Let the Sunshine in: Summer Renewal and the “ABCs” of Spiritual Healing

Spring has come, summer is hot on its heels, and the Earth is bursting with new greenery, bright flowers, and baby animals. And with all the new life and sunshine outside, most of us long for similar renewal inside. Generally, we express that drive in external ways. We “spring clean” our homes with a frenzy. We plant our seeds and tend our gardens. We connect with friends and family through cookouts, pool parties, and June weddings. Intuitive psychologist Susan Apollon says our annual warm weather rituals are metaphors for what we need to be doing spiritually.

“Springtime, especially, but also on into the summer, is the perfect time for rebirth,” says Apollon, author of Touched by the Extraordinary. “Most of us are in a mood to clean out clutter, to open up windows both literal and metaphorical and let the sunshine in, to celebrate life’s riches. That’s why this is a good time of year to renew your soul by replacing your old spiritual habits with new ones that lead to healing on every level.”

But what, exactly, is spiritual healing? Apollon says it’s about bringing into harmony and balance our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions. It’s about becoming whole. Healing takes place when we reclaim our power, wisdom, or spirit, which we often bury during the process of life, and when we reconnect with our soul or Higher Self, as well as with the Universe or God.

On a more practical level, it means learning to live in such a way that you don’t spend all your time fretting about the future, worrying about your kids, or obsessing over health issues. And it means coming to a place where you refuse to settle for a job, a relationship, a lifestyle—a life—that doesn’t fulfill you.

“We are healing spiritually when we accept and align all parts of ourselves in a way that allows us to genuinely feel we are being true to ourselves, or whole, or complete,” Apollon says. “We get to feel an authentic connection with our higher self and lower self, a balance, which also enables us to feel more at peace, as well as more confident about who we are, our worth, and our wisdom. It is knowing that we are so much more powerful than who we always thought we were; it is knowing that we are connected with something much greater than ourselves.”

The Law of Attraction: Pathway to the Life You Want

Spiritual healing happens when we work with the Law of Attraction, which is basically an understanding that like energy attracts like energy. Apollon explains it this way: Given that everything is energy and vibrates, and given the Law of Attraction, wherever we are vibrationally, we attract to us experiences of a similar level of vibration. What we focus on (our thoughts, images) cause us to vibrate at a particular level, as well as create either good or not good feelings. Focusing on thoughts or images that cause us to feel relatively good or better will enable us to be at a higher level energetically and, consequently, will draw to us a higher level of vibrational experience.

In other words, when you worry about your job, your grades, your children, your health—and that is what you do most of the time—your dominant energetic level is quite low. Being in this state causes you to experience events and situations that are of equally low vibrations, such as the loss of your job, poor health, lower grades, and so forth.

 “Everything we desire is available to us, if we can just get out of our own way,” asserts Apollon. “We put our own stumbling blocks in our own path, by way of our attachment to our negative or low energy thoughts, images, concerns, unresolved issues, our inability to forgive and release old feelings of anger, judgment, and pain, etc. Suggestions such as lighten up, let go and surrender, detach and move on all represent appropriate ways to energetically shift to a better place.”

The trick, of course, is to become conscious and aware of how we are feeling in order to allow ourselves to do the work of cleaning up (or out) our spiritual closets and bringing in what feels energetically better. This allows us to attract to us wonderful things and experiences that we want—our hopes and dreams—rather than those things and experiences we don’t want.

To do this we need to be really clear about our intentions, says Apollon. We need to decide what it is that we intend to do or make happen in our lives that will make us feel good or better (happy, satisfied, joyful, peaceful). Once we have our intentions in mind, we can give them power and help to create them by giving ourselves permission to really focus on them.

 “There are several ways to accomplish this,” says Apollon. “You might choose to write about your dreams once a day in an intention journal. You might create a vision board: a bulletin board on which you place sayings, beautiful pictures from magazines and brochures, anything that energetically excites you and fills you with enthusiasm. Hang this in a place you will gaze at often. Every time you pass this board, look at it and fill with excitement as you imagine living your intention.

Practice the Art of Your ABCs

Once you have clarity regarding your intentions, you must practice what Apollon calls “the Art of Your ABCs.” Intertwined with the ABCs technique is another one, which she refers to as “Face, Embrace, and Replace.” Here’s how it works:

• A is for AWARENESS and ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Become aware of your thoughts and images at the “head” level that do not feel good at the heart or belly level. Here, you’re “Facing” what makes you feel bad. Put your hand on your heart or belly and ask yourself, Am I feeling good (or okay) or not good at this moment? If your answer is “not good,” put the same hand on your forehead and ask yourself, what is my thought, picture, or image that makes me not feel good? Now, take time to Acknowledge or “Embrace” the picture or thought. Give yourself permission to really feel the pain associated with your thought or image stored deep within you. Kick, scream, or cry it out—for a few moments.

• B is for BREATH and BREATHING OUT YOUR PAIN. Learn to use the Gift of Breath and then use your ability to lift yourself energetically to a higher level of well-being. Take three deep breaths. As you breathe in, visualize yourself breathing in the colorful and magnificent energy of the Universe or God. (Yes, actually give it a color so you can “see” it more readily.) Watch and feel this powerful healing energy coming in and filling your body with amazing warm, relaxing energy, causing you to feel so relaxed and heavy and at the same time . . . so light that you are aware of your body shifting up energetically.

• C is for CHOICE and CHOOSING THOUGHTS AND IMAGES THAT FEEL GOOD or BETTER. Here’s where you “Replace” your negative energy with positive energy. You choose thoughts and images that lighten your vibrations and enable you to allow in those experiences you have viewed as your intentions, hopes, and dreams. Every moment is about choice. Be conscious of how you are feeling, moment by moment, and choose to focus on anything and everything that brings you relief and feels better or good, including your kids, pets, loved ones, or your favorite funny video.

 “Practice your ABCs and Face, Embrace, and Replace often,” advises Apollon. “They are the tools that lead to healing.”

If you’re thinking it all sounds a bit too touchy-feely for you, don’t. Apollon says these spiritual healing techniques work, even if you’re a cynic. Feeling good is your birthright. Indeed, you’ve probably experienced the essence of spiritual healing at some point in your life—when you’re so immersed in a project that you lose all sense of time and place, for instance, or when you’re with friends or family and feel a surge of joy and gratitude and “rightness.”

 “Spiritual healing is often experienced as a state of harmony, balance, greater well-being, and joyfulness,” says Apollon. “Athletes call it ‘the zone.’ It is an awareness that in our being authentic and unconditionally loving, we are in a sense able to connect with all others who are experiencing the same thing. Being at peace and authentic, we can and do align with the same energy of others, drawing this equally balanced energy to us. And that’s when we start to get the life we long for on a deep ‘soul’ level.”

About the Author:

As a psychologist and an author, Susan Apollon empowers and heals the body, mind, and soul; as an educator, she informs; as a speaker, she inspires and touches the heart. For more than twenty-five years, Susan has been in private practice in Yardley, PA, evaluating and counseling adults, families, and children who are dealing with difficult life situations.

Susan comes from a family of physicians, which includes her husband, father, brothers, aunt and uncles, daughter, and cousins. She has lived more than sixty-five years with the joy and satisfaction of being married for more than forty-four years to her husband, Warren, a practicing orthodontist, along with the role of being mom to her two adult children, Rebecca and David.

About the Book:

Touched by the Extraordinary, Book Two: Healing Stories of Love, Loss & Hope (Matters of the Soul, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-9754036-9-3, $24.95, www.HealingStoriesOfLoveLossAndHope.com) is available at bookstores nationwide and from major online booksellers.