If you’ve ever been to a yoga class you’ve probably heard the phrase, “Heal yourself, heal the world.” And if you’ve ever heard that phrase, you’ve probably thought to yourself: “What does that even mean? What does my personal healing have to do with anyone else?” You probably thought that was as silly as the instruction to bloom love through your toes!
I’ve taught yoga for over 25 years and I admit it wasn’t very long ago that I thought the same thing. I mean, healing myself was incredibly important — to me. Healing myself was crucial because I was full of stress, had so much trauma, and was miserable, sad, tired, and despondent. I needed to heal. But how did that affect anyone else?
In fact, part of my healing journey was learning the genuine truth behind that yogic statement.
The turning point in my healing and my understanding of our interconnectivity came from studying with Rupert Sheldrake, a brilliant and controversial scientist. He taught me field theory — the idea that energetic and electric fields inform our reality. This might seem far-fetched until you unpack it a little.
Think of the field of gravity and how that keeps us connected to the planet even though we can’t see it. Think of the field of your WIFI and how that keeps you connected to your internet as long as you’re close to it.
Fields affect us all the time, over varying distances, even though we can’t see them.
And your trauma and your stress are actually held in a field in your energy systems. That’s right. Just like your router is putting out a WIFI signal, you are putting out a signal at all times. And if you have trauma or stress that you’ve never dealt with, you’re putting out a signal of trauma or stress.
You may have read studies about how the heart puts out an electromagnetic field that reaches up to 15 feet, and how it affects people within it. If you’re happy or you’re sad, that energy signature can be picked up by people around you. You all know how you feel when your super bubbly coworker comes in the room. Everyone lights up! Or when your Eeyore friend shows up, and you know you’ll have to steel yourself not to sink into his depression. Those are real effects.
One of the strangest and most powerful things about the field that holds your trauma and your stress is that it’s a field of habit. It’s actually a living energy field called a “habit field.” This means you have become habituated to trauma or stress. But more than that, you will draw more of it to you. If you’ve experienced trauma, you’re more likely to experience it again. Same with stress. Ugh!
But wait, don’t lose hope yet. This knowledge that trauma/stress is held in a field, that it draws more of it to the same field, and that it’s habitual pattern is the very thing that can set you free!
Knowing that all the trauma in my life was habitual, and that the fields were drawing it helped me to see that it wasn’t some defect in my personality or my soul that was causing my pain. Also, knowing that it was held in a field made me finally understand my need to get out of that field!
There is a field where your trauma and your stress doesn’t exist. It’s a field of order, coherence, health, and joy. You can shift fields, and you can shift patterns within a field.
This was freedom!
After earning this powerful piece of information, I started to put all the other practices I knew into play. And little by little, and then shockingly all at once, I started to heal. I began to feel better, calmer, more centered.
This shift from a lifetime of traumatic experiences to a life of magic is available to anyone. But wait — you still don’t know why I care if you heal.
Here’s how it works.
The people causing the most damage in the world today are the people who haven’t processed and released their trauma and stress. And the people who have done this important work are often the ones doing the most important healing, heart centered, generous work in the world.
Understand that not everyone experiencing stress turns into a rabid dictator. Oftentimes we just turn that pain in on ourselves and go to darker and more isolated places. But that energy still affects the world.
Think of everyone on the planet in this huge symphony. If you tune up your instrument and play the song, it sounds wonderful. But if your instrument is out of tune and you play the song, it sounds awful, and it makes the whole symphony sound “off.” That’s essentially what you’re doing if you don’t heal yourself. We’re playing a symphony with a lot of out of tune instruments.
I believe healing our trauma and stress is the single-most important issue facing the world today. Every problem we have — from political unrest, climate crises, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and able-ism, to every phobia — stems from personal trauma. Think about it: If the CEO of Exxon was healed and whole, he wouldn’t deny his company’s complicity in the climate crises. In fact, he’d be the first person spearheading a true solution. If a despotic dictator truly learned to love himself, he wouldn’t oppress and kill people, but would celebrate the beauty and diversity of humanity.
If you’re at peace and in love with yourself — the way you feel when you’re free from trauma — then you can be at peace and in love with the whole world.
This is why I care whether you heal. And this is why you should care if I heal. And this is why the most important and loving thing we can do for ourselves and for everyone else is to start to do the beautiful, loving work of healing.
I promise you that it isn’t painful, ugly, scary or sad. It’s actually easier than you thought possible. You can help the world heal, and you can start right here, right now, right in your own home.
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Written by By Lauren Walker
Lauren Walker has taught yoga and meditation since 1997 and created Energy Medicine Yoga while teaching at Norwich University, the oldest private military college in the country. She now teaches EMYoga across the US and internationally. She is frequently quoted in Yoga Journal, Mantra Magazine, and Yoga Digest, and her yoga work was featured in the New York Times. In 2016, she was named one of the top 100 most influential yoga teachers in America. Her two previous books, The Energy Medicine Yoga Prescription (2017) and Energy Medicine Yoga: Amplify the Healing Power of Your Yoga Practice (2014), both won the Nautilus Silver Award for Best Mind/Body publication. Her new book is The Energy to Heal: Find Lasting Freedom from Stress and Trauma through Energy Medicine Yoga (Llewellyn Publications, May 20, 2022). Learn more at EMYoga.net.
