Healing and Spirituality - What's the Connection?

Sneaking just around the corner of our consciousness is the notion that grandma might have been right all along.  Strange remedies, gentle and sometimes not-so-gentle cures, sound advice, lots of love, and regular visits to church, synagogue, mosque, and other places of worship.  Grandma, now, in hindsight, seems to have known it all.

Who is Grandma?  Whether she’s Native American, an old Chinese sage, a Hindu shepherd, a Greek fisherman, Grandma is Grandma throughout the world and the ages.  She has the secrets that science is now revealing and giving us permission to experiment with.

It’s not just the chicken soup; it’s the chicken soup with Grandma’s love.  It’s not the tea; it’s the tea after a long, happy, loving walk home from church.  It’s not just the herbs; it’s the herbs that were grown in Mother Earth by Grandma, with love, respect and honor for all living things.

My Grandma prepared a concoction of Venduzes: scary, the preparation and the procedure.  Any pulmonary problem and here we go:  lie on our stomach with our backs exposed. Here’s the recipe:  thick-walled drinking glass; butter knife wrapped in rag and tied with string; glass of alcohol; burning candle.  Here’s the procedure:  dip rag/knife in alcohol; light it with candle; place burning knife in glass and swoosh around, removing all the oxygen; fast place glass open-end on back; our skin gets sucked up (a little) into glass; keep going with more glasses.  When Grandma is done, she removes the glasses, and voila! we’re better!  For Real!

Think back.  What about your Grandma?  What “home-made” remedy did she have for you?  I’m sure that she did.  Keep thinking.  What else did she do?  Oh, yeah, she LOVED YOU.  She MADE YOU LAUGH.  She FORGAVE YOU.  She SAID PRAYERS WITH YOU. 

What do we all have in common, from the jungle, to the prairie, to the sheep-covered mountains, to the desert, to the city?  We call our religions and our philosophies by name, to identify them so that we can relate to them as ours, but we all truly believe the same thing.  We all come from the same place. 

Love of Mother Earth.  Take only what we need.  Put back into the Earth what we will not use.  Connect with Her. 

Turn our eyes upward to the Heavens.  Experience the wonder, the majesty, the vast glory of the Universe.  Stand.  Feel.  Know the energy that exists above and below us.   Connect to that energy.

Yoga. Chi Kung. Reiki. Therapeutic touch.  Pipe Ceremony.  The power of prayer.  Bio-energetics.  Massage.  Mantras.  Medicine Wheels. Reflexology.  The movement of  internal energy for the purpose of healing.  These modalities are now being studied, analyzed, cross-tabulated, labeled, insured.  We have succeeded in complicating the simple.  It is merely ENERGY.  These, and countless other methods, are tools to awaken, channel, focus and utilize our energy for our health and for the healing of others.

Which is CORRECT?  Of course, all are.  Energy is energy and the channeling of that energy can be studied and cultivated over time.  It is the practitioner’s INTENT that is the primary force behind the healing technique.  It is not merely the Venduzes; it is the movement of energy, the clearing of internal pathways (meridians) that is the healing mechanism.  My Grandma didn’t know the word meridians.  But yours might have.  My Grandma and yours, regardless of their nationalities, their races, their belief systems, or their concoctions, would have been friends.  They would have SHARED their knowledge, their procedures, and their remedies.  Without saying specifically, they would have known that their commonality rested in their knowledge of Energy and would never have even used the word.  They would have drawn their knowledge from observation of Earth, from an innate respect and love for Her, and the resulting modalities would have emerged.

Our healing abilities lie within us and are empowered by our beliefs and our spirituality.  It is our connection to ourselves, each other, and nature which empower the practitioners of “Alternative Methods.”   For my Grandma and yours, they are NOT the alternative; they are the Way.  The Taoist Way is the Native American Way is the ancient Greek Way is the Zulu Way is the Zen Way.

On your path to Spirituality, do not forget your Healing.  While you heal, do not lose your Spirituality.  Brain surgeon.  Priest.  Medicine Man.  Simply be still. Quiet.  Feel the Earth below and the Heavens above and allow the loving energy to move through you as part of your preparation for your day’s work.  Recognize that you are a part of it all, and that you are all of it.   Respect the knowledge obtained in the thousands of years before you stood where you stand doing what you do.

And, whenever in doubt, ask Grandma.