What Is the Right Speed for Healing?

A conversation recently left me thinking about something I have returned to many times in my own life and in my work with others:

'What is the right speed for healing?'

I don’t think I have a simple answer.

There have been periods in my life when I felt an urgency to heal. It felt almost desperate: I need to heal.

I wanted to understand what was happening inside me, to go deeper, to meet what I had not been able to meet before. I immersed myself in my own healing with enormous intensity. And I don’t think that was wrong. At the time, it felt deeply right. There was something in me that was ready, and I wanted to follow it. But there have also been times when I began to notice that the same desire to heal had changed. It no longer felt like something pulling me forward. It felt as though I was pushing myself.

There was a part of me that wanted to heal faster. A part that wanted this to be already done, whatever done means. But then I paused and questioned:

'Who is deciding how quickly this should happen?'

That question changed something for me.

I began to pay more attention not only to what needed healing, but to where the urge to heal was coming from. Was it something arising from within, or was I pushing myself again?

Perhaps you know this feeling too. The longing to feel better can so easily become another demand we place upon ourselves. But I also don’t believe that slower is always better.

Sometimes we are ready to move quickly. Something opens, there is energy for change, and going deeply into our process feels right. There can be fear and readiness at the same time. Moving towards something difficult is not necessarily the same as pushing ourselves.

I have lived both sides of this. I have known the urgency that felt right, and I have known the urgency that became pressure.

I notice something similar in my work with the body. Sometimes tissues seem ready to respond. The body seems receptive to change, and surprisingly much can happen in a relatively short time. At other times, the response is different. There may be protection, resistance, or simply a sense that this is enough for now.

I don’t think there is a formula for this. What feels right at one moment may not feel right at another. For me, it is much more about listening and noticing what is happening right now.

I see so many parallels between what happens in the body and what happens emotionally that, for me, it is difficult to even separate the two. Where does one end and the other begin?

There can be a fine line between I am ready to go further and I need to get better. Between curiosity and urgency. Between meeting something difficult and pushing ourselves because we believe we should already be somewhere else.

Slowing down can have different meanings too. Sometimes it may be exactly what we need. Time to settle, integrate, or simply live. At other times, going slowly may be a way of keeping a safe distance from something we are becoming ready to meet.

Perhaps there is no universally right speed.

Maybe healing has less to do with finding the right speed and more to do with developing a relationship with our own pace. Learning to recognise the subtle inner sense of yes, I can go there, not yet, a little more, or this is enough for now.

For me, this is where attunement becomes more important than a formula.

Healing may not move in a straight line. There may be periods of profound change followed by stretches when very little seems to happen. But perhaps those quieter periods are not an absence of healing. They may be times of settling, integrating, living, and allowing something new to become part of us.

I am becoming less interested in asking how quickly we can heal.

Perhaps a more useful question is much simpler:

'What pace feels right for me now?'

Elena