Human beings have the innate ability to self heal.
Just watch the extraordinary process your body goes through when you get a simple paper cut. You can observe real time as you watch the body respond immediately to the injury, the pain response, the drawing of blood/fluid, the immune system response, the biochemical response, all culminating in the self healing that occurs over the following hours, days, and weeks. From blood and fluids flushing out the cut, it then begins to clot, forming a protective scab providing a barrier of protection, as new skin grows beneath the scab not only closing the cut, but allowing for total repair and healing to the injured area. In most cases it does the job so beautifully, (without any help from us) so that just a short time later, you cannot see any evidence that the injury had even occurred.
Too simple an example?
How about the fact that if you volunteer as a living donor and donate part of your liver, they will take up to 3⁄4 of your healthy liver for transplant. Both the recipient and the donor will have a full size and fully functioning liver within months of the transplant. Now of course this does not mean we can or should completely heal on our own. The body will naturally heal a broken bone, but without medical intervention that bone may heal crooked, or heal in a way that causes the limb to lose mobility /function. However, you would be amazed at how much we can heal and improve our health and wellness on our own especially chronic illness/pain conditions.
Our innate self healing simply requires a favourable environment that promotes health and wellness thus allowing the body to thrive and do what it does best, adapt to ensure our survival. The less favourable the environment the greater the challenge to healing, resulting in a spectrum of potential responses. Everything from complete healing, slowed healing, partial healing, up to and including the inability to heal.
We Human Beings Are Nothing Short of Remarkable.
What is most remarkable about human beings is our ever-constant ability adapt and change in response to our environment and experiences. This occurs daily as an automatic response without our awareness or intention. Even more extraordinary is that we are the only species capable of observing and identifying within ourselves and others, a maladaptive response by the brain/body and using that knowledge to intentionally create positive change so that our response is no longer maladaptive.
Essentially manually overriding an autonomic process with intention for a desired outcome. Just as we can manually override the autonomic process of breathing when we intentionally change our breath rate, depth, and length of our inhalations and exhalations. The autonomic nervous system is the system responsible for the processes that occur in the brain and body which includes habitual behaviours, and systems/processes such as breathing, heart rate/blood pressure, regulation of body temperature etc that happen automatically without our awareness or thought.
By getting intentional and learning how to regulate our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour we can retrain our brain/body to respond appropriately vs react all by utilizing our brain’s incredible ability to change itself and therefore the body via a process known as neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity of the Brain
Neuroplasticity is a complex set of processes that are responsible for human beings having the ability to adapt to our environment and experiences. This adaptation is the result of the brain changing over time in response to its environment and experiences. Just as we cognitively learn from our experiences, our brains change structurally, and biochemically in response to the environment and experiences. This impacts every aspect of our lives including our physical, mental, emotional health and well-being which of course, have a direct impact on our quality of life. As such the brain can create new neural pathways, networks, and connections and even new neurons via neurogenesis. The more these new neural pathways/connections are utilized, they strengthen and eventually become the new and preferred path/network thereby allowing old and no longer used pathways/connections to become weakened and over time become dormant.
I know what you are thinking …Rhonda, I agree that the neuroplasticity of the brain is amazing, but I don’t see how this is related to healing or how it resembles anything that might even begin to restore health and wellness. Stay with me and all will become clear.
Our innate self healing simply requires a favourable environment that promotes health and wellness thus allowing the brain/body/mind to thrive and do what it does best, adapt to ensure our survival.
For this to be true, then the opposite must also be true.
The environment that is most responsible for our health and wellness is our internal environment. Our internal environment is the culmination of the way we think, feel and in turn the way we act/behave which determines how we perceive, experience, and interact with the world around us. The sad reality is today, that a large percentage of individuals are in a toxic and abusive relationship … with themselves
©️ 2021 Transformational Coaching & Hypnosis with Rhonda www.CoachWithRhonda.com