what is a healing crisis

What Is A Healing Crisis?

We have to crash before we ascend…

I don’t really know how to explain a healing crisis if I’m completely honest. But its something that happens to a lot of us when we dig deep, searching for the root cause of an issue or imbalance within ourselves, and start to heal. To oversimplify, sometimes things seem to get a lot worse before they start getting better – especially when you’re dealing with deep spiritual or magical healing.

In terms of physical (& medical) healing, it’s where “symptoms briefly worsen before beginning to improve”. https://www.healthline.com/health/healing-crisis. It’s not just limited to complimentary therapies though, your own spell work and manifesting can also trigger it.

If you’ve ever heard of shadow work then you’re probably familiar with a healing crisis. It was something I was warned about when I started my Reiki training too. It’s not something to be afraid of, I think of it as cleaning a wound before it fully heals. Because we can’t just keep bandaging up deep imbalances and traumas, and expecting them to fully heal. So we dig deep, seeking a truly healing experience – we move through those dark, painful places in our psyche that we’ve been putting off dealing with as we just carry on with the one day at a time, and envelope ourselves in love and healing.

And it HURTS sometimes. We may have an “emotional release”. We may have stomach aches and pains for a couple of days, we might feel dizzy, we might need to rest and sleep for a couple of days. Lots of things may happen. It seems we’re getting a bit worse. This is a healing crisis, and it’s normal. (Or, we could simply move through without a crisis – again, totally normal).

But then we come out the other side. It’s like we’ve been stripped clean of the muck and pain and sorrow and imbalances that were holding us back. We emerge, a shiny new glowing version of ourselves, happier and healthier than before we stepped into the chaotic messy whirlwind of healing.

The healing crisis was temporary. And it was worth it.

So how do you get through a healing crisis?

  • Be kind to yourself – don’t expect too much
  • Drink water
  • Avoid alcohol and drugs
  • Try and eat healthy, balanced meals
  • Listen to your body. Eat what you can, when you can
  • Rest.
  • Trust. Trust yourself, trust your healing
  • Try bathing away the energetic muck and physical aches in a ritual bath (especially with salt and epsom salts)
  • Ground yourself with grounding techniques
  • If you’re healing something like deep traumas, reach out. To friends, family, fellow witches and pagans, or even your GP or the depression helpline. Even introverts are designed to be relatively social beings and sometimes we just need to chat.

A healing crisis doesn’t always happen, so if you do deep healing work and don’t experience it, this doesn’t mean you haven’t healed. And if you are experiencing a healing crisis, I wish you a swift and powerful healing journey.

Leave a Reply