The word healing has its roots in the Greek word ‘holos’, the same word that has given us ‘whole’ and ‘holistic’.  Healing is the expression of wholeness, health is wholeness.  The experience and expression of this quality can only come from within the individual, it never comes from an outer source such as a therapist or teacher.  Just as all paths of spiritual development tell us to look within, so for our healing we must look to our inner selves.

Health is also the expression of integrated being that a person embodies.  The emotions, thought-life and spiritual flow are as important to health as is the state of organs and tissues within the body.  Whether we are concerned about being healthy, regaining health or moving to a greater health, the whole of the being is involved.

The person who is ‘ill’ is in fact the healer.  Aid can be sought from ‘experts’, whether allopaths or herbalists, psychotherapists, nutritionists or witch doctors, but the responsibility for healing can never be truly handed to anyone other than the person desiring healing.  Healing comes from within, from truly embracing the life that flows within us.  Herbs will aid in this process, but healing is inherent in being alive.  It is our gift and our responsibility.  This may come as a surprise to most of us, conditioned as we are to hand our power over to ‘experts’, whether they are doctors or politicians.  In healing as in all life, we are free, and we are the divinely empowered authority for the process of our unfolding lives.

Healing is rarely an act of consciously harnessing inner energy and light, but is always a release and expression of this inner power.  Whilst the healing process is unique, an expression of life in a person, this miraculous event can be facilitated by various tools and techniques.  Numerous therapies have been developed throughout the unfoldment of human culture which have much to offer as healing arts.  However, these do not heal.  They can only aid the body with its own innate healing power.

A key to all self-healing is compassion.  Expressing compassion for oneself creates an inner ease and clear perspective from which much can change and heal.  Compassion grows in an openness to spirit in one’s life.  The form is not important.  The ineffable must be part of one’s experience or subtle, must be actively present in one’s experience and expression.  This may take the form of meditation, prayer or whatever works for each of us.  The form is irrelevant, the content and attitude crucial.  Openness to the experience of soul and spirit is healing, and affirms wholeness of being.

Some material referenced from The New Holistic Herbal, David Hoffman