Dear beloved community,
This has been a painful week amidst a painful time. I am struck by the depth of healing and transformation we need in our community. Justice for George Floyd is only the beginning. We also need to rebalance our community – restoring how we relate to each other and where we live.
Complementary therapies, just as with physical healing, will be an integral part of the success of our actions.
The power of complementary healing registered in my bones when I was healing from cancer over ten years ago. I am grateful that doctors offered surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Yet I see these medical treatments as interventions that bought me time. They didn’t touch the suffering in my heart that I feel was connected to my illness.
I sought out complementary healers, most significantly Master Lin at Spring Forest Qigong, to help me get to the energetic root of what was making me sick. Over the course of a few months of very intensive healing work I experienced a huge shift in how I understand my place in the universe and my role in it. My spirit felt healed.
I had major, complex surgery with uncertain outcomes. (You might have noticed the scar on my neck and chest.) To everyone’s surprise, it was miraculously successful and I have been in remission ever since. I had excellent doctors AND excellent healers and together they made something great happen.
Right now the Twin Cities is having a crisis which is being felt across the country. We need our literal and figurative firefighters. We need to literally sweep up the streets and also clean up our public policies.
We also need to heal the heart of what is making us so sick as a community. One of my favorite guideposts is this graphic by Movement Generation. Scarcity, hierarchy, and competition are deeply embedded in our reflexes and worldviews. It’s not who I want to be, but it’s the soup we’ve all been raised in and it is very powerful. It’s in our official and unspoken theologies. It governs how we organize our families, communities, and policies.
In order to build a society based on care and compassion, we need to teach our bodies what reciprocity and mutuality feels like on a cellular level. It’s funny that such a desirable-sounding destination is actually quite difficult to achieve. While we might intellectually embrace the idea of our inter-being, it is another thing to embody it.
Changed hearts and changed policies together hold the potential to transform our community.
The wisdom traditions from around the world can guide us in the art of inner transformation. Wisdom guides us back to remembering who we are, our purpose, and how we are to be with one another.
“You were born a healer,†as Master Lin frequently reminds his students. We each can do so much for our own personal healing and to help our friends heal. We can also help our community heal through our love.
Over the past few days I have been offering special meditations for healing to the Twin Cities and to the world. I’m so grateful to everyone who has joined me. There is one more meditation scheduled for tonight. It is free and open to all – please join me. The link is included in my newsletter but if you didn’t get it you can register here.
My goal is to empower you to be a love radiator in the world. Our community is faced with a complex, high-stakes healing crisis. Let us combine our prayers with skilled action so together we might experience a miraculous recovery.
Love,
emily
Healing meditations every week with Healing Waters Qigong
We are meeting outside at a social distance AND streaming online. Learn more.
Dancing for healing and transformation
Joy, resilience, and deep connection are some of the gifts that come from dancing traditional dances from the Balkans, Greece, and Asia Minor. We dance outside at a social distance. Learn more about the Wisdom Dances Circle.
