I hope this note finds you navigating these wild times with deep breaths and beauty in your heart. Sending you waves of both breath and beauty as I start this note…

Years ago, while I was navigating one of the health crises that led me onto a deep and long healing path, I remember despairingly asking the questions, “Am I going to die from this? What am I supposed to DO here? What am I supposed to GET from this?”

Years later, when I was doing my training in energy medicine work, I learned to dive deeper, and steadier, exploring answers to different questions, like, “What do you need to take a closer look at here that you’ve not been paying attention to? What is this health issue and crisis saying to you about what needs shifting in your life?”

These types of questions help us to see what shifts are needed to heal from concerns or crises we are facing – understanding that what needs healing and what shifts are needed can look distinct for different people.

As I deepened into my study of alternative healing modalities, I began to understand more profoundly that when something arises in the body, it is there as messenger. When we are ill, when we are in pain, the body is speaking to us.

There is wisdom held in the pain, illness and discomfort about what needs to shift, what we need to do differently to bring back balance, what needs to heal underneath the surface, that we can uncover. And in this uncovering, we can often go even deeper in our healing process, healing at the root.

I know I'm going deep here. I’m going to speak to this healing concept at the individual level, and then widen the lens and bring it back to our collective.

In my healing work with clients now, we look at what is the obvious – like the image of the iceberg above the surface of the water, which is what we see and recognize. “What can we do above the surface, to bring ease, balance and well-being”?

And then, further into the journey, we explore the invisible parts underneath the surface of the water.

“What is underneath the surface that needs our attention? What are the deeper and older layers that need healing?” In this phase of the healing process, that is where we can move to deeper and lasting healing.

Now, if we zoom out and look with a wider lens at our world in these times, we see a level of chaos and unrest, COVID lockdowns, school closures and financial breakdown, racial injustice, environmental devastation, corruption and divisiveness in our politics and elections.

It’s a lot!

Since this pandemic began, and all of the resulting upheaval that has followed, the question that sometimes wakes me in the middle of the night (and nudges me in rare moments of quiet) is, “what is this COVID-inspired global crisis showing our collective/ our world about what needs shifting and healing, in our own lives and on the planet?”

If we look at everything that has been brought above the surface for our closer viewing, and we listen deeply to the messenger that is this global experience, what are the answers we would hear – and are hearing – about the medicine that is emerging in these times?

Some of these answers may be obvious… and some might need a bit of time. On a global level, we as a collective humanity are being asked to take a look at some big things – systemic change that has needed our attention for far too long, no longer willing to be held in the shadows.
What do we as a global community need to pay closer attention to?
What has been brought to the surface to heal?
What have we been ignoring that we cannot any longer ignore?
What needs to be created to forge a better way?
Then, as we narrow the lens again, and move our attention to ourselves as individuals, each of us is experiencing this in our own way, with our own triggers and traumas and experiences that are surfacing, and our own parts that need healing.

So here are some questions for you…

What do you need to pay closer attention to?
What has been brought to the surface for you to heal?
What have you been ignoring that you cannot any longer ignore?
What is essential to you, what matters so much, that you need to create or shift to fully step into your life in a purposeful, healthy, whole way?

Again, some of these answers may be obvious… and some might need a bit of time and deeper exploration.

On the individual and community levels, what was not getting our attention before this pandemic, and all of the other upheaval we are experiencing on a global level, that has long needed our attention?

And now that we are in this planetary “time-out”, how might we use this space without the usual distractions and numbing techniques to look within?

It seems clear this pandemic has changed our world forever, and it seems unlikely we will be “going back to normal”. So as we explore the creation of a better way, a more sustainable and compassionate way, for our people and our earth, how might we use these questions and answers as pathways to our transformation, to a better way for our future – for ourselves as individuals, for our communities, for our planet?

This might take a bit of diving in – I encourage you to take a moment and get quiet, and then ask yourself these questions.

Remember, as changemakers, as caregivers, as stewards of the planet, the more we do our own healing and the more we tend to what is inside, the more this ripples out and helps to heal throughout our global community.

So as we look at what needs attention in our own lives, this exploration becomes part of our service to the collective.

When we show up well, healed, whole, the more alive and present and potent and effective we can be in our changemaking, healing and service.

If this resonates, keep your eyes on your inbox. There is more to come.

In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be sharing more about a group program where you will have the chance to dive into these questions for your healing and that of your community, in a group of conscious, thoughtful, compassionate people, all looking at how to take care of yourself as we seek to create a better way forward – for ourselves and our planet.

I can’t wait to share more.

For now, if you would like to share your thoughts and/or feelings about the questions, and what answers are showing up for you, I’d love to hear from you. Please hit “reply” and send me a note.

Many good wishes of health, ease and well-being coming your way!

With much love and appreciation,
Kelly

p.s. If there is someone you think might benefit from this note – or my notes in general – please forward to a friend and help spread the healing.

Kelly Lubeck, MPH, RYT