Salumer

Salumer

Maggie has written all of the blog entries for the various types so far, but she asked me to write the one on Salumer the healer. Salumer is pronounced sah-luh-mer, with the emphasis on the first syllable.

When I tune into the Salumer inside, I feel instantly surprised. I’m a physician, so I expected the healer aspect to resonate with all of my hopes and dreams (and disappointments and frustrations) with that profession, but it doesn’t. It is playful, and light, and the healing aspect is fluid and instantaneous, dancing around and through my body, realigning and rewiring with ease and speed. My expectations of the healer, all of my doctor stuff, both the positive and negative, turn out to be things that need to be lifted … well, most of them need to be trashed! I’ve been seeing my job as a doctor as ponderous, as very important heavy lifting, work that is slow and careful, often boring and worrisome.

Suddenly, it is obvious that I have borne this disparity all along, the difference between the light speed of the inner healer, and the ideas that I have of healing as hard work that requires worry. I’ve often come to moments when I’ve wanted to reject the whole healer aspect, to be done with that, to disavow it, because in my view (which now I see as an illusion), the work has been so dense, so heavy.

I’m not saying that I haven’t had moments of lightness, and that it all has been work and no fun. I’ve had many moments when I touched the lightness I feel right now in the Salumer within, but it feels that I’ve had to work hard to make them possible, to bend space and time enough to allow the world of insurance companies, and scheduled time slots, and detailed diagnoses to make space for what actually feels good.

Suddenly, I’m back in medical school, in the main building that housed the classrooms. I knew back then that the building reminded me of a prison. I can feel the me back then, not having the words, but struggling with the very conflict that I feel right now, having some intuitive and bodily knowing of the lightness of healing amidst the tremendous labor of getting through medical school. I had such anxiety, and while it was directly about making the grades and learning what I needed to know, I always had a deeply aching feeling that something terribly important was missing … and I haven’t seen that missing stuff so clearly as today as I feel the Salumer within.

The Salumer within wants to remind us that forces can align in healing, that it isn’t crazy to find magic within healing, and that the role of insight, humor and transcendence aren’t peripheral, they are central. As for me, I’m in bliss, enjoying the lightness of healing that I’ve always known but haven’t fully allowed.