At a cellular level, kids are designed to heal quickly from bodily injury. But 41-year-olds require more energy, intention, and time to mend from our wounds. After my recent, painful face off with the dirt, I wanted to share my most powerful tools and strategies that aided me in transforming from FrankenJulia to healed up Harriet within in a week’s time.
Breathe. You’re probably thinking: well duh. But here’s the trick – when you experience something your brain defines as “life threatening,” it spins you into survival mode. Your primitive brain takes over and enables your inner super hero to work its magic. As a power reserve, you disconnect from your frontal lobe to accomplish the prime directive of living. Less thought, more action. Temporarily, you cease being able to engage in conscious breath because you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Those shallow little fight-or-flight huff and puffs will get you through the drama, but they don’t cut it for encouraging recovery. Your breath is your life force and once you assess the damage, it’s time to stop and breathe. Deeply.
My friend and ally in breath awareness, Eric Brown, has guided me into this practice of regaining mindfulness. Focusing on inhalation/exhalation and everything in between, allowed me to take a break from the distraction of ouchiness and to enjoy the fact that my body was beautiful in its steady, powerful breath. This refocusing, away from the immediate problem and back into the present, expedited my healing. Check out Eric’s offerings because he’s a master guide at tuning in and welcoming conscious breath: https://www.ericbrown.yoga/
Visualize and affirm it. You’ve done that awesome breath work but when you go into the bathroom and see your banged up face an alarm goes off. Immediately, all the bad thoughts emerge like bouncing fleas on an old dog – I’ll never look the same. What if it gets infected? What did I do to deserve this? Why me?
There was a song I learned in 1986 from the local fire department called “Stop, Drop, and Roll.” Remember that one, if your clothes caught on fire? Well, this is one of those moments to fully utilize it. STOP. Don’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stop and grab those yucky thoughts by the balls and roll them out of town. You might be thinking, well that’s easier said than done, Julia. True. But imagine if you were on fire – instinctually you would want to run down the street screaming. But if you run, you fan the flames higher. Same goes with your mind. If you let your thoughts go to shit then before you know it, you’re in the middle of a shit storm.
Instead, try to breathe and visualize your healed self. Better than before. What does your skin look like? What does your body feel like after that surgery? How do you look without pain and full of joy? How do the people around you feel now that you feel now that you are a healed goddess? Can you picture it? Can you see beyond this scary episode and the pain to discover the GLORIOUS you out there in the world once again?
That’s exactly what I did with my face. Every night, before I fell asleep I repeated an affirmation of my healing: “every day, in every way, I am getting better, better, better.” With that, I pictured my cells dancing inside my skin like Christmas elves mending all the wounds, precisely and delicately. Each morning, I thanked my little helpers and kept my thoughts under check. And if I found my mind dancing to the dark side, I stopped. And found my breath.
Put some honey on it. I’m a big fan of bees. Big ones, small ones. They are simply amazing creatures. And the single most important component to the success of my quick, physical healing was liberally smearing honey over my messed up face. Falling into the gravel meant I had dirt packed deeply into all those horrible cuts. Rocks too. But honey made it all better. Can you believe it? If you’re thinking, no, here’s the regiment I used:
First, I used hydrogen peroxide to clean out the major shrapnel. I only used it the first day because it can actually delay healing as it wipes out the good cells with the bad. Then, I treated my face with 50/50 apple cider vinegar and purified water applied with Q-tips. Finally, I coated manuka honey over the top like you would apply a mud mask. I did the apple cider vinegar/honey treatment morning and night for the first 4 days. By day 5, I was able to spot treat the few remaining deeper wounds. The result is that I have very little scaring and avoided all infection. Here’s more about manuka honey specifically if you’re interested: https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/manuka-honey-medicinal-uses
Here’s to happy healing – if you’d like to talk further or share your tips, I’d love to hear from you: julia.harriet@gmail.com
