What Does Healing Actually Mean?
We hear the word healing more and more.
Healing journeys.
Healing retreats.
Healing practices.
Healing spaces.
But what does healing actually mean?
It is one of the most commonly used words in spiritual and wellness spaces, yet it is rarely defined.
So let’s begin with two definitions.
1. Wikipedia Definition
According to Wikipedia:
Healing is the process of the restoration of health from an unbalanced, diseased, damaged, or unvitalised organism.
In medical contexts this usually refers to the body repairing itself-tissues regenerating, wounds closing, and normal function being restored.
This definition focuses largely on physical repair. Which of course, is an important part of healing.
2. A Broader Definition Through The Lens of Yoga
Another way to understand healing, through the lens of yoga, which is a framework for whole being healing and integration is this:
Healing is the process of restoring wholeness - physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually - through self-awareness, relationship, care and time.
Through the lens of yoga, healing is not simply about removing symptoms. It is about integration.
When we begin to heal, we begin to become more aware of our patterns, attachment styles, our nervous systems responses, and the ways we learned to protect ourselves.
Through this awareness, we start to let down the armours of our self protective behaviours (eg control, perfectionism) and responses (eg defensive, reactive) and start to soften.
Over time, self-reflection and practice, we return to a deeper sense of wholeness.
We meet all parts of ourselves with care and compassion as we realise that there is nothing to fix.
In many modern wellness spaces, healing has become quite westernised and primarily about the body - fixing pain, increasing performance or optimising health.
But many traditional healing systems offer a deeper experience of healing. Practices such as yoga, Aryuveda, acupuncture, kinesiology and indigenous modalities, view healing as a process of removing blockages so that life force can move freely through the system.
When that life force - called prana, chi, or vital energy - is flowing, we experience greater vitality, lightness of being, creativity and a renewed sense of connection to life.
Healing is not about becoming perfect but allowing life to move through us again.
But here’s the thing, healing usually happens slowly and over time.
It becomes less about fixing ourselves and more about coming back into relationship with who we really are as our deepest, truest selves.
Unfortunately, in many modern wellness spaces there are false promises of overnight transformations, break-throughs and quick fixes, and this sense, that healing is outside of ourselves, and something that we have to do or achieve.
True healing is a return to wholeness and requires us to turn within for self-reflection and the integration of our experiences that allow us to feel a deeper sense of balance, connection and stability to ourselves and life itself.
It does not mean our life path will be perfect, or without challenges along the way and it is certainly not something that we can purchase, chase or achieve externally.
Ultimately healing is a gradual unfolding of awareness that brings up home to ourselves.