There is a real need for a collective healing movement in the world today. Our communities, cultures and wider ecosystems are in deep need of repair and restoration. A vision is needed to support the development of healing ecologies and resilient systems. Such a movement must begin in understanding the principles of healing.
How do systems heal, grow and transform whether at the level of the individual, the group or a whole society? The following are some guiding principles on which healing practice can be based.
- Healing is the movement towards wholeness or integration. Health emerges within optimally regulating systems that are integrated as they balance and co-ordinate differentiated parts of a system into a linked whole.
- Trauma and healing are collective experiences. The systems view sees health and illness as arising as a result of problem in the patterns of relationship of the system (e.g. society); altering these relationships therefore is central to healing.
- Experiences of being alone with overwhelming feelings lie at the core of trauma; at the core of healing is reciprocal relationships, kinship and ‘relational health’.
- ‘Healing centred engagement’ starts to focus more on what supports well-being (hope, imagination, trust, dreams etc.); the focus is on ‘what is resilient about you’.
- Right-brain attending is a kind of ‘therapeutic attention’ which rests on being rather than doing and creates the felt sense of a ‘we’ that supports healing.
- Transformance refers to the innate motivational drive to heal, self-right and flourish. To transform and heal people must have experiences that directly contradict prior traumatic learning. Healing trauma involves helping people feel safe in their bodies.