What is the best thing you can do for your well-being?

I had a dream a couple months ago.

I was participating in a radio contest (apparently my dreams take place when I listened to the radio in the early 2000’s) and they were looking for the answer to the following prompt:

“What is the very best thing you can do for your well-being?”

I was with a whole lot of people and they were all writing answers on slips of paper. I saw other folks’ answers including:

“Eat vegetables.”

“Be kind.”

I wanted so badly to participate but there were no more slips of paper. I rushed around from person to person asking for more or if I could write on the back of one of their slips.

Finally, I got my hands on paper and wrote:

“Receive Love.”

The very best thing you can do for your well-being is receive Love.

Receive…

“I’m right here with you.”

“I got you.”

“You make sense to me.”

Receive…

“Take your time, we’re not in a rush.”

“I’m not disappointed in you.”

“I’m sorry, I can see why you feel that way.”

Receive…

“Let’s figure this out together.”

“I trust you.”

“You can’t earn it or lose it – I love you.”

From my perspective, that’s the process of embodied healing.

In my practice, it’s typical for me to see folks who have traveled down every restorative spectrum and traversed every mode of healing. From religious retreats, psychedelic journeys, modern modalities, woo-woo spiritual experiences and think-yourself-out-of-it sessions.

I don’t knock it and I’ve noticed a theme — we expect to be healed in one big, sexy fell swoop.

We hope the next thing will be the thing so we can be ‘healed’ and move on to something else.

But what if healing and receiving Love are the same thing?

And if that’s true, healing is never over because there is always more Love to receive.

And there isn’t anything to move on to because there is nothing beyond receiving and embodying Love.

The whole kind of Love that includes nurturance, guidance and limits.

Healing is a process, not a project and receiving Love is the point.

The way I see it, life is a fractal of Hero’s Journeys where we experience and do hard things, practice receiving Love in the midst of them and embody Love a little bit more each time.

Over and over and over again.

And in that fractal, we are always healing backward and forward — healing from and toward at the same time.

Photo: Nathan Dawang | IG - @nate.dawang

Healing from the pain, allowing it to transform us and healing toward all that Love has in store. Like more justice. More stick with it-ness. More joy. More connection. More coherence. More peace. More stubborn hope. More Life. More purpose and passion. More Being in action.

More well-being.

And then something wild happens. Not wild like crazy, wild like Nature.

As we receive Love, we also start to give it away.

Not because we try to, but because it is our design.

Like a tree who has all she needs naturally produces fruit and gives it away freely.

Because of our inherent interconnectedness, receiving Love is the very best thing we can do for our well-being and everyone else’s, human and nonhuman kin alike.