Take a look at this tree....When we are talking about Energy Work, or healing in general, whatever "symptoms" you are having are like the leaves of this tree. Your symptoms can be physical illnesses, disease, unexplained aches and pains, or even mental/emotional symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, sadness, anger, etc, etc. Basically, any outward manifestations of something "wrong" in your body are represented by the leaves of this tree.
When people come to me for help with an issue, they usually want to talk about the "leaves"...They say "Help me know how to relieve my arthritis pain, or what can I do to heal my sluggish thyroid?" Sometimes I hear things like "I'm angry/sad/depressed all the time, and I don't know why..." or "help me deal with the anxiety that is keeping me up at night..." All of these things are "leaves", or outward manifestations of something wrong within the body.
Notice how, in the picture above, you can trace lines from the leaves into the core of the tree, and then down to the roots.
It is in addressing the roots of an issue where true healing takes place!
The belief that you must address the root of an issue to truly heal it is one of the basic philosophies that separate holistic healers from our counterparts in mainstream medicine.
While a dr. looks at your physical symptoms and asks "How can we make these symptoms go away", a holistic healer, a trained herbalist, for example, would ask "Why are these symptoms present? What is happening to create these symptoms (what is the root cause), and what does the body need to heal itself?"
When I start working with a new client, one of the first things I do is show them this picture of a tree, and explain the importance of getting to the root causes of the issues that have led them to me. This is usually the beginning of a process, where we deal with one or two issues at a time, and continue working until we have resolved those issues 100% (which is always our goal!), or have made as much progress as we can. There are some cases where the root causes of a complaint are easy to find and are resolved quickly. The need to discover and address problems at their root level is one of the reasons I have been trained in so many different modalities...My training in herbs, homeopathics, essential oils and Energy Medicine help me to address imbalances on whatever level I find them, and gives me the tools to address a wide variety of issues!
Over the next few posts, I'll talk about the systems of the body, and give a basic overview of the Energetic Systems (this is where things get really interesting!), as well as teach the 5 Levels of Healing!