Sickness, injuries and even disease can be powerful catalysts for our own growth and healing. This requires us to be open to working with our bodies and receptive to the deeper messages that lie beneath our symptoms.
I was recently reminded of everything I teach and practice when I was sick with COVID. I wanted to share some of the things I did to heal faster and likely avoid any lingering symptoms.
Here are five tips that might seem slightly unconventional, but are very effective and that I used to feel symptom free in less than a week.
Try these next time you’re feeling sick, run down or for general healing.
- Uncover the Underlying Issue
Your body always gets sick for a reason. It’s not random.
When you’re looking to relieve symptoms and speed up healing, start by asking yourself what what in your life needs your attention? Where are you playing small, ignoring your own desires or following someone else’s ideas or opinions over your inner knowing?
Maybe you’ve side-lined your self care, been lax with your boundaries or have been pushing your body too hard.
What emotions have you avoided feeling? Where have you not been speaking up or following your intuition?
Illness is a sign that you’re out of alignment with something in your life. It’s an invitation to slow down and increase your awareness.
Ultimately, illness is a gift. The key is stop fighting it or feeling sorry for yourself and surrender to what is.
The more you hate on your body or decide you’ll just push through regardless of how you feel, the longer it takes to heal. Your body heals when it feels safe and supported to do so. Your job is to provide it with this environment.
If you feel like you don’t have time to be sick, this is an invitation to look more closely at how you’ve crafted your life.
- Feel What’s Going On and Be Open to Releasing it
Sickness is an invitation to focus on yourself. Your body is creating time for you to take inventory and release the things that are no longer a good fit for you.
What doesn’t feel good to you anymore? What have you been avoiding thinking about, feeling or experiencing? What are you afraid to let go of?
For me, I had been pushing forward in a masculine energy for a long time. I was leading with fear instead of trusting and allowing life to naturally flow.
This imbalance felt uncomfortable to me for a long time, but I ignored it, thinking I had to keep pushing in order to see results (Yes, healers are still healing too!).
Getting sick causes us to stop completely and I was finally able to surrender to the pace my body requested.
My healing work involved digging into the underlying beliefs that were supporting my need to push through and then shifting them into beliefs around trust and releasing the need to control the outcome. I also completely leaned into what my body was asking for at any given minute, even if it seemed totally silly.
It was a week of surrendering to the present moment and dropping any expectations or to-dos. My body showed me exactly how to rebalance my life. I just had to be present and follow the pings.
There are many ways to shift and release energy when you’re healing.
Journaling, talking through what’s bothering you with a friend, mentor or therapist or talking out loud to yourself are all very effective.
You can also try gentle, intuitive movement, singing, dancing, intentional breathwork and spending time in nature. These all encourage you to drop into your body and get your energy moving.
For me, cleaning out closets and getting rid of anything that felt heavy also helped shift my energy.
- Honor Your Body
Things like sleep, hydration and nutrition are so important, but they’re also highly individualized. I’m not going to dig into them in detail here because there are so many resources out there. I will say that the perfect diet and supplements won’t replace doing your inner work and shifting your energy.
When you’re sick, it’s important to treat your body like royalty. If you want your life to feel amazing, do this every day!
Think of your body like a friend who’s hurting. Your job is to listen to what it needs and provide it with love and support.
Kind thoughts, gratitude and loving actions are powerful healing tools. Beating up on your body knocks your nervous system out of its healing state.
- Stay Grounded
When you’re ungrounded, it’s very difficult to connect to your body.
Essentially your awareness is outside of yourself, making it challenging to know what your body needs. These are the moments when you’re staring at your phone or the TV, mindlessly eating, reacting to someone without thinking first or when you’re doing something on autopilot.
Your goal right now is to bring your attention back to your body as often as you can.
Practice this by focusing on your breath, taking a walk outside or enjoying a bath or shower. If you find your focus frequently wanders off, try stopping in place and bring your focus back to your immediate surroundings. Then tune in to your senses, one at a time, naming what you experience.
- Move Your Energy
We feel good when our energy is flowing. When you get sick, it’s often because energy is blocked and isn’t flowing freely through your body. Think of it like placing a huge log in the middle of a stream. Water pools up behind it and the river doesn’t flow as quickly or as smoothly.
To get things flowing, give yourself an energy bath.
Sit quietly with your eyes closed and take 10 deep, slow breaths.
Once you feel relaxed, connect with the energy of love (you can think of a favorite person, place or pet) and visualize a steady stream of loving golden white light flowing through the crown of your head and slowly moving down your body.
You might feel some areas that need more of this light than others. Stop and allow the light to penetrate here.
Visualize it spreading throughout your body, healing and strengthening your chakras and immune system.
Alternately, you can draw healing energy from the earth up through your feet and into your body. I love to stand in the sun, barefoot and practice this.
If something uncomfortable bubbles into your awareness, just allow yourself to fully feel it, bring it to the surface and then exhale and release it into the Universe. Then picture the golden light filling up this space.
Give these a try and let me know how you feel!
