There are two parts to healing. I will first explain in terms of pain from muscle imbalances. The same applies to healing the rest of your body and mind as well — it will be touched on at the end.
First is to identify the pain. Like I’ve mentioned many times before, the body has a natural ability to heal. Whatever we can feel, we can heal.
The problem is that as life is busy, we often disregard the initial sensation of pain and keep pushing on. As a coping mechanism, the mind cuts off connection with this part of the body to stop experiencing the agony. We stop feeling this area. The healing stops too. As a result, there are a lot of “hidden” pains inside our body. It doesn’t bother you right now. But if it’s not healing, then it’s deteriorating. A lot of injuries that occur “suddenly” often have been brewing like this for a long time, and slowly deteriorated beyond the breaking point.
When we take time to suspend our thoughts, the sensation of pain can rise to the surface of our awareness, and the body can start to heal again.
To uncover the “hidden” pains takes practice. The practice of yoga poses places our body in positions to heighten awareness in different parts of the body. The more variety of poses we do, the more we can uncover. The practice of meditation trains the mind to be still. The less we think, the more we can feel and heal.
Healing alone is not enough. It fixes the problem. But if we don’t remove the cause, the problem will keep coming back. Pain is caused by repeating the wrong action over and over for a long time. We get upper back pain from hunching forward working at a desk. We can relieve the upper back pain by taking a break to let it heal. But if we keep going back to work with a hunched upper back, the damage will keep negating the healing. It will not get better.
So to complete the healing process, we also need to correct the wrong actions. In this case, we can work on strengthening the upper back postural muscles to help us sit with a more upright spine. Then the pain will stop getting worse, and by making time to heal, it will truly start to get better.
As mentioned in the beginning, this healing is not limited to your muscles. As you deepen your yoga practice, you can feel the subtle discomforts in your physiology, and your mind too. Whatever your mind can feel, it can heal. With yoga practice, what you really develop is the capacity for observation — to be observant of your whole life as well. Everything you do in daily life could be causing you problems: the food you ingest, the environment you are in, the information you ingest, the thoughts you formulate, etc. Observe and notice what’s causing you pain. Experiment with small changes to see what adjustments you can make to remove the causes.
Healing is simple. Observe, notice, and remove the cause of pain, and take time to meditate to let the body heal naturally. Keep going through this process, and you will experience less and less afflictions in life.
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