The Start of a Healing Journey

by Sharon E. Martin, M.D., Ph.D

I treated two women in my medical practice who both had had recent diagnoses of cancer. One woman (I'll call her Jane) was plagued with worry and wanted her blood work tested more often than is traditionally called for. She cried much of the time while I was treating her and seemed fixated on the disease and how it might conquer her. Jane was miserable, although she was undergoing treatment and her cancer was in remission.

She could not seem to step outside her diagnosis: She was caged by her fear. Because of my shamanic training, I was able to sense that her energy field was constricted and dense. Her vitality was significantly diminished.

Despite my attempts to encourage her to shift her perspective, she kept reliving and ruminating over the moment she was diagnosed. Jane's view of her world was directed by her fears, which ran rampant inside her mind, keeping her stuck in anxiety- provoking thought processes. She was stuck and could not see the possibility of any path except one laden by fear that moved quickly toward death.

Despite my attempts to encourage her to shift her perspective, she kept reliving and ruminating over the moment she was diagnosed. Jane's view of her world was directed by her fears, which ran rampant inside her mind, keeping her stuck in anxietyprovoking thought processes. She was stuck and could not see the possibility of any path except one laden by fear that moved quickly toward death.

The second patient (I will call her Jill), who also had cancer but at a slightly worse stage, started her discussions with me about how she could improve her immunity and health while she was getting chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Jill adopted a healthier diet, began a walking program, and kept a journal of all the things she loves in the world. She has shifted her focus away from her diagnosis and out to the world, noticing the sunrise and giving thanks for the beauty of the woodpecker that frequents her bird feeder.

Who is cured? Neither-at least, not yet. However, I know that Jill has set the stage for a more optimal outcome for healing, not necessarily her body (she may not experience that) but her spirit. Jill seems to be healing from her fear of her powerlessness and learning to accept uncertainty and take charge of her thoughts and perspectives.

Let me explain.

I have come to see healing as experiential. You do not have to change anything in your physical body to have an experience of healing.

The walk toward healing involves either a sense of reinterpreting what you are experiencing in the literal world or a shift in your energy field brought about by rituals and practices I teach in this book.

The shift in your energy field then informs your experience.

Healing involves having a greater acceptance and willingness to continue engaging in life with optimism. Someone who feels ill, broken, wounded, or defective can feel as if she is caught in a box with no air holes, unable to see a future because her view of something grander is constrained.

Two of the keys in the shamanic practices I learned (and teach) are to shift perspective and exercise your ability to sense the forces from the unseen world connected to you and operate in alliance with you.

As I define it, healing comes when you make peace with where your soul is on your life's path, holding a renewed excitement about extending your human journey or a willingness to move forward and even experience a sense of renewal.

You may not be able to heal from a physical ailment or disease fully, but you can still experience healing.

I have come to see many people struggling with health challenges as being locked in a box of their diagnosis. Many patients I care for have debilitating back pain. Several are under 40 years of age and define their lives based on this diagnosis. Each time they come to the office, their main goal is directed at getting narcotics for their pain. They are stuck, as if blocked in concrete, self- identified as disabled, and often unwilling to consider any approach other than narcotics to give them some relief. To me, healing them means helping them break open their box to show them there's life outside of their limited diagnosis, outside of being stuck. can experience and how you can heal-and being open to staying as vital as possible. In shifting perspective and energy, you can take charge of your health and life experience and become more fully immersed and participative in life. If you choose to work with a healer (including your physician), this work will be in partnership. You can be a regular human expanding your life and vitality and control over your physical, mental, and spiritual body, helping you to feel less helpless and more capable and confident, and to begin again to look forward to starting each day.

When you are healed, you are not stuck. Your physicality may not have changed, but you are not stuck. You are willing and able to see something different as a treatment and something different as an outcome.

Maybe that means going to acupuncture, getting an MRI, and finding an anesthesiologist to give you an epidural. The willingness to broaden your perspective pokes air holes in your box. Healing Stage 4 cancer might involve reflecting on your life and recognizing a unique opportunity to teach others, such as your familyusing ideas such as "I can spread love while I'm still here, be sure I'm the one that brings the flowers to church on Sunday, lead the lay prayer"-because you are not stuck ruminating about your death sentence.

True, with a health challenge, not everyone can start their healing journey as easily as Jill. However, you can learn to move from fear to living with an upbeat attitude, in charge of your personal journey no matter what your health and wellness challenges.

Healing is about being receptive to other possibilities about what you

You will need to have greater intuition about the possibilities available to you and improve your ability to listen to the more subtle messages. It's also critical to learn about the power of the mind. We have been shown that our thoughts influence our energy fields and, thus, how our lives play out.

When we make our thoughts clearer and more accurately express our desires, that increased refinement of our thoughts impacts the outcome of our fields and lives. I remember the time when a frail, elderly man came in for his appointment, still shaken from the very recent death of his wife. I stopped just before beginning my usual rundown on blood pressure and cholesterol lab readings. Something "told" me to ask him if his wife was still "around."

At first, he looked surprised, but despite my unusual query, he did not waste a moment telling me that he had walked by their closet a few days before and smelled violets, her favorite flower. What is more, every evening, his little dog would go into the sunroom and jump up and down as if waiting for his wife to grab his leash and get ready to walk him as she had regularly done when she was still alive. So here the dog was weeks after her death, jumping up and down alongside something invisible.

Another day, soon after her death, my patient came back from the store and found their wedding photo on the sideboard, which caught him completely off guard as the photo had been put away in a box for years.

"It was so strange. I couldn't explain how it could possibly have gotten there!" he said. But he then reflected that he felt comforted, realizing she had moved the photo to send him a sign. Listening when something "told" me to switch gears from "running the numbers" (focusing on the values of blood pressure readings or blood sugars) to talking about the unseen world opened the door to a powerful conversation that was healing for this grieving patient. drsharonmartin.com

I shared with him that I believe that a person's soul can exist in the afterlife and that we can receive messages from the afterlife in ways we cannot explain. I told him that although science cannot explain these occurrences, I find them to be real.

He told me it was good to talk about these topics. He seemed comforted by our discussion. Integrating traditional Western medicine and shamanism gives me broader tools with which to guide change for my patients.

Sharon E. Martin, M.D., Ph.D., graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and is a board-certified Internal Medicine physician with a physiology doctorate. She graduated from the Four Winds Society's Healing the Light Body curriculum and hosts two radio shows, Maximum Medicine and Sacred Magic, aired on the Transformation Talk Radio network. A doctor at a rural health clinic in Hustontown, Pennsylvania.