let’s redefine healing.

the word heal has its origins in the old english and german languages. it literally means “to make whole.” often we think of healing as the ending of a thing — some kind of pain, rupture, or discontent. but to make something whole sounds like a beginning, to me.

when i think of wholeness, my mind zooms out to touch the edges of what i know. the edge of my skin, the city i live in, the edge of the river, this continent, neptune and pluto, the center of our galaxy, the infinite black of space. as my mind stretches to feel included in the vastness of stephen hawking’s genius ponderings about the universe, my breath softens, my chest widens, i feel more connected to my gut. there is something, somehow, transformative about the experience of wholeness, even if it seems merely conceptual. i suspect, however, that this imaginal widening is not merely conceptual, but an integrated, lived experience of wholeness — a brief moment of healing.

of course, when we attempt to widen out beyond the rings of saturn, we encounter the inevitable — war, genocide, famine, deforestation, mass extinction, and the infinite details of human and interspecial suffering on this planet. when i connect my heart to the gaza strip, it begins to race, it gets heavy, it hurts. i think of the folks i know who have suffered institutional violence, i remember my ancestors who lived in chains.

so if wholeness includes this complex map of miseries, how does healing get such a good reputation? and how does it work in our favor?

i won’t claim to know exactly how or why the widening of one’s perceptual field helps to bring the nervous system out of states of fight, flight, freeze and into rest, repair, digest — but i know it does indeed work. i’ve seen it work. i’ve felt it work with my own hands. i’ve orchestrated its potency with my own voice.

there is something ineffable about recognizing that there is a beyond beyond this limited perception of here and now that organizes our metabolic field into coherence — circulation improves, cellular respiration increases, damaged nerves reintegrate, dehydrated tissues find nourishment. it is as if somewhere out there, like way out there, there is a right now that is well — a right now that mirrors the spontaneously joyful emergence of a new leaf in spring, the first sight of crocuses, the simple delight of a ripe mango.

health, i think, is not about the end of all human suffering, or even our own. it is about remembering that within the field of all that is, there is something else happening that is magical, that is pleasant, that is truly transformative and good. when we can touch even for a moment this alternative, but very present reality, we are healing — we are made whole.

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