The 3 Principles That Govern All Healing

What would you get if you took the overarching principles from every theory of psychology,

Every religion,

Every tradition of spiritual practice,

And every form of self-care?

If you could combine all of that into a simple sentence or a base level of instructions,

What would you get?

Well,

I think I've done it.

Now that sounds quite outlandish and ridiculous,

And I'm not claiming that this is the answer to all of the problems,

But what I am saying is that when I look at every spiritual tradition that I've studied,

Every religion,

Every theory of psychology and counselling that I've come across in my work as a therapist,

As a counsellor,

And a spiritual seeker,

And strip away all of the jargon,

Strip away the mythology,

Strip away the things that sort of cloud it,

What are we left with?

I think we're left with three simple statements,

Three simple actions.

Awareness,

Acceptance,

Action.

Let me break it down for you.

We need to become aware,

Aware of ourselves,

Aware of others,

Aware of the situation we are in.

If we are not aware,

How can we engage with anything?

How do we know who we are,

Where we're going,

What we want?

How can we engage with any form of connection to any form of divine or any sort of therapy or any inner process or any anything,

Right?

Awareness is the first step.

We must be aware,

Strip away the delusion,

Focus in the moment.

Okay,

We're aware,

Now what?

Now we need to accept.

Acceptance of reality as it is,

For what it is,

Right now,

Right?

Accepting reality as it is,

For what it is,

Right now.

Now,

Acceptance is a bit of a loaded word.

By acceptance,

I don't mean approval.

I don't mean you have to like it.

There are things happening in my life that are great,

Things happening in my life that are not so great,

Things happening in my body that is great and not so great,

In my world,

Your world,

Our world,

Obviously,

Right?

I don't have to like it.

I don't have to approve of it,

But I do need to accept that it's happening.

The reality of the moment and of the self and of what's happening.

If I don't accept that reality,

I'm acting on false assumptions.

I'm moving through the world without,

You know,

Engaging with a real response.

Awareness,

Acceptance,

And then action.

Now,

Our actions need to be value-aligned or belief-aligned,

Aligned towards a higher purpose,

Towards a goal,

The goal,

Whatever your goal is.

Value-aligned action,

Actions that move us closer.

We've become aware of what's arising,

We've accepted,

Not necessarily approved,

And then we can take action.

Now,

That action can take many different steps.

So,

By saying that this is the summary of those different techniques or those different principles,

Those different psychological,

Spiritual,

Religious traditions,

The detail comes in the action.

And don't get me wrong,

If you look into a DBT,

CBT,

Mindfulness of a Pastner,

The prayer-based practices of multiple religions,

All of the different stuff we can do,

That's where the real juice of how and what and why to act comes in.

And there's multiple different techniques that go far beyond the scope of this short session.

But what I am saying here is that if we become aware,

We accept without approval necessarily,

We can then act and choose the appropriate response.

Value-aligned,

What gets us closer towards our highest goal?

What gets us closer towards the self?

What gives us the best opportunity to grow?

Now that we're aware of the problem,

We've accepted it,

We can take action.

And then,

From there,

We go back.

Our action makes change.

Change is good.

We are always changing.

So,

We've changed something with our action and we move back to awareness.

We become aware of the new situation,

Ourself,

Others in the world.

We accept the new situation.

Did our actions get us closer or further?

Okay,

Yes,

Keep going,

No change,

So on and so forth.

That's the overarching principle that seems to cover a variety of different techniques.

All of them,

Right?

Once again,

Quite a big statement,

But let's unpack it a little bit.

I like to look at principles.

There are techniques,

Like this is how you do box breathing.

This is how you do this form of ritualistic prostration.

This is how you approach thoughts from a CBT model,

So on and so on and so forth.

This is how you practice mindfulness.

This is how you do a visualization.

There's all of these different things.

They are great,

But can we combine those into,

To use a computer analogy,

A zip file?

When you're studying or looking at different traditions from different teachers,

Different approaches,

Therapists,

All of that sort of stuff,

See if you can fit the practice into awareness,

Acceptance,

Or action.

And it gives you a zip file and you go,

Okay,

I've got a problem.

I need to open up my health or healing response.

What do I do?

Okay.

Awareness,

Acceptance,

Action,

As opposed to trying to go through all of these micro techniques.

Those micro techniques are important,

But if you don't have the overarching concepts,

You're going to struggle to pick the right one or deploy it or even remember to deploy it.

Yeah.

There's a couple of other little sub principles that I would like to offer you.

Health seems to be fitting in within a bio,

Psycho,

Social,

Spiritual model.

Your biology matters.

How you treat your body,

The foods you eat,

What you do,

How you move,

Medications,

All of that sort of stuff matters.

The psychology matters.

The thoughts,

The inputs,

The psychology,

The talk therapy,

That sort of stuff matters.

The inputs into your mind.

The social matters.

Who you're with,

How much deep,

True,

Meaningful connection you have.

And the spiritual matters.

How you form meaning with life and perhaps with a higher power and internal strength or self.

If you are struggling in one area,

Impact the others to raise them all.

If you're struggling in general,

Look across the broad strokes.

Bio,

Psycho,

Social,

Spiritual.

And the final thing,

The final part of all of this is the statement,

I am here now.

I am here now and this moment is safe.

Things happened in the past.

Things happened to us all.

And to survive it,

We built up defense mechanisms.

Defense mechanisms that we hold in the body.

You know,

The body keeps the score.

Defense mechanisms that cause us to act or think or do certain things that kept us safe.

You know,

The fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Fawn or fantasy response.

Yeah.

But that's not happening anymore.

And those things that did keep us safe may no longer be suitable or functional,

May not work anymore.

So what do we do?

We say to ourselves,

Ground ourselves in the moment.

I am here now.

Then we focus on the senses.

What can I see,

Hear,

Touch,

Taste and smell in this moment?

And then we slow down the breath.

I am here now.

What is coming in from the senses?

Slow down the breath.

And the final thing we do is add a bit of gratitude.

What am I grateful for?

What is good in my life?

This process hits all of those markers,

Bio,

Psycho,

Social,

And it also makes you aware,

Accept,

And it is positive action.

Let's give it a try.

Just one minute.

Reminding yourself,

I am here now.

Taking some slow,

Deep breaths,

Relaxing the muscles in the body.

Focusing on what you can bring into the senses,

What you can see,

Hear,

And feel.

And fostering a sense of gratitude.

I know that's a lot,

But let's just try that.

I am here now.

Slowing the breath,

Relaxing the muscles.

Focusing on what you can see,

Hear,

And feel in this moment.

And being grateful.

Give it a try.

So like I said,

I'm not suggesting this is the answer to every problem,

But it is a way to contextualize all of the different supports and approaches and methodologies that you may have come across.

Find your own principles.

Find your own guiding solutions.

Find what works for you to give you a broad stroke conceptual understanding of health,

Happiness,

And healing.

Based on whatever mythology,

Whatever spirituality,

Whatever belief system,

Whatever belief system,

Whatever psychology,

Whatever internal processes work for you.

For me,

The best summary is awareness,

Acceptance,

And action as a loop.

Is adherence to the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model.

And is the practice of,

I am here now.

Relaxing the body.

Slowing down the breath.

Focusing on what I can see in this moment.

And fostering a sense of gratitude.

Because all of that combined seems to put all of those other things in context.

Strips away all of the extra chaff,

So to speak.

And leaves you with the nugget of,

Well,

Helpful truth.

That then you can go deep with those practices to explore and,

You know,

Add the complexity back in.

But with a contextualized understanding of the whole process.

Thank you for joining me.

I'll see you next time.