Healing is Experiential

The healing ceremonies, common to many Native American traditions, in which community members come together to support a person’s process towards balance, is such a profound form of healing, a fully embodied experience. Profound not only from the feeling of support and validation from the community, but also the rituals that may involve ingesting or smelling herbs and the passage of extended time in this process. I participated in such a ceremony for a Native friend who was facing his addiction to drugs and depression, and this process changed me, and certainly brought him a new place to stand in the world.

 I use lots of vitamins and minerals in my holistic health practice, as they help balance bodily systems and methylation pathways. A good supplement program can balance on a deep physiological level. Yet, I am more and more looking for other ways to balance these pathways, as I now think that experience is a central feature of healing. Using an essential oil, inhaling their mysterious and dense scents is a full-on experience. You are in relationship with that plant, with the quintessence of that plant. I also work with tuning forks as these can balance and clear energies in and around the body and provide experience also. A fork on the body is extremely calming and shifts one’s whole orientation.

 I don’t want to reduce the importance of supplements, because I do value them highly, ingest them every day. They are essential since crops are grown in severely depleted soils, meaning our food lacks necessary minerals, vitamins, and amino acids. But the pharmaceutical industrialized healing enterprise knows nothing of experience as healer. Popping a pill to fix a symptom doesn’t have the same rootedness in source that methylation works carries.

This age of Netflix and video games and porn is characterized by the virtual experience, which isn’t a real body one. Screens and their content become highly addicting and can make the real world look unappealing. But that’s a very slippery danger, as this virtual flat world is the pinnacle of dependency, of being owned and controlled by the zombie machine corporate all powerful. Take a walk, do yoga, see a friend, touch the ground, meditate, have sex, write a book and have an experience.