:
- Ask yourself whether you can do anything in the 3D to heal the situation. For example, if you’re struggling with guilt, can you ask for forgiveness from the people or parties you feel guilt toward? If they are no longer with us, work on forgiving yourself. Or, you could try to communicate with them through the assistance of a Medium.
- Use positive affirmations.
- Book in for a spiritual energy healing.
- Have a sound bath or gong bath. These techniques are brilliant at raising your vibration and giving space for revelations and breakthroughs.
- Go on a retreat. Taking yourself out of your usual routine and surroundings can be an excellent way to reflect, be with like-minded people, and not think about your day-to-day commitments. Looking for the best spiritual retreats UK?
- Get to know your inner child, talk to them, ask them what they want, and ask how they’re doing.
- Do your shadow work (there are guided journals for this, too). What is Shadow work?
- You may also use the Tarot and oracles to help you see what needs to be healed.
- Ask for guidance from your Spirit Team, if you’re in touch with them, and your intuition. Who are my Spirit Guides?
- Get creative; express yourself through art.
- Share your healing process if you’re comfortable doing so.
- Focus on the future and create beautiful memories.
However, if you choose to address the wounding, make sure:
- You are kind to yourself; self-compassion is key.
- Forgive yourself; don’t beat yourself up!
- Be gentle with yourself, practice self-love, and treat yourself along the process.
- Take breaks, and don’t force yourself to soldier on dealing with the memories and emotions.
9. Seek guidance and assistance if necessary
Although intuition is indeed all-knowing, and ego limits and prevents us from accepting external input, self-healing is a practice that teaches us to listen to our intuition before taking eternal feedback. It does not, by any means, mean that you shouldn’t seek help from therapists, practitioners, spiritual healers, and, most importantly, your support system. Self-healing and assisted therapy are not mutually exclusive. Ideally, they work together.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed or you need help processing, many professionals and practitioners can guide you. From therapists to energy workers to experts in past-life regression, they’re all available to assist you along the way. If you’re not interested in having a therapist or practitioner work one-on-one with you, working with a support group of peers may be better suited.
Self-healing means you decide where you want to head, what you want to address, and how you want to address it.
Happy healing!
