Setting Your Sights on Healing

Setting Your Sights on Healing

Tending to psycho-spiritual issues in the race to recovery

Our Beloved Family:

David Brown is a gifted sprinter. He owns world records in the 100 and 200 meters races, and has gold medals from national and international championships to prove he’s one of the best. He’s also blind.

David competes in Paralympic track and field events all over the world and regularly amazes people that he can run so fast (100m/10.92 seconds) without being able to see the track. Assisting David is his guide, Jerome Avery, a former U.S. track and field competitor who runs alongside him in the lane to his immediate left. Both runners are connected to each other by a short four-inch nylon cord that loops around two fingers. As they fly toward the finish line, Jerome helps David maintain his lane while announcing how many meters are left to go, as well as when they’re entering a curve, cresting it and coming out of it. The key to pulling all this off, while running at about 23 miles per hour, is synchronization.

The relationship between Jerome and David is very similar to the relationship between physician and patient. For David, it’s crucial that he be able to find a partner who can set the pace. Likewise, it’s very important for patients to find a physician who sets his sights on healing (not symptom management) and knows how to get there. As David runs his race, his guide needs to be able to keep him on track while providing instructions and encouragement along the way. In similar fashion, the right physician will keep his patients on track toward their healing while offering insight, inspiration and support. It’s essential that David’s partner be able to provide all this while running side-by-side with him at the same speed. Patients also need physicians who they feel are by their side during their illness. If a doctor and patient are at different places along the healing track, whether that be from a difference in philosophy or commitment, then healing doesn’t happen because this is a race where they’re working to cross the finish line together, too.

While David has found an incredible partner in Jerome who is doing all the right things, it’s important to remember that regardless of all this invaluable assistance, David still has to run his own race. Jerome can’t do it for him.

Even with the best physician providing the most knowledgeable, supportive and intimate care, patients must remember that it’s not really the doctor who does the healing. Health arises from within the patient as they increasingly commit to the race toward recovery.

Health arises from within the patient as they increasingly commit to the race toward recovery. Running your own race requires a lot more than just following the directions on a prescription. It means tending to all the pyscho-spiritual issues that may be contributing to your dis-ease. Explore past traumas and unresolved hurts that contribute so much to creating chronic illness in the body. Do the necessary work to heal those wounds, find forgiveness and mend broken relationships. Have the courage to do what it takes to create a joyful life. Hate your job? That’s not helping you heal. Start looking for one you love. Is your intimate relationship loveless or a constant stress? Do what you can to repair it or find another that’s fulfilling. Do everything you can each day to incorporate more love, laughter and joy in your life. If you do, your body will respond to this profound energetic shift and heal, because healing does not happen by medicine alone. It takes a great guide and a patient who’s willing to go the distance.

Light & Love in the Month Ahead,
Dr. Habib Sadeghi & Dr. Sherry Sami

(Photo: Kirby Lee-Image of Sports)