Reflection: Healing Is Integration

Even after deep healing, emotions and sensations still arise — just as monks still feel anger, sadness, or fear, but they’ve developed tools to recover faster. The goal of healing isn’t to erase those experiences but to meet them differently. Over time, the emotional waves become smaller, and recovery comes faster.

In somatic healing, energy stored in the body from old experiences may still surface from time to time. This doesn’t mean we’re back at step one or that the trauma has returned — it means the body is continuing to release what it once had to hold. Each time this energy rises, we have another chance to stay aware, breathe through it, and let it move through us rather than resist it.

Healing is not the absence of emotion or energy — it’s the ability to stay present when they arise. To feel the movement without fear. To trust that what comes can also pass. Over time, this awareness becomes strength, and the body learns that it is safe to return to calm again and again.