My Approach to Wellness

My approach to wellness and healing is based on the principle of basic goodness – that when a space is created where each person gets to be heard and acknowledge for what is important to them, healing and reconciliation naturally follow. This process is not unique to humans, it can be recognized in all aspects of nature. When the natural processes of life are allowed to fulfill their actual potential, a sustainable balance arises that is diverse and reflects nature’s innate capacity to move towards health and wholeness. This principle is expressed well in Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s poem:

Life’s errors cry for the

Merciful beauty that can

Modulate their isolation

Into a harmony with the whole

In the context of relationships, it is my experience that if we can find a way to acknowledge our own humanity and our own unmet needs, then we will find ourselves naturally more open and curious with regard to the humanity and unmet needs that are motivating the behavior of another. This is where the meeting and acknowledging of each other’s humanity and needs take place. It is where we get to recognize and celebrate each other’s innate basic goodness and wholeness. As said so beautifully by Rumi

There is a field out there

beyond right or wrong

Ill meet you there.

I also deeply value getting lost and finding my way home. I belive the bewildered and surrendered feeling that happens when we find ourselves lost, supports a rediscovering of our fundamental connection with wild nature. And that the more time we spend in wild places, lost ot not, with wild sounds, smells, visuals, temperatures, we will wander our way knowlingly or unknowingling back to our animal nature. With that arrival comes the remebering of our inner compass, the capacity to listen to the whispers of our heart, the wind, river and trees, and ultimately the realignment and rekindling with our values, direction and joy. The following poem “Sleeping in the Forest” by Mary Oliver shares for me, an essence of this experience

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

Our world view is made up of a abundance of individual experiences that come together to form a complete landscape. Somedays that landscape can feel sunny, stormy, fogged in or even at times barren. If we can choose to cultivate a curious perspective of the way that the fog, sun or barrenness informs our rich and diverse internal landscape, it can help us to have appreciation for each and every changing element of our experience.