Healers and healings

Lakota spiritual guide Wakia taught me so much this week.

He works a lot with my people from the forest. One of the topics was “healings”.

“Only you can heal yourself” he said.

Then I asked what he thought was the role of a healer then. He said

“Healers are very important and they’re real. They don’t really heal, they help people activate what’s in themselves to heal which is very different. It is a very big responsibility and requires inner strength and long training.

Good healers have immense knowledge and work all the time on learning.”

How do you tell a good versus a “fake” healer I asked?

He said humility. Real healers will never claim or tell you anything. They don’t introduce themselves as healers or advertise it ever. They will never pretend they have special powers. They just have them secretly and use them when it is appropriate.

They will also know when to not heal someone.”

He added “an artist can use his art to make a beautiful painting but if he uses all the color palette and mixes everything it becomes dark and horrible”.

I would add it’s the same with cooking, imagine a 3* Chef mixing all his ingredients and starters with dessert and how awful the best ingredients could be if mixed too much.

He taught me how and why to *not* help someone or more precisely to help by not helping.

“We have a natural tendency to want to help when someone is in trouble or needs healing. But certain issues like someone processing deep trauma in a specific container like the “sundance” or a plant ceremony often must be left alone facing his or her own demons. They need to connect with their inner strength to recover by themselves, feel their own power. We can all be healers, at least of ourselves we just don’t know.”

Genuine healers have an immense level of mastery and are able to process the negative energies they find in others to a certain point. They are very aware of their own limits. It is a very difficult path, but much needed in the world.

I would add that it is absolutely not a replacement to western science and medicine, it’s needed and different healings. We need both. We need spiritual healers and we need western medicine.

Most indigenous friends of mine and healers have a deep respect for science driven medicine.

I wish science studies plants and natural ancestral healing work much more as well as develops the same respect for it.