A Spiritual Approach to Healing and Well-being

Our biological body is the most complete alchemical laboratory in existence. The human being is able to synthesize thousands of substances in its body. Each element corresponds to a precise process that involves physical, emotive, subtle and spiritual aspects. A complex relationship exists between physical organs, vital energies, the senses and the different essences that comprise our soul. Every part of the human being is essential to all others and each one is at the centre of a complex network of physical, mental and spiritual correspondences. Not only can we ideally be the Master of ourselves but we can also be Healers of our own body.

Natural medicine, in fact, with the aim of re-establishing the indispensible equilibrium for the conservation of health and well-being, considers that treating the individual in his or her entirety and in relation to the environment, produces a better result than merely treating the body as the simple sum of its parts. This approach is defined as ‘holistic’

According to traditional concepts, disease originates from an energetic imbalance caused by different factors: such lack of balance has repercussions on the psychic and nervous spheres and results in influencing  the physical.

From a spiritual point of view – but also psychological - a limited and confused awareness of ourselves and our bodies is already a kind of ‘disease’.

The body and the spirit are part of the same reality. Therefore disease in general terms, putting aside that which is severe, the result of particular circumstances, or of an extraordinary character – is ideally seen as a sign of imbalance and a lack of inner harmony. We can think of disease as the synchronic voice of our ‘inner master’ who provokes us to reflect on ourselves, our lives and values: the process of real healing therefore corresponds to a process of comprehension and personal growth.

According to traditions of ‘spiritual healing’ by ‘channelling Prana’ it is possible to re-establish the equilibrium that is indispensable to the conservation of health and well-being. According to spiritual traditions Prana arrives directly from the cosmos, from the sources of life: it is the archetype of well-being, the matrix of health. It corresponds to a state of vital, intelligent dynamic balance that can be simply identified with the ideal concepts of well-being and ‘feeling good’, without limiting the concept to a lack of disease but referring to it as a more complete sense of realization. Feeling ‘well’ in fact does not simply mean ‘not being ill’ but rather, attaining that cognitive, creative and spiritual potential inherent in human nature.

Prana is an energy that the healer channels in an ‘indifferent’ way, without using conjecture, the mind, or personal energy to interfere and without activating any personal capacity to heal, be it real or presumed.

The concept of ‘well-being’ – and the relative intervention – is more about prevention than therapy: the attention is all on the person, on life, on the expansion of well-being and not on the illness as such. Once having manifested, the illness requires suitable therapeutic measures, as non-invasive as possible, which take into account the type, urgency and severity of each case and the means that are available.

An intelligent integration of cures produces the maximum effect. The ‘healer’ in the guise of a mere ‘therapist’, which he is not really, should work in tandem with the doctor without disturbing the situation so that the process of healing can perfect itself because of the ‘upstream’ energetic intervention. In this way the disease does not reappear in different ways or places but is completely resolved.

The healer must not be a therapist but rather the ‘facilitator’ of a reawakening of consciousness, in which the client must be the responsible protagonist. A new found well-being cannot help but manifest as the natural consequence of this very radical process.

The work of the prana-therapist has therefore to be carried out in such a context and not end up in the plagiarism of diagnostic procedures and conventional medicine. Otherwise it risks only distinguishing itself in terms of the forms and instruments it uses and not from the concept. A concept which is focused on the organ, the symptom and the disease and therefore confirms an approach and therapeutic intervention that is basically physical (although working with bio-psycho-energetic instruments), rather than holistic.

The ‘healer’ – in a shamanic sense and I stand by my argument – is above all a bearer of Consciousness, who is also involved in a pathway of personal spiritual growth and is consequently able to help others to regain a state of harmony and conserve it. The healer acts on a spiritual, energetic and subtle plane, mostly preventative and eventually integrated and complementary, in perfect harmony with conventional therapeutic procedures. He/she does not enter into the merit of the diagnosis, or comment on the frame of mind of the doctor, or offer to specifically cure an illness, which could just be resolved through the natural consequences of a broader consciousness of the self.   

This kind of ‘healer’ does not transmit their own vital energy, but channels the universal energy, to encourage a process of Consciousness: the conscious reawakening in the person of their own energies, of their sense of responsibility, of their ‘inner healer’. It is the process of understanding the self which is true growth and which leads to the well-being of mind, body and spirit. A process that the healer also has to constantly undergo by working on his/herself.

Being a ‘healer’ means becoming a channel for vital energies (Prana) to encourage harmony, vigour and health in oneself and others. ‘Pranic’ energy, or an ideal model of universal balance and holistic well-being, is called upon and projected without using instruments or equipment of any kind, just oneself as a living bearer of energy and well-being.

The Sanskrit term Prana literally means life, and was later seen as breath. It is the archetype of health or better still of existential equilibrium and harmony.

The channelling of Prana therefore does not envisage a diagnosis and does not consist of a specific therapy. It is the flow of vital energy, which through resonance enables the existential equilibriums that preside over the well-being and evolution of mind, body and spirit ‘upstream’, to be maintained (or to re-establish) themselves.

It is important to remember that the aim is to prevent and not to cure, although applications of Prana can, if necessary, be harmonized with all kinds of therapeutic procedures. In such cases the objective is to ‘reawaken the healer’ that each of us has inside and foster a holistic process of understanding, the betterment of life, the relationship with oneself, surrounding reality and others.

Ideally the person is rendered autonomous and in turn becomes a Prana channel by learning and adopting certain meditation and breathing techniques.

           

In shamanic tradition the medicine-man sustains and transmits his ‘power’ by extolling his personal charisma, with the help of suggestions and expedients. In Africa, I personally attended some very bizarre methods practiced by a tribe of the Cameroon; afterwards the sorcerer confided his real opinion about  the phenomenon of healing to me, describing it as a phenomenon of consciousness: “The healer always lives inside of you, and in each case indirectly triggers a process of understanding in the person who is ill: this is what really happens, all the rest is just theatre”.

And even more interesting from the point of view of our metaphysics is the spiritual concept of ‘reconnection’ when applied to therapy. By removing the causes behind the disease the person moves to a new line of reality which also modifies the past: in this way, it is not that a person is ‘healed’ but rather that they move to a new line of existence in which they were never ill in the first place.