The Power of a Word – Healing or Tending?

Years ago, a shift occurred in the way I perceived the idea of healing. Several of us who provide Reiki and shamanic services for others were in a group with our mentor, Cheri, discussing the word “healing”.  It’s loaded with programmed connotations that assumes a person needing healing is less than healthy, less than whole. Cheri told us that she prefers to use the word tending instead of healing. She said that tending is a gardening word.  One tends a garden by pulling weeds, fertilizing the soil, planting seeds. When we work with people shamanically and energetically, that’s more along the lines of what we do. We help remove the weeds that take the form of blockages, intrusions, limiting thoughtforms. We fertilize their soil by balancing the energy centers, returning power and any lost soul essences.  Then we plant seeds by giving practical tools that they can use on their own to grow and tend what they want in their lives. I absolutely loved that perspective.

On the other side of that, to say that one is a healer also gives the impression that you are the one healing your clients. This is not true. The return to health is actually done by the client themselves. I, and people like me, are facilitators – or tenders – helping that return to health happen. We can hold the space for the client, and connect them with their helping spirits who do energy work for them. We can bring back messages from helping spirits about what would return them to a state of perfection.  We can also be the channel for universal Divine energy to flow through us to the client. But we are just the channel. Once the client receives that Divine energy, their Higher Self and Spirit helpers directs it to where it needs to go.

Using the term "healing" can also put the client in a permanent state of seeking health. As practitioners, we must see the client as already in a perfect state. Then we need to help the client see themselves as being in a perfect state of health and wholeness. This is not delusion. This is putting the power of their energy to work for them. Energy flows where attention goes. The mind is an amazing force. Asking the question, “What is the perfection of the situation right now?” opens the space for the Higher Self and Spirit helpers to come in and show them.

For me the definition of tend in the dictionary is the essence of what I am called to do for others. But the words “healing” and “healer” are the ones most commonly used today, especially in alternative or metaphysical care. I find myself using those words when I don’t want to - just to get my meaning across. But I want to shift away from those terms, which is why I called my website Shamanic Soul Tending.

There is a belief system that is prevalent in our society today that we need someone to fix us. A belief system that says we are not capable of, or do not have the power to return ourselves to perfect health. But a rising tide of scientists and new thinkers* are proving that we hold that ultimate power within ourselves.  We will continue to reclaim our power and re-frame the idea of how we heal. We will realize that we are all always in a state of Divine perfection, and that we could all just use a little tending now and again.
 
*Just a few thoughts from those scientists and new thinkers to shine some more light on the subject.

https://www.brucelipton.com/blog/how-heal-your-body-your-mind
https://lynnemctaggart.com/a-healers-thoughts-the-best-medicine/
http://drjoedispenza.net/blog/health/change-the-field-change-matter/