Healing usually comes with the notion of fixing something that needs to be fixed. And in some sense, this is true – that healing can be brought to something that needs fixing. But how often do we look deeper than simply fixing the external layer and consider what is happening behind the issue that is needing to be resolved? How often do we consider the steps that were taken that lead to that issue in the first place?

In recollection of my younger self, I often was after the ‘quick-fix’, the Band-Aid, the ‘I-want-it -to-go-away-quickly-so-I-don’t-have-to-look-at-it-and-feel-what-has-actually-happened’ approach. In my observations, I was not so different to anyone else … we were all after the same fix. We would arrive to the healer, whoever that may be – a doctor, a counsellor, a friend – with an issue, a symptom or a problem, and we would want that issue, symptom or problem fixed in that moment so that we could get on with our lives as they were.

Yet, for me, there reached a point where this no longer sufficed; I could no longer push-down the insatiable unsettlement I felt in my life. Nothing that I did could stop me from feeling this unsettlement … an unsettlement about the fact that things just did not feel quite right (in fact, they felt way off!) and an unsettlement about the fact that I knew there had to be more to life than for me to just continue putting one foot in front of the other with not a lot of direction or purpose.

I was exhausted by the way I had been choosing to live up until that point … in constant competition with the rest of the world and in constant comparison with pictures about how it was that I believed I wanted to be or look. These pictures held no true residence within me, but instead came from outside of me. Each picture put me in a state of constant striving towards something outside of myself; a constant movement away from who I naturally was and therefore was a constant effort to maintain. There was no true stop-moment of discerning what I was aligning to until that point of absolute exhaustion was reached … when the limits of pushing, driving and straining my body had been out-done.

It was at this point that I reached out for a greater form of support from others. There were two practitioners that presented to me … the first was a practitioner of Chakra-Puncture and Counselling and the second was a practitioner of integrated trauma and art therapy.

Walking into the clinic space for my first Chakra-Puncture session, I did not know what to expect. I had never heard of Chakra-Puncture before but was not afraid about the idea or concept of needle work on the body because I had previously received dry-needling sessions from another practitioner.

There was a part of me that was actually eager to attend this Chakra-puncture session. This part of me was the part that was getting very tired of the behaviours I was choosing on a daily basis; the part of me that was seeking relief from the tension of life. I could physically feel my body begin to melt and let go upon entering the waiting space of the clinic, as though my body knew it was returning to somewhere it had been before. In this space I felt like I was a child again … clearer and more transparent, inquisitive and not afraid, more open. I took this openness to the session with me where I met my practitioner for the first time.

The practitioner asked me a few questions. There was no imposition in his tone or movements whatsoever. Usually, when I had visited a doctor or dietician or psychologist, I had always felt they were trying to probe and get something out of me – an answer, although I understand that this is a necessary part of the diagnostic process.

The questions my practitioner asked me did not seek an answer but gave me the opportunity to enquire more deeply into why I was there for the session that day. The questions gave me an opportunity to reflect on how I had been living up until that moment and how the way I had been living had led me to arrive there.

It was a very simple process from there. I was given the space to feel, reflect and begin to heal that which was not true to my being. It was not a miracle cure or magic pill as some of us (including me) would have liked things to be sometimes, but it was the beginning of my miracle, the beginning of a magical transformation that at the time, I would not have been able to fathom.

The practitioner did not identify me with the behaviours that I was living out. He was aware of the self-harming behaviours and did not overlook them, but his communication with me held me in the understanding that I was not those things … that they were not me. Being held in this understanding gave me the space to feel who I truly was, from within first rather than from any of the pictures I had been previously seeking to be … I was able to connect to an inner essence that I had disconnected from over the years since my childhood. His communication (both verbal and non-verbal, i.e. facial expression and body gestures) with me confirmed that this was what was worth connecting to … that this was where I had to come back to before I made any outward movements again.

In this process, I was supported to see that the disregarding and harmful behaviours I had been living with were not a part (and were not ever a part) of that inner-me, of my inner-essence. That the inner essence of me was untainted, sacred and settled as it always had been. The way my Chakra-Puncture practitioner provided the loving space for me in this initial session really allowed me to truly connect to that inner-essence within me that had not been felt so deeply for a while.

As he began to gently place the Chakra-puncture needles onto my skin, I began to feel more tangibly what this connection to the inner-most of me was. I was able to settle more into my body whilst lying on the table and this gave me the opportunity to actually feel where my body was truly at.

Prior to this moment, I had been living in go-go-go, drive-mode, in a state of high nervous tension and this had never allowed me to truly feel what was really going on in my body.

Lying there on the table, I could feel that my body was actually in physical pain … my muscles were bruised from the strenuous exercise, my arms were raw and tender, and my neck, shoulders and jaw were tight and achy. It was a real eye-opener to feel this and it inspired me to not want to feel that way anymore. (But it took more than one session for me to stop living the way I was living, this was just the initial igniter, the beginning of the end.)

Beyond the physical things I was feeling, I began to connect to a deeper settlement within. I closed my eyes and let myself be with that. I felt like I was smiling inside as a gentle warmth flowed into my heart and up my back. This felt like a return, like I was finally back. I was finally uncovering something I had buried not so long ago but what felt like a long time given the effort required to bury and shut it down.

The Chakra-Puncture session offered me the space to come back to harmony in my body by igniting the natural emanation of my true expression through my body and clearing disharmonious patterns of energy that lay on top or over-rode this otherwise natural emanation. With the space I was provided and the healing that took place in my body, I then had a greater awareness about other disharmonious behaviours and patterns I was living in my life at that time.

After experiencing Chakra-puncture and what it offered me … to let go and discard what was not true to my being and embrace what was true, I then had a sense of what true and graceful healing really is – to allow another the space to feel whatever it is they need to feel so that they can make their own steps back to truth.

A similar experience happened when I walked into the room for my first art therapy session, where I felt instantly settled. It was a similar feeling to when I walked into the clinic space for Chakra-puncture; a space where there was nothing imposing on me to be something, which is what I usually felt when I was out in the everyday world.

I clocked that this was a very important part of healing … having space. Space to feel and space to be. No need for results to be produced. And I came to realise that this space was Love, true Love.

What I had experienced in these sessions, the space I felt held in, and what was reflected to me, all became an important reference point in my life … something I could always come back to as truth, a way back to who I truly am. In other words, the space (love) held in the sessions had afforded me a moment to meet more of the real me and this was the grace of true healing.

“Love is an observation. A situation that allows another to be held no matter what, giving them time to get to their own amazingness.”
Serge Benhayon, Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume II, Ed 1, p. 473

By Giselle Cavanagh, Australia

Further Reading:
Returning to Our Essence
The Real Meaning of Healing
Chakra-Puncture Turned my Life Around