Not Healer. Whole.

In training as a body-based therapist, the term healer tends to surface. Over and over again, I notice myself reject this word, as if it is some kind of hierarchical label – a belief that I could heal you. But, it is my belief, that all of us are already whole. How could we not be? Perhaps we have forgotten our wholeness, and maybe I have the ability to help you remember it. We are all healers, we are all powerful beyond our understanding, we are all whole. Below, are words that poured out of me as I reflected on this shift in thinking. This is dedicated to you.

What is the future of therapy, you ask.
I spiral down a slide that mutters not healing, not healing, not healing.
We are not healers or we are all healers.
Do you see?
All of this is already whole.

That is perhaps the biggest misconception:
Humans believing we can or need to make anything whole.
Forgetting the brilliance of natural order that sews threads of immaculate completeness.
With these eyes, these hands, these ears, these hearts, we are only here to rekindle our relationship with innate wholeness.
To recognize it, re-member it so it seeps into our psyche.

We are reflectors.

Listening to the whispers of a soul that has distant memories of home and refuge.
Reflecting that back so that the unconscious is made conscious,
Another being remembering their sovereignty and place in the web of life.

We are here to watch eyes move and wander, endlessly looking for the eyes that will return our gaze and say what our life depends on:

All of you belongs here. All of you is welcome. You are loved.

We are the bodies acknowledging the bodies sitting in front of us praying for relief.
We are those acknowledging the ancestral hands reaching out from bodies begging to be considered, begging to be known.
We know there is nothing to add nor subtract, that our pelvic cauldrons are mixing potions of medicine that already exist:
Earth, breath, heat, connection.

Don’t you see, we are not therapists.
No, we are the modern substitute of ancient council.
We are the multi-generational family systems that offer a weaving of interdependent belonging.

As a single human sitting in a single seat in front of another whole story,
We hold the tribal notion of inclusion, of together, of one, of allowed.
We are stewards to life, stewards to the wisdom of soma, and the brilliance of survival.
We know that the body was born from a blueprint that has been evolving for lifetimes.
And that the imprint of lived experience and memories we cannot even remember can be smoothed with tides of clear river water.

Therapist, therapist.
A word distanced from the intimate relationship and bond that is asking to be formed,
A brave soul who walks in hoping you will stay as they reveal their heart to you.

I love you,
Gavrila Nikhila

Photo Credit goes to Wieslaw Smetek, 1955