The healing journey and the life journey are one integrated process: Journaling - Healing into Life and Death by Stephen Levine

I realized in the book we are all suffering, feeling pain, feeling pain, experiencing joy, dying and being reborn,  I like the idea of Life and Death being just this much.  I had a client the other day who had a many many physical and emotional problems.  So many and he physically was deformed and I thought what can I do for him.  Maybe I can do a body scan, a little breath work, joint freeing series. And now I can do "Just this Much" or maybe I can just listen. It's all valid.  My conscious mind wanted to come out with elaborate routines and prescriptions by the superconscious will what to see what God-dess has to say and do the little things,

These quotes spoke to me

p.29
“This work of opening to ourselves is taken a step at a time.  It is begun with a heartful openness and investigative awareness which gently explores the physical/mental pains and holdings which become so noticeable around illness. It is an ongoing process of meeting our fear with forgiveness and healing awareness, meeting our doubt with a new confidence which develops in each unknown step as the ground comes up to meet and support our progress.”

p.35
“Healing, like grace, always takes us toward our true nature. Indeed healing is not somewhere we are going but a discovery of where we already are-a participation in the process unfolding moment to moment.”

p.54
“Nothing has to be different for us to be whole. It is not  a mtter of change as much as merciful acceptance. We don’t even have to be less angry or less frightened or less doubtful. We  don’t have to be more loving or more compassionate, or more wise.  To be whole is just to take ourselves within wholeheartedly to meet even our lovelessness, our mercilessness with a deeper “Ahhhhhhhhhh”

I am very interesting in the topic of APPEARING WELL VS. BEING WELL and also the converse
APPEARING SICK vs BEING SICK

p.103
“One fellow with terminal cancer noticed that in trying to heal himself he learned to appear well but never how to be well. He said he had been pretending his whole life that he wasn’t sick. He spoke of notiing an ache in his chest just over the heart, which was becoming more intense as he worked with the grief meditation and he exploration of his stomach tumor. One day, when the pain in his heart was particularly apparent, he decided to address it directly. He spoke to it, asked how long it had been there. To his surprise the ace responded saying, “I have been here all your life.  But this is just the first time you ever noticed me.”

.p. 127
“Most importantly I have come to accept myself exactly as I am.  This is the greatest gift of all… Soon my body will drop away from me like a cocoon and my spirit will fly like a butterfly – beautiful and perfect.”

I love this quote because it relates to me as a Yoga therapist who always wants to take another course and another training.  I need to find self-acceptance of where I am right now.