Soul – The Missing Link

When I came across Universal Medicine I had been working as a massage therapist/body-worker for 13 years. I had done an extensive amount of training, always looking for more knowledge and more skills to bring to my work. When working with clients I was aware that we were only touching the surface of the problem. People would turn up with pain or muscle tension, I would administer the techniques I had learned, the tension would be relieved and they would leave… but only to return with exactly the same problem a few weeks later. This was good for business (!), but it was not my idea of helping someone long term, and it did not feel good to me.

I had an impulse to look deeper. I wanted to work with the person in front of me, not just the muscle and bone. I wanted to ask the question ‘WHY’? to all the conditions and pain that were presented to me. I was aware of other mechanical functional treatments I could train in, but they still didn’t answer the question ‘why’?, or offer real solutions on how to prevent these conditions in the first place.

Looking for the answers, I decided to do a 4-year training in body-psychotherapy and deep bodywork. This definitely took me deeper, and introduced me to emotional processing and cathartic release. I became aware of the amount of tension in my own body, and also of the unresolved emotional issues I was carrying around with me – and that these were affecting my body. For four years I went over and over those emotional processes thinking I was healing and releasing them, and doing what I thought was ‘getting to know myself’. I was being encouraged to ask clients to do the same. Although I had definitely gone deeper, it wasn’t feeling right, and I did not have a clear sense of what I was asking clients to do, or where we were going with it. It wasn’t clear to me how any healing could be taking place. I now understand that what I was actually doing was magnifying these issues and not healing myself or others at all, but doing the exact opposite. Ouch!

When I came across Universal Medicine and esoteric healing in 2007 it was a huge relief. All the pieces fell into place, and I could feel the truth of what was being presented. After the first few exercises on my first day I could feel that all the emotional stuff is actually on the periphery, and that this is not who we are at all. In the centre of us, at our very essence, is a big well of Love that is our Soul. The Soul has a warmth that when kindled can radiate throughout the body. This energy is healing. This was the missing link. Why focus on the tense muscles and the physical pain, or the emotional turmoil that is creating them, when you can go straight to Soul? What we focus on and give energy to simply magnifies. It is important to address the tension and emotion that is around, but the healing also lies in knowing the greater and true part of us.

With this re-discovered awareness I could feel that my approach to my work and my own life had been back-to-front. I had been treating the body from the outside in, and could now feel with a growing clarity that true healing comes from the inside out. How empowering is this! What this actually means is that each person has the innate ability to heal themselves, and need not be reliant on someone else to be responsible for their health. Obviously modern medicine, bodywork therapies and other modalities have an important role to play in supporting people to heal and indeed are likely to be more effective when supported by the awareness and livingness of daily life when in connection with the energy of the soul.

The answer to my searching question ‘why’? was very simple. When we allow life to take over we can become disconnected from our very essence, and this in turn creates stress, disharmony, tension, illness and so on. So the root of healing is found in the re-connection.

This beautiful simplicity is what Universal Medicine represents and consistently invites us to come back and return to. The esoteric practitioners who have trained with Universal Medicine are wonderful examples of people who are living this simplicity in their daily lives, and as such are able to inspire others to do the same if they so choose. They are living in connection to the Love within and continually confirming and building this Love with every choice and every move they make. From this there is a wisdom that grows from living in connection to their Soul.

The Universal Medicine practitioners have been a source of continual inspiration to me. The unwavering and loving support I have received has enabled me to make decisions in my own life based on the reality of how my own body is. Some of my choices have been surprising, including my choice last year to stop practising massage and bodywork. I know that this modality is very important, and I may come back to it in the future, but I realised I needed time to build my own loving foundation in my body before trying to treat other people.

An esoteric practitioner is not someone who simply turns up and gives a session with a whole load of skills. To practise esoterically requires an outstanding amount of integrity, and a responsibility and commitment to living true to oneself in every area of one’s life. Every movement, every word, every thought, every choice, every mouthful of food is either healing to the body or harming. The Love and responsibility needs to be to self first, before one can be there for others. It takes time to build up the energy of one’s loving choices in the body, and it takes patience and dedication to remain committed to oneself in that way. The esoteric way of life takes self-love and self-responsibility to a whole new level.

Over time I also realised that I had been under the weight of the identification and ideal I had of myself as a ‘practitioner’, and knew that I needed to let this title go. I could not have predicted how amazing this would feel, and how I now feel free to be ‘me’ without the pressures and expectations I had been putting on myself to be a ‘good’ practitioner. I am now free to build my own self-love, lovingly, in my own time.

I continue to attend the lectures and workshops presented by Universal Medicine, but now I am there as ‘me’, not as ‘a practitioner’. I am beginning to feel how being the true me is more important than trying to be something, and that I can bring the fullness of myself into whatever I choose to do.

I am now working in a busy shop in the centre of London, a regular job that is providing me with a regular rhythm through which I am learning to lovingly support my body. I serve hundreds of customers every day, and I love the opportunity of learning how to stay connected, gentle and true in everything I do, and in each interaction I have. When I am connected I love my job, simply because I am being me, and therefore able to be there fully with everyone else. There is a huge potential for healing here, for me and for those around me, and I am nowhere near a treatment room or a healing couch (!), but simply living and loving my daily life.

To Universal Medicine, Serge Benhayon, and the whole amazing team – thank you for your unwavering commitment to Love, and for being living and inspiring examples of what is possible for us all.