We’ve asked Karyn Schwartz, owner of the Sugarpill apothecary on E Pine, to contribute to CHS about health and Hill living on a semi-regular basis. If you’re an expert and want to share with the community in a recurring CHS column, we’d like to hear from you. This is her second post for CHS.
At least a handful of times every day, emergency vehicles race past the front door of the shop. I’m always fascinated by the different ways people respond to the noise and the implied tragedy of the sirens as they screech by. Some put their hands over their ears and hold their breath while others hardly even seem to notice; some keep talking to me like nothing is happening and as if I can hear what they are saying, while others look like they are in actual pain from distress. Not infrequently, people tell me of times in their lives when sirens have meant something very specific to them, and the memories and the feelings they still bring up are as varied as the people sharing them.
One of the things we strive to do in holistic healing is to understand the nature of each person’s suffering, and to look at the patterns of reaction that an individual has to their own unique circumstances. For every person who doesn’t feel the ease, the freedom, the joy, satisfaction or well-being in their lives that they aspire to, there’s a complex back-story that includes details of when, and in response to what, a symptom or feeling began, what specific things bring on, aggravate, soothe or in other ways seem to affect those symptoms, and how the person actually experiences their own discomfort or dis-ease.
No two people will ever suffer in exactly the same way, nor will their healing process follow the same course. Each of us has our own personal constellation of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual sensations, as well as the very tangible circumstances and histories of our individual lives. It’s that particular constellation of detail that helps us to understand what needs to be healed, what might assist in that healing, and what healing would actually constitute in the context of the whole of a person’s life.
Sometimes I think we have too few words in our language to describe the nature of our own suffering, and the tendency to want to label our experience succinctly leads us to use big, general terms in an attempt to describe incredibly nuanced and deeply personal states of being. Just as with the people listening to the sirens, our responses to the stresses and challenges of our lives are so distinctive, and the way we experience and understand our own reactions has so much to do with the way we experience and understand the world around us and our place in it.
This is why holistic practitioners of any modality ask so many questions when people come to seek guidance for any of the reasons they do – even if it seems like something simple and common. Without considering the individual, we cannot know what their symptoms mean or what is causing them. We cannot know, if we aren’t curious about the context, if a symptom is actually the problem or if it’s a reasonable reaction to something else that needs to be addressed. This doesn’t mean that the physiologic realities of the body, which may only be detected by modern scientific investigations are unimportant, or that conventional medicine is not miraculous, life-saving and necessary. It just means that these aren’t the only facts to be considered, and that healing has just as much, and perhaps sometimes even more to do with addressing to the more subtle and individual aspects of our lives. It means that everything that you feel may have something to do with your own condition is important, and worthy of being shared, considered and attended to, whenever you seek any kind of assistance.
Previously on Capitol Pill
Everyone on the street has to put up with painfully loud sirens so the sirens can still be heard over the full volume stereo in some asshole’s car to move their obstruction out of the way.