ARIZONA TRAVAILS, TRAILS AND TRIALS OF HEALING

I was teaching a workshop recently in Tucson, Arizona and one of the students was one of my least favorite kinds.  I could see that he was finding a lot of fault with my approach and the details of both the theory and practice I was presenting.

Of course, gadflies, critics, skeptics and competitors piss us off.

Every few minutes he could not resist making some statement that found me wanting.

At one point, I explained that we are really not healers, that we are facilitators.  That our clients unconsciously and sometimes consciously create their own healing.  It proceeds with input from us, but is ultimately an inner decision our clients make or don’t – consciously or often unconsciously.  But it’s up to them.  I told the story of one of my mentors telling me we are responsible for doing our work as best we can, but we are not responsible for our clients’ results.

Well this fellow raised his hand and said, I don’t understand why you are saying that because that is the opposite of what Native American people say –they say we are healers and there is the medicine man.

I waffled a little in my answer.  Wanting him to appreciate my superior fairness (while I really wanted to tell him to just shut up!) I explained that both perspectives could be seen as true.  On the one hand, we are facilitators, but really if you ask me, do I want to be a healer or to be thought of as one? -  I actually do – I just don’t want to claim it aloud.  It’s a lot of responsibility!

So I have to give this competitive fellow a bit of credit.

We sometimes say “facilitators” to kind of let ourselves off the hook.  The truth is, in choosing to find the deepest ways to help people; such therapists are assuming a responsibility to heal.  Perhaps we indeed invite participation of higher realms, of angels, of mystical forces to act through us.

So who am I or who are you not to be a healer? 

I would like to believe magical realms empower me to heal and those of course manifest in the ridding the client of their dis-ease and the arising of new wonderful experiences of health. And I doubt myself more than anyone!

So yea go ahead - call me a Medicine Man, if you prefer.  Just for now, I’ll try to let go of my caveats and my careful rationality. 

We all have the capacity to heal – we’re all medicine women and medicine men.