The Missing Link: Is Joy in the Healing Journey?

Most of us consider the path to healing, recovery, or overcoming pain an arduous journey. Something that can be described as challenging, hard, boring, terrible, and mundane, although those are simply a short list of ways you may describe the process of healthy living. But as Christina Costa, describes in her Ted Talk, a body is not a battlefield.

What happens in your experience when you think you have to fight, overcome, beat or work your butt off to reach your goals?

If this is your approach, what happens when you reach your goals? If you do indeed reach the goal? Do you collapse? Do you stop doing all the things you did to reach your goal? Do you fall back into old habits? Do you set another goal and believe that by reaching this higher mark, you’ll finally be happy, content, and have everything you need?

I used to do this. Although, to be honest, most of the time I didn’t actually achieve my goals. But I was in a constant state of fixing myself, ignoring the signs of my body to get stronger, reading up on the internet about everyone else’s opinion on what I should be doing to heal my gut, stop feeling anxious, and sleep better at night.

But overtime, I’ve stopped fighting against myself. I’ve rested when I need rest. I stop eating when my stomach hurts. I do inversions (go upside-down) when I have gas in my stomach. I workout and ride my bike when I’m excited to do it. Sometimes I go too hard…and my body/back let me know to slow down. Now I listen to it. And with this listening, a joy in the healing journey naturally arises. I don’t have to force it.

As it turns out, it’s actually quite pleasant to work with my body, rather than work against it.

New Considerations to find Joy in the Healing Journey?

So, what if our beliefs and thoughts were the only thing making the healing journey feel so bad? 

What do I mean by that? Consider this, what would it be like if you stopped having the thoughts that being healthy was hard? Stopped believing that you needed charts, accountability partners, strict meal plans, and a cupboard full of expensive supplements in order to feel good in your body.

Because the truth is…that while sometimes those things can be helpful at different times in our lives…they are not required for joy. They are not a necessary ingredient for healing yourself. Why are you looking to heal anyway? You want to feel joy again?

I’m not indicating that it doesn’t take some work, changes in your lifestyle, or anything else that you’ve read about or considering doing for yourself. 

But I do know that healing can actually be a really cool and amazing process, if you are open to seeing something new.