The Healing Circle Book Chapter Blog: Chapter Two – Setting an Intention to Heal

 Join us by reading one chapter per week of our book The Healing Circle which includes inspiring true stories and teaching from the ‘Skills for Healing’ Cancer Weekend Retreats. Each week we will post the next chapter of our book, links to related video, and a blog about the chapter. Learn about recent scientific advances in the body-mind-spirit connection, updates of the people featured in our book, and our reflections on each chapter. Read the whole book for free by accessing the previous blog posts. Please send us your comments and questions! Deep peace and healing,Rob Rutledge, MD and Timothy Walker, PhD.

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Read Chapter Two:   Setting an Intention to Heal

Watch the Video:  In this first visualization, Rob shows how we can always generate loving kindness and compassion towards ourselves and others. Please follow this safe and easy visualization as you listen along.  Watch the video.

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Blog by Dr. Timothy Walker

Over the years of working as a counselor and psychotherapist I have repeatedly been moved by what happens when people give rise to a strong intention to heal. It reminds me of the old joke, “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.” Contemplating this simple concept has, in no small way, transformed my practice. When people consistently hold the intention to heal, they heal, in one way or another.

In the world of cancer there are many remarkable stories of people who say that they would not accept their prognosis as framed by their doctor, and instead, based on a deep intuition, began to envision themselves healing. The story of Geoff Eaton in our book is one such story of a young man who faced two bouts of leukemia. During the first bout, he had a focused determination to heal which he framed as a hockey player going through the Stanley Cup playoffs, with each round of chemotherapy representing a hockey game. When his cancer recurred two years later, he took a more gentle, intuitive, and spiritual approach combined with his bone marrow transplant. (Geoff is cancer-free and well now, 12 years later). Another man we recently met at our Winnipeg retreat has had five distinct cancer diagnoses over thirty years and his oncologist says, “If I knew why you’re still alive, I would be awarded the Nobel Prize.”

Nevertheless the intention to heal is tricky. Wishful thinking and hoping for a good outcome are not the same as setting a strong intention to heal. The difference has to do with holding your attention in the present moment and paying attention to your current state of mind. The intention to heal is in fact an ongoing, moment-to-moment practice of mindfulness and loving-kindness.

Think about an airplane on automatic pilot going from New York to Toronto. The wind may be constantly blowing the plane off target. One moment it blows it off course to the east another moment off course to the west. What the autopilot does is constantly reset the plane to adjust to these strong environmental factors realigning it back on target. By the time the plane lands it was probably off course as much as it was on course but it still lands    on the runway in Toronto.

Meditation works the same way. There are many forces within our own being, in our lives, and in our environment that can blow us off course. But when we set a strong intention to practice mindfulness we are gradually training an inner system of our mind’s natural capacity for awareness that brings us back to the present and back to our wholesome intentions.

Once we set an intention to constantly bring ourselves back to the present, next we can set an intention to practice loving ourselves no matter what. We can set an intention to be grateful for all of the good in our life and to love life in each moment. In the midst of this kind of practice we can also set a strong intention to heal and to grow in whatever way is right for us at this point in our journey of life.

There is a story that Tara Brach (director of the insight meditation center in the greater Washington DC area) tells of the Zen teacher who gave a 5-second talk on meditation. He stood up and said “Meditation is about intention and attention.” Then he sat down. Very pithy!

Growing our capacity to give rise to clear intentions and then learning through mindfulness to consistently bring ourselves back to these intentions is an essential practice in aligning mind, body and spirit into their natural potential for healing.