A few months ago I wrote to you describing my unexpected encounter with a truck while out roller-blading.  I talked about feeling great afterwards, and how my Aikido training saved me from catastrophic injury when I was thrown into the air.

A month and a half after landing, "all of a sudden" my right knee began to swell, and swell, and swell.   Finally, 25 cc's of extracted fluid later, the doctor told me I would need an operation on my knee.  I don't know about you, but I don't like operations.  One reason being that I don't believe in "factory authorized replacement parts" for humans.  The other reason being, I'm a sissy when it comes to medically induced pain.  I told the doctor I was unlikely to show up for an operation, and he finally agreed to giving me a course of physical therapy and anti-inflammation medication.

And from there, the second part of my story unfolds.

Ever since I was an officer in the Navy, I've realized I excel during emergencies.  What I don't do quite as well at is taking care of myself over the long haul. It's not that I abuse myself all that much.  It's more that I often keep myself too busy to attend to myself properly.  I am sure many of you suffer from the same syndrome.

This time around I vowed to do things differently, but I soon realized I wasn't getting the job done.  Finally, a good friend pulled me aside and said, "You offer such a wonderful gift of healing to others.  I'm surprised to not see you use these gifts with yourself."  I immediately understood that she was saying something quite important.

"I've seen you play and work with young children from other cultures," she said, "and I'm always amazed and touched by the connection you make and the results you get, even when you don't have a common verbal language.  Talk to your knee as if you are talking to a young frightened child.  Talk to your knee with tenderness and intention, and it WILL understand and respond."

My friend's kind words were enough to jump start me into action.  I took a private two-hour Yoga class every day for two weeks, and during the evenings I put my hands on my right knee and spoke to it in loving terms.  It took three days of talking before I could feel my knee responding.  A pulsing here, a softening there, and little by little the pain subsided and I felt stronger and more confident when standing and moving.

If there is one thing the body really does understand, it is the language of love!

The language of love touches each of us in a profound way, and we need to trust in this fact if we are to play an active part in our own healing.

Several days ago I went back to the doctor and he said he was pleased to tell me my knee appears to have fully healed.  He said he was quite surprised given the extent of the damage.  When I told him what I had done he smiled and seemed amused as he closed my folder and said, "That's all for you, your treatment is complete."

I wish I could have helped him understand that the critical element in my treatment was self love.  What a shame that he didn't understand what I was saying.  Hopefully this message is one that you can hear and come to believe in.

Whenever you open yourself up to the experience of love, you offer yourself a gift of profound healing.  And there is no greater gift of love, than the ability to love yourself.

Commentary

I wrote above that it took three days of talking to my knee before I could feel it responding.  My belief is that my knee was a bit confused at first.  Even though I've had trouble with my knees my whole life, I'd never taken the time to let my knees know that I truly care.

During the initial three-day period of talking to my right knee, I think two things were happening.  One, I was warming up to the whole experience and getting over being self conscious.  Two, my knee had to take a bit of time to absorb my energy, and trust that I really meant what I was saying.

I am guessing that when some of you read what I write here, you might think I am being a bit wacky.  But believe me, I feel that I am sharing well founded, important information with you.  Whenever you take the time to care for yourself and offer yourself love and understanding, your system DOES appreciate and respond to the attention!  And depending on how long you have been neglecting yourself, it could take three seconds or three months before you feel a response.

Please trust in the fact that no one can love and understand yourself better than you can. Your love for yourself is what will make you whole.

Charlie Badenhop is a native New Yorker and have been working as a coach, bodyworker, hypnotherapist, and workshop facilitator since 1985, when he first arrived in Japan.  He is a fourth degree black belt and certified instructor of Aikido in Japan, and a certified trainer in NLP and Ericksonian Hypnosis.  He is also a long-term practitioner of various forms of bodywork, self-relations therapy, the Japanese healing arts of sei tai and seiki jutsu, and Yoga.  He's had the good fortune to study with numerous exceptional teachers, healers, martial artists, therapists, and coaches throughout the world, and has created the human potential discipline of Seishindo as a synthesis of all he's learned along the way.  Visit him at http://www.seishindo.org. 

I move through my day-to-day life with a sense of appreciation and gratitude that comes from knowing how fortunate I truly am and how unearned all that I am thankful for really is.  To have this perspective in my everyday consciousness is in itself a gift, for it leads to feeling "graced," or blessed, each time.  For example, my workday commute takes me through a tunnel toward the Golden Gate Bridge.  Sometimes I emerge to see a panoramic view of bay and bridges and city, or perhaps I see only the tops of the bridge towers emerging through the thick fog.  I am struck by how beautiful each sight is.  Every time I see beauty around me I appreciate what I am seeing, and simultaneously I have this sense of appreciation--for being alive to have this particular moment.

My children evoke a much deeper sense of gratitude.  Feelings mixed with simultaneous appreciation well up in me toward them.  There is a sensation in the middle of my chest, and the words that I stopped saying out loud, "You warm the cockles of my heart," come to mind.  I have never taken my children for granted or have been unaware that things could have been different.  That they were preceded by three miscarriages is only part of it.  The miracle of new life that I felt when they were born left an indelible mark on my psyche.  I remember being awed, recalling the perfection of a little hand with nails perfectly formed in miniature and the stillpoint numinous experiences of nursing or holding them during the middle of the night.

In my work, when I am able to make a difference to someone, catch a glimpse of a person's soul, or hear a dream and sense how profound the human psyche is, I feel privileged to be in this moment.  And when I narrowly escape being in an accident or have some sense of a close call, I literally and physically appreciate being alive and unharmed in this moment.  When I feel this gratitude-for-being, it is like singing a thank-you and hearing a response in which divinity is present.

When San Francisco suffered an earthquake in which most were spared and the potential for devastation averted, it seemed as if our entire community responded from the heart with thankfulness and helpfulness.  People commented on how wonderful this was, how what really matters became clear, and why did we have to have a disaster for us to realize this?  For a time, what we had, compared to what could have been taken away, was in our consciousness, and we felt gratitude.

As I was growing up, I became very much aware that bad things happen to people; medical school, internship, and residency further brought this home to me, case by case.  My work as a psychiatrist has added to this awareness.  I do not know that there is an answer to the question, "why them and not me?"  As a consequence, however, of witnessing the suffering and abuse that has happened to others, when bed things happen to me I do know that this, too, is part of my life:  my turn to experience pain and loss, which is partly redeemed by my conviction that no experience goes to waste.  As a therapist and teacher, through my writing or analytic work, whatever happens to me will help me someday to better understand and help someone.

Over the years I have come to believe that life is full of unchosen circumstances, that being human has to do with the evolution of our individual consciousness and with it, responsibilities for choice.  Pain and joy both come with life.  I believe that how we respond to what happens to us and around us shapes who we become and has to do with the psyche or the soul's growth.  Now that I am in my fifth decade, I can look back and say that the hardest and darkest times in my life led me deeper and farther along my spiritual path.  At the same time I am not at all sure that, at least in this life, such is the case for everyone, especially the very young who are abused or who arrive in this world innately handicapped.

It has not been the difficult times, however, that most shaped my spiritual life, but the times that were "sacramental"--situations that were imbued with grace, sacred moments in which I felt the presence of God or Goddess or felt connected to the universe or Tao.  Or those times I was in nature or at a sacred site, and felt myself enter a sacred place, or have a sacred meeting, a soul-to-soul communion with another person.  These are the experiences that have really mattered, the ones that changed me--the spiritual experiences that led me to what I am doing with my life.  I directly felt the presence of divinity, and knew it.  Each experience was subjectively and intensely real, more so than ordinary reality.