AwarenessHeals

Greetings for the New Year. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas connecting with family and friends and that the year is starting off with great energy and promise.

Here in my area of Vancouver, we have been blessed with brilliant sunny, crisp, calm weather – perfect for walks in nature. And Nature put on a dazzling display!

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Perspective is everything.   Consider if you are fighting the disease that you are fighting yourself because the disease is part of you.  The more you fight, the more stress, the less possibility of healing. Rather than fighting the disease consider approaching it with curiosity to understand why it has shown up and what it might be trying to tell you.

Whom or what are you fighting?  Ask yourself – are you blaming others or your circumstances?  are you blaming your body?  are you blaming yourself because of lifestyle sins you think you have made?  Blaming, complaining, fighting are all energy drains and add stress and do not provide the necessary self-reflection that can move you toward understanding and solutions.  Do whatever you can, as quickly as you can, to let go of these non-helpful reactions.

The disease is what it is.  First step is to recognize it as your reality for the moment, that it has shown up for a reason.  Be willing to take ‘response-ability’ for it showing up – not that you are at fault or have done anything wrong but rather that it is the outcome of an unconsciously held pattern of stress or program of belief.

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It’s been a stormy time here on the west coast.  We are now enjoying the calm after the storm.   I hope your life is calm for you.  And if not right now, my wish for you is that you find resources to support resolution of whatever may be troubling you and to restore your own inner calm.

A crisp clear day in mid November – blueberry fields, Pitt Meadows, BC

I have been enjoying several opportunities to network with others and find common ground and support for collaboration.  I am looking forward to  sharing my message of self-healing more widely with video, interviews and with my writing and speaking.  Please watch my Facebook page and blog posts in the coming weeks.

The article this month is a true life story of a courageous woman’s healing journey and how her healing helped many in her family to heal as well.  As I have written before, the greatest gift for those you love is the gift of your own healing.  It is a gift of love for yourself and for those around you.

I want to highlight an upcoming live event for those of you living in the Vancouver lower mainland and Fraser Valley area – Soul Talks – a day of ‘TED’ talks for the soul – on Saturday, November 29th.  For details and how to register at Soul Talks event on Facebook.  Hope to see you there.

Finally, I have made a few new recommendations for book resources.

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Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete acknowledgment with it -  Dr. Nelie Johnson is a family physician and facilitator for healing – inspiring and guiding people to heal their life and heal their body.  She is a contributing author to a bestselling book and provides seminars, workshops, and private consultations.

I recently had the opportunity to hear a story from a woman, I call her ‘Diane’, who healed herself and as she did so, it helped many members in her family to heal also.

Diane described to me that she had a ‘rough upbringing’.  Her alcoholic Dad died when she was just 4 years old.  Her mother went to work to raise her daughter and two older children.  In addition, Mother, I’ll call her Susan, was manic-depressive whose several boyfriends over the years emotionally and sexually abused Diane.

Diane grew up feeling traumatized, really alone and abandoned not only because her Mom was away at work and not protecting her but also because her two brothers who were several years older didn’t want her tagging along with them.  In her teen years she was acting out – hanging out with a wild crowd, drinking and taking drugs.  She felt not worth taking care of.

She married young and attempted to marry someone better than herself.  The marriage didn’t last long, a little more than 2 years.  However, now she had a child to care for.  Although she stopped using drugs and excessive alcohol since age of 17, she struggled with depression.   Her overall sense of herself all her life was that she was ‘damaged goods’.

After her second child in a second marriage (and she is still married to the child’s father), Diane became severely depressed and suicidal.  She was poised to jump off a ladder with a noose around her neck, ready to hang herself but her dog stopped her.  He put his paws on her feet. In that moment, Diane knew she was being asked to choose life and with the help of counselling she chose to live and to committed to a spiritual journey to reconnect with her true self and with a sense of belonging in the world.

Over the next several years she took personal development courses and spiritual workshops.  She uncovered a core belief that she was not lovable  and as she let go of that belief, she grew in self-love and self-esteem to find solid foundation of peace within herself.

An even bigger shift came when she connected with her deep feelings of abandonment and realized that it was primarily her mother’s issue.  Susan, her mother, had lost both her parents at a young age and married in her teens, lost her husband to alcohol in her 20s and had a number of failed relationships.

What was astounding for Diane was that during the days she was releasing her feelings of abandonment, Susan reported to her later that during the same period she was confined to her bed for three days with a severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea and felt surprisingly well and much lighter afterwards.  Also at the same time, what was remarkable and most touching for Diane was her mother expressed to her for the very first time – “ I am sorry that I didn’t love you as a child.”

Susan, now in her mid 70s, is seeing a counsellor and is starting to heal.  Also Diane’s daughter who has struggled with low self-esteem and depression, like her mother and grandmother before her, is taking steps for her own healing.

With great insight, Diane expressed to me the following -  “ Mom just didn’t have the strength to heal.  I was the one that had to go first.  As I did my healing, I freed up my Mom and my daughter to do their own healing. I am grateful to finally break the chain of this behaviour in my family. ”

I thanked Diane for sharing her courageous story with me and allowing me to share it with others.   In my work with people, I have witnessed similar breakthroughs and the ripple effect of benefit it has for those around them.

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Want to use this article in your ezine or website? You can, as long as you include this complete acknowledgment with it -  Dr. Nelie Johnson is a family physician and facilitator for healing – inspiring and guiding people to heal their life and heal their body.  She is a contributing author to a bestselling book and provides seminars, workshops, and private consultations.

A lot is made of October as breast cancer awareness month.  Why only breast cancer?  Why not cancer awareness month?

I started thinking how the language we use directs our focus.  What about a Healing Awareness Month?

I have been writing and speaking for years about breast cancer, and about cancer and disease in general, and doing whatever I can to bring people’s attention to a healing perspective.

Here’s an all too common and repeating scenario. I use the example of breast cancer but I could use any cancer or serious health concern.

A woman is found to have breast cancer.  Her initially response is shock, perhaps disbelief – ‘why me?  what did I do to deserve this?’

Her fear and stress rise as she reviews what she has heard about breast cancer – how common it is, how disfiguring and sickening the medical treatments are.  She fears the disease and she fears the treatment for it and she fears the consequences if she does not do the maximum medical therapy.  And she fears dying, and how devastating that would be for her, her family and loved ones.

This patient goes through treatment – surgery, chemo and radiation therapy and perhaps Tamoxifen.  In addition she meets with a naturopath and changes her diet and takes nutritional supplements.  She takes steps to reduce her stress with yoga, meditation and exercise.

She gets a good result.  And yet she remains in fear – fear that the cancer might recur.   Where is the peace?  Where is healing in this scenario?  It does not have to be this way. [Read more...]

The more I support and guide people in their healing journey, the more I learn about the process of healing and how to help people experience it.

I can provide very similar information and mentorship to clients and some engage fully and heal and others don’t.   Why is this?

I am reminded of a maxim my own physician mentor and trainer in this healing modality emphasized – “ Healing does not depend on what you know, or what you understand, or even what you believe.  Healing depends on what you do. “

In the last year I have been working with a client, (I’ll call him James) who has a degenerative neurologic disease, similar to MS.  By the time he contacted me his condition had deteriorated such that he could no longer drive and was soon after wheelchair dependent.   He had exhausted medical and alternative therapies and his doctors advised him that they had nothing more to offer him.

Within a very few sessions, I was able to piece together the pattern of stress that resulted in triggering the disease as well as reveal to James that he had resolved the original trauma and had moved on in his life.  Well then, why was the condition continuing to worsen? [Read more...]