Healthy Living DIY

Engagement is the state of being present and involved.

When you've hired an outside party to perform routine maintenance on your car, an oil change for example, you can generally afford to disengage. Same with getting a leaky faucet or sticky lightswitch fixed. They're routine repairs commonly performed according to a set standard. You really don't need to micro-manage.

However when you yourself are the subject of the restoration process, it's a different story. You know yourself better than the most educated doctor, and you are responsible for implementing the ongoing lifestyle changes that will make the "fix" stick. Further, engagement is a visible sign that communicates to both you and the practitioners whose support you've requested that you care about the outcome.

Imagine a cancer patient saying to their oncologist, "Whatever, just fix it." Or a heart patient saying to the cardiac surgeon, "Hurry up and do your thing. I'm busy."

People do this, of course. But the results are often less than spectacular.

In order to effect a full and conscious healing process, the patient has got to be engaged. And that, I believe, was the truth behind Dr. Myss's insight.

Back in the day, she was developing her considerable skill as a medical intuitive. The term "medical intuition" refers to a person's ability to sense another person's state of health. We can all do this to a certain extent (you can tell when a friend or family member isn't well), but some people develop the skill to a much greater degree.

In Caroline's case, she can also quite reliably distinguish the underlying energy imbalance behind an illness. If a person works too hard, distrusts people, clings to worn-out hurts, refuses to forgive, martyrs herself caring for others, or any number of similar patterns, it might as well be broadcast with a neon sign. Caroline will see it, and she'll explain quite clearly the relationship between that old habit and the person's current state of health.

At least she did back then. In fact, she would regularly hold workshops during which she would give personal intuitive readings for every participant. Before the workshop would start, she'd often visit with people as they arrived, congenially getting aquainted with the group.

On that particular day, Caroline told us, she had introduced herself to one of the arriving participants by asking her, "and what can I help you with this weekend?"

The participant responded tartly, "You tell me. You're the psychic."

Caroline shared with our group her response to that comment. She did a quick double-take and sat down next to the participant, saying, "I'm going to sit here until I find a reason to thank you for that comment. And it may be a very long time."

Truth is, though, it didn't take her long. You see, something else had been bothering Caroline for a while, but she hadn't yet put her finger on it. As she delivered potentially life-changing insight to her clients in the form of an intuitive reading, she noticed that more often than not, they would seemingly ignore everything she told them.

What she realized that day was that her insight was not theirs. And that her clients would more likely act on information that they had gleaned for themselves. So instead of commencing the process of delivering readings for the entire workshop that weekend, she said, she offered them another option.

"This weekend," she told them, "I'm going to teach you to connect with your intuition yourself. There will be no readings. If you're not willing, I'll gladly refund your workshop fee."

Caroline had drawn a line in the sand. She was no longer willing to enable her clients' lack of engagement in their health process by attempting to do their "work" for them. The "old school" method of trying to do the person's healing process for them not only exhausted her -- it didn't serve the client either. Because, frankly, it didn't work.

She got no refund requests that weekend, so she told us. And a new style of teaching was born.