What is Self-Healing?

Self-healing is a process by which we take responsibility and control over our own health and wellbeing and in doing so, we maximise our levels of inner peace, happiness and positive material/physical health and mental health while minimising the less desirable aspects such as ill-health, disease, and damaging negative thoughts and emotions.

To fully understand our health and wellbeing and, therefore, to be able to take control over it, it helps to separate out each aspect of health and wellbeing, and we have done this using the AYA Healing Pyramid. Health and wellbeing cascade down from the top. If you get the top right, everything starts to cascade down into place. If you get the top wrong, everything cascades down out of place. There are 5 layers to the pyramid. We have written these explanations starting from the bottom of the pyramid and working up to the top.

The Material Body Layer - (bottom layer)

This is the layer that we all know so well. Most symptoms of ill-health will be seen in the material (physical) body first. However, it is actually the bottom layer of the pyramid and there are 4 layers above it that govern its health. This means that although symptoms in the material body are often first to be seen, they are usually last to manifest, which means that ill-health could have been prevented much earlier if the other layers had been attended to. There are, however, many ways in which the material body can come to harm and, therefore, the way to keep this layer healthy is through, unsurprisingly, nutrition and exercise.

The Bio-Energy Layer

Bio-Energy is a type of subtle magnetic energy that makes up a large part of our anatomy and physiology, although this is not currently part of mainstream science due to the lack of evidence for its existence. This does not mean that it does not exist but that we are perhaps not looking in the right places or the funding for research is not being channelled to that area. In time, we believe that science will discover, prove, and accept that we have subtle magnetic energies within us that form structures such as bio-energy organs and bio-energy body systems, in the same way that our material body has organs and systems. For example we have a heart and a blood circulation system.

An important part of the Bio-Energy Layer is the 'energy body' which includes our chakra (energy pumps) systems and our meridian (energy vessels) system. These two systems are the most famous, but there are many other systems in the energy body, which we go into more detail in AYA Education. The health of this 'bio-energy anatomy' has a huge impact on the health of our material body and the way to keep this layer healthy is through energy breath work.

The Emotional Layer

In recent years, there has been an increase in awareness surrounding mental-health issues, which is a good thing. However, it is still missed or dismissed in far too many cases.  Mental health is a very general term and, therefore, at AYA, we separate out the emotions from the psychology. When we do this, we can start to really understand exactly how emotions are generated, how they are perpetuated and how we can isolate them and target them for healing. In this instance we are talking about negative emotions as these are the only type that cause a problem. The emotional cycle is very complex. However, there are some very simple exercises that can be performed, which can target this layer very successfully. It is already known to science that our emotions have a large impact on our health, but the field is still in its infancy. When we feel an emotion, a type of subtle bio-energy is created (emotional energy) and is circulated around our energy body. This energy can be transferred from person to person, which accounts for the mystery of empaths (people who feel the emotions of others) and also accounts for certain concepts that we all feel intuitively, and that are characterised by certain phrases in our language, such as 'I could really feel the energy of the room', or 'the atmosphere at the stadium was electric'. The Emotional Layer can be targeted for healing though karma-emotion work.

The Psychological Layer

Our personalities are very complex psychological structures. It is the thoughts that are running through our minds (the mind stream) that produce the emotions that we feel. It all starts with a trigger of some kind, which can be part of our environment (outside of us), or can be an internal pattern of thinking. Either way, our mind stream is activated and this activates our emotions in the body. Quite often, we find ourselves trapped in a negative mind stream, which perpetuates negative emotions and is sending disorder and damage down the layers of the pyramid.

If we are to start producing positive emotions for ourselves instead of the negative (painful) ones, we should take a look at how our mind stream and our personality is actually formed. Keep reading to find out how the quality of our mind stream is literally producing the emotional layer of the healing pyramid and understanding our 'patterns of thinking' is the key to unlocking the health of this layer.

The Spiritual Layer - (top layer)

This layer influences all of the other layers of the pyramid. There is an inner peace in everyone, which lies just behind the mind, just waiting to be found. It is your consciousness, your Awareness. It is you, your true Self, your true state of being (and in a way cannot be actually found, only realised). When you realise this Awareness, you find that it is very peaceful; in fact it is peace itself. It is impossible to describe this concept effectively, which is why it has to be experienced instead. The more time we spend looking for this inner peace, or the more time we spend in it once we have realised it, the larger impact it has on the psychological layer underneath it. If we concentrate our efforts in staying in this inner peace, slowly the psychological layer smoothes out and the negative sides of our personalities decrease and the positive sides increase. This is the goal of self-healing and in fact is the highest form of healing that exists.