Sometimes, in the midst of the healing process, I stop and realize that I have run across what I call the Continental Drift Principle. What is the Continental Drift Principle? It’s when I find that I have been busily planting palm trees while all the time the continent has been drifting to the Antarctic.
Like all of life, healing happens at different levels of being. We see the patterns of life repeat in the spinning, circling motion of the atoms, the sun, the solar system, the galaxy, and so on. The pattern is repeated, but at grander and grander levels. So in healing, there are patterns that need to be attended to, each at a different level of being.
Planting palm trees when the entire continent is drifting to the Antartic happens when a healer starts healing with nutritional supplements and forgets to examine the patient’s readiness to be healed. Of course, every patient consciously desires healing, but there are many who are not ready to be healed. Subconsciously, many patients may feel only deserving of suffering, abuse, illness, and perpetual worthlessness.
A practical example is found in the day to day work of a social worker. Social workers understand the importance of the patient’s social milieu. A doctor can give perfect directions on how to take a pill, what to eat, or when to take the regimen, but nothing will happen if the patient can’t afford to buy any of it, or lives with parents who won’t allow the intervention to be used. So it is that there is an inner milieu within the patient that either fosters healing or destroys healing.
Energy therapists have called it “massive reversals.” When a patient has a massive reversal, his or her muscle tone will weaken when making a statement such as “I want to live” or “I want to be happy.” It suggests that the patient’s energy system is “reversed” when it comes to recognizing these statements as truths. Psychotherapists recognize it as subconscious drives that undermine positive transformation. The patient’s milieu for healing encompasses the energy healer, the orthomolecular physician, the psychotherapist, and the family constellation. All relationships are included.
When I recognize the Continental Drift Principle, I stop and tell the patient that I am seeing a pattern–a big pattern–that encompasses the healing process. I tell the patient all the levels in which this pattern manifests in the patient’s life, and we begin to look at it and start to use the tools that are available to start to heal it.
I recall a woman in her 40’s who had been in my care for nearly two years. She had made progress in many areas of her life, but she would still get into cycles of despair and anxiety–cycles that could not be broken with medication, supplements, energy healing or a combination of all three. One day we realized that her big pattern involved a life long pattern (since early childhood) of “on again, off again” relationships– feelings of being abandoned, helpless, and fearful, alternating with being the center of attention, functioning, and on track. As a child, this pattern was created by a mentally ill care provider. But as an adult, her pattern extended to her mental health treatment with me, her career, and her emotional functioning. Her relationship with me reflected her relationships in life–at times available and other times not. In order to heal, she had to recognize and resolve the bigger pattern that unconsciously repeated itself at so many levels of her life: biochemically, interpersonally, and socially.
Another patient in her 50’s had experienced abuse throughout her life, and she married an abusive husband. After seeing me, she experienced good health, and was medication free for several years. After a period of radiant health, she got into a car accident that gave her severe whiplash and that immediately returned her to a state of depression, anxiety, and medication use. Circumstances required that she see a chiropractor for a cervical spine adjustment, which her husband forbid her. As I counseled her to see a chiropractor and to stand up for her needs, she “stood up” for herself by telling me to take a hike and never talk to her again. With that she returned to what was essentially the same state that she had worked so hard to escape from. When I thought of her choice, I realized the importance of not just healing a person’s body, but also healing the soul. To me, it seemed that she was still captive to the the lessons derived from abuse.
As a doctor and energy healer, healing goes beyond biochemical regimens and physical recovery. Healing must include both the planting of palm trees and the redirection of drifting continents. Through multiple levels of healing patients will have the best chance for achieving complete, deep, and permanent health.