Why Retreat is Essential to Healing
- 55 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 13 minutes ago
Article written by Mike Broadwell, Developer of SolaraGem Crystal Fusion Light
This article was first published in Retreat Boss Magazine
YES! YOU READ that correctly. Retreat is essential to healing. At every level. This isn’t marketing hype or clickbait. It’s a foundational truth. But like most things in life, we rarely, if ever, grasp their full importance until well afterwards. (That’s a feature, not a bug, by the way.) As the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard put it, “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.” The transactional approach to health ignores this truth, which is why it is so limiting. To get to the heart of the matter, let’s look at the three basic questions we should always ask. What, Where, and Why?
What is Healing?
Have you ever really pondered this question? Or do you jump into action, ready to get this “fixed” so you or your client can get on with… What? … Life? … Or the endless little tasks that seem to fill it?
Healing is not fixing. Sure, you want the pain to go away, the shoulder to loosen up, the stomach to settle down but your body isn’t a car. Why treat it like one? Is healing simply a transaction?
What is healing? is a question each of us must ask, as we all need healing, on so many levels. People we love need healing. Relationships need healing. It’s not just theory, but highly practical. To hit a target, you must know where you’re aiming.
I pondered this question for years, especially after seeing people’s pain go away, yet leaving them confused, or even disappointed. That led me to ask, do we really know what we want? Eventually the answer became clear:
Healing is more you.
This isn’t just a clever turn of phrase or slogan. It’s one of those “ding, ding, ding, jackpot” insights. A “gift of the muses/sun breaking through the clouds” type moment that makes life so magical. The more I ponder it, the more I see how true it is. The implications are profound.
That doesn’t mean I’m the first to discover this. It would be the same if I were the last one on earth. What matters is that I discovered it for myself. I saw it and my world opened up. Each real insight you have is like this. Your world gets larger. It’s only as large as you can conceive. A larger conception means a larger you. Healing is more you.
When a baby speaks her first word, or takes her first step, the parents are ecstatic. They never forget those moments. What’s the big deal? Billions of people can speak and walk. But she will only do it once for the first time. Her world is fundamentally different from that moment. So is yours when you have a true insight. Celebrate and honor it. Seek these moments and you will find them.
Insight and therefore healing isn’t linear. It’s a leap in consciousness, not something learned. Transactions are linear and limited to what we already know and understand. They are necessary to life, but not transcendent. We can’t create insight, but we can create the conditions where it can blossom.
This “where” is the retreat
A retreat is a place where more of you can be expressed. Or to put it another way, where fewer things can keep you from being you. To see the stars in the night sky, you need to get away from the city lights. To share a special moment with your beloved, go where outside cares are muted and you can just be together.
The most intimate relationship you have is with you. The more you are present with you, the more “you” is present - the more healing happens. Healing is more you.
Healing is fractal. As you expand, that creates space for others around you to do the same. Relationships are restored. Families come together. Friendships grow. Life gets larger.
To intentionally create this, the ideal setting is an immersive retreat. A serene spot away from the noise of the modern world. From duties and obligations, bathed in nature, nurtured by the elements and surrounded by others of like intent and supportive energy. Perhaps most of all, where the tyranny of the time clock is taken away.
It’s basic physics. Reduce the external pressure and internal contractions and an object will expand. When you expand, there’s more you. The healing has begun. Maybe it will only be a few hours or days until you are right back in the fray. Hopefully rested, renewed and reinvigorated. Ideally enlarged by new insights and understandings that allow you to better handle the stresses of the so called, “real world.
"A retreat is a place where more of you can be expressed.”
This larger you will face a different world when you return. How different will depend on you. They say you can never go home again, and this is why. Silly, inconsequential things won’t seem so important. You’ll be more resilient - more cause and less effect.
It’s not a linear process. Things may well come up that you hadn’t seen or didn’t want to see about yourself. Unpleasant, even painful ones. This is a necessary and essential part of the journey. What may have felt too big to confront before has shrunk relative to the larger you. It’s not so enormous after all. It’s just static taking up space that rightfully belongs to you.
This is the healing journey. The retreat can kick start it and give you momentum to carry on with the process. It never ends. As you expand, the inessential and unessential things become less important. You find more places of rest and retreat, more often, even if only for a moment. The cumulative effects are incalculable.
Healing only happens in retreat. That’s because our bodies are designed to be self-healing. There’s no other way they can work. All proper medical intervention is designed to buy time for the body to heal itself when it is overwhelmed by accident or disease. Proper supplementation and nutrition are needed to provide the building blocks, but don’t do the healing.
What keeps our bodies from healing otherwise is between our ears. “B.S.” (Belief Systems) coming from family or societal influences that are necessarily incomplete, fears, traumas, etc. These form the “programs” in the mind that keep interrupting the body’s natural self healing process, like an obnoxious back seat driver. “Hey, stop healing and be mad at Sally for not showing up at the coffee shop on time!” etc. Only by quieting that noise and interference can the body get to work and do its job. We have to “retreat” from that constant cacophony in order to heal. The large, “intentional” retreat is the perfect place to embody this lesson, and set the process in motion.
So sound the retreat!
About the author: Mike Broadwell is the developer of SolaraGem Crystal Fusion Light with over 15 years in that field. Hosted multiple mini Immersion Retreats with this technology all over the US. Creator of the Living Energy Secrets summit series (2009-2011) one of the first focused on energy healing. Degree in electrical engineering and many years in design and technical sales. Mike is the ultimate connector for all people practicing Bioregulatory Medicine and is an esteemed advisor to BRMI.
Bioregulatory medicine is a total body (and mind) approach to health and healing that aims to help facilitate and restore natural human biological processes. It is a proven, safe, gentle, highly effective, drugless, and side-effect-free medical model designed to naturally support the body to regulate, adapt, regenerate, and self-heal. BRMI is a non-commercial 501(c)(3) foundation and will expand and flourish with your support. Our goal is to make bioregulatory medicine a household term.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for the direct care of a qualified health practitioner who oversees and provides unique and individualized care. The information provided here is to broaden our different perspectives and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. v
