The Healing Power of Forgiveness
The healing power of forgiveness has been well documented. Research shows that being able to forgive can help your health in many ways. Amongst them is lower blood pressure, stronger immune and heart health, as well as less anxiety and depression, and even better physical fitness. With all these benefits, you’d think that everyone would want to forgive as fast as possible. Yet we are often reluctant to forgive when we’ve felt slighted.
What keeps you from forgiving someone? For some of us, it’s the need to be right. For other’s holding on to a painful memory seems to define our lives, if we don’t have that memory, who are we? It might help to realize that forgiveness doesn’t make what happened to you okay, or make the other person right. It releases your pain so that you can move forward with your life. Forgiveness is pouring love on a wound, which allows it to heal.
In Chinese medicine – the liver is the organ that rules the emotion of anger. There is a natural flow of energy from the liver – which is the element of wood, to fire – the element of the heart. The heart rules the emotion of joy. The shift from anger to joy is through the act of forgiveness.
How Forgiveness Can Help
We’ve all done something to hurt someone’s feelings or were rude to someone and felt the need to make it right. It’s not always easy to do but when you summon the courage to be vulnerable and apologize, you can be given one of the greatest gifts another can give you – which is forgiveness itself.
I recently had a situation where a friend of mine forgave me for something I had done. It was such a huge blessing. Realizing the magnitude of this gift made me feel so incredibly blessed, that I found myself wanting to give that same gift to another person.
The Importance Of Forgiveness
If you are doing my Seasonal Reboot Cleanse, this is especially important. A large part of doing a cleanse is not only to clear out physical but also emotional toxicity. It’s helpful to practice some sort of clearing out of your old stuck emotional places. Think of a time in your life when you were wronged by someone or a time that you wronged someone else. Spend a few minutes thinking about that event and find a way inside your heart to forgive. Perhaps you realize that the other person was in some sort of pain, or you remember a time that you did something similar to someone else. Fill your heart with love – and imagine that your love is bigger than your pain. Then think about that painful event, can you make your love bigger than the pain you experienced?
It’s never easy to forgive those painful experiences we’ve had. But when you do, you will be healthier and stronger than ever.
