Today I want to bring your attention to an important part of the healing process – a deep understanding of the nature of health and healing helps you to achieve greater levels of health. I’m all about education – knowing what is health and what constitutes healing. If you’re going to have significantly better health, it’s important to know the different mechanisms that can occur along the way.

A Healing Crisis Is Healthy
One of these process is called a healing crisis. Essentially it is a worsening of symptoms or reoccurring of them within the context of your treatment and your progression towards becoming healthier. Now let me be very clear about two things here: the first is that there is a limit to how much we want symptoms to aggravate and secondly, many people don’t experience a healing crisis at all – or nothing really noticeable.

But when it does occur it can be very mild or more significant and how you deal with this is really important if you want to keep on the path of healing.

Let me give you some examples

1. Someone who has had suppressed anger my find that during treatment, their anger levels rise and come to the surface and they may begin to overtly express this anger – they might have outbursts here and there. Physical symptoms may be exacerbated at the same time.

2. Another example is someone who has been having a lot of antibiotics for say, tonsillitis. During Naturopathic or homoeopathic treatment, the tonsils may flair up (not infected) and become hyperactive if you like, as the immune system is stimulated.

3. And another aggravation of symptoms may occur after a consultation when we have talked about some deep inner feelings and experiences – it’s a little like the cover had been lifted from deep seated emotions and airing them brings them to the surface and this can seem like an aggravation of symptoms – emotional and or physical.

4. If someone has been of a unhealthy diet and then suddenly changes their eating patterns to include only health foods and beverages, there can be an unpleasant healing crisis as the body readjusts to new foods and begins the elimination processes. As a Naturopath, we use specific techniques and medicines to minimise this sort of healing crisis as the symptoms can be very unpleasant and actually harmful to the body. For example, it is very stressful for the liver to detoxify loads of toxins during a healing crisis and so careful liver support id required.

Each of these situations may be indications that you are moving towards a healthier state. In fact, us Naturopaths and Homoeopaths usually see a healing crisis as a really good sign as your healing progresses. If this does happen with you, don’t panic! Just stop any medication you are taking and give the clinic a call.