HEALING CRISIS
The Road to Better Health
by Walter Last
I routinely recommended to my patients right on their first visit to adopt a high-quality, low-allergy diet. When they came back two or three weeks later, they often said that they feel much better now but a week ago they had a cold. When I asked about the symptoms they turn out to be mainly a profuse mucus discharge, sometimes also diarrhoea, but rarely are there signs of a real infection. In fact, these patients just experienced their first healing crisis on their long path to better health.
This concept of a healing crisis clearly shows the opposite perceptions that drug medicine and holistic medicine have of health and the healing process. In drug medicine it is assumed that a patient who is free of disease symptoms is more or less healthy and the aim of drugs is to achieve this condition by removing any disagreeable symptoms. Frequently alternative or complementary medicine is used in the same way, instead of more or less toxic drugs just more benign remedies are being used. This is what most patients want and according to their beliefs they either use drugs or natural remedies for this purpose.
However, holistic or natural medicine, following in the footsteps of the old nature cure movement, aims much higher. Here, health is regarded not just as a temporary absence of disease symptoms, but as a state of profound physical, emotional and mental wellbeing so that we simply cannot develop or catch a disease.
Animals living in an unspoiled natural habitat in the wild commonly display this kind of health. If we want to come close to such outstanding health, we have to work for it by consciously minimising the multitude of negative influences on our health and maximise positive factors instead.
However, experience shows that we do not follow a straight line of either health improvement or health deterioration. Similar to periods of illness interspersing times of relative wellbeing on the common road to chronic degenerative diseases and death, so we have also ups and downs on the road to superior health. The main difference is that the road to deteriorating health on average is sloping downhill while the other road on average goes up in health. Travelling downhill is easy, we do not need to do anything about it, but improving our health requires consistent effort.
Contrary to the often-lengthy periods of ill health on the downhill road, the dips on the uphill road are usually short and sharp. They are called 'healing crisis' although I prefer the less dramatic name 'healing reaction', also 'cleansing reaction' or simply 'reaction'. After each reaction we advance to a higher level of health than before the reaction.
Holistic therapists realise that the road to better health follows a definite pattern. The old school of nature cure called it
HERING'S LAW OF CURE:
"All cure starts from within out, from the head down and in reverse order as the symptoms have appeared."
Dr John Whitman Ray has developed a method specifically designed to help us travel the long road to superior health. He called it Body Electronics, using nutrition as well as press point therapy to facilitate emotional release and expansion of consciousness. Out of this work Dr Ray found it necessary to modify Hering's Law to the following
LAW OF HEALING CRISIS:
"A healing crisis will occur only when an individual is ready both physiologically and psychologically. The basic foundation for all healing is nutritional preparedness. A healing crisis will begin from within out, in reverse order chronologically as to how the symptoms have appeared, tempered by the intensity of the trauma. The individual will have the opportunity to re-experience each trauma, both physiological and psychological, beginning with the trauma of least severity. It must be recognised that traumas involving emotions, which include all traumas, will be released in order, beginning with unconsciousness, then apathy, grief, fear, anger, pain and eventually enthusiasm (love), in conjunction with the appropriate word patterns for each emotion and thought pattern (sensory memory) which are accessible at each level. Unconditional love and unconditional forgiveness are the keys to apply and transmute any resistance at any level, once these resistances are brought to view through the application of the laws of love, light and perfection.
With this definition Dr. Ray emphasises the importance of the emotional side of our health problems. Each disease, accident or surgical intervention contains a strong emotional component which needs to be re-experienced during a reaction, otherwise the healing will remain incomplete and the problem will present itself again at a later time for healing at a deeper level.
This also means that the body selects the kind of healing crisis that is most appropriate at the time, taking into consideration its needs and abilities to have a certain area healed or improved. We can consciously influence this choice by working on a particular problem. I also noticed that the body self tries to select a timing, which does not disable us during important events coming up. I have no doubt that we are guided on our healing path by our inner intelligence, which has our best interest at heart.
In the beginning our healing reactions will be mainly on the physical or biological level, but more and more we will experience the release of emotional blocks and changes in consciousness, preparing us for greater activity on the spiritual level.