The Cyst in Her Throat was the Size of a Golf Ball: Healed!
When Dot first came to me, the cyst in her throat was very noticeable. It was about the size of a golf ball and was hard to the touch, kind of like feeling the bone in your elbow. It was so big she was having difficulties swallowing. Both her doctor and acupuncturist told her that it needed to be surgically removed. This was to be a complicated surgical procedure which would leave her scarred on the inside and outside of her throat.
Dot was afraid to have the surgery. She was willing to try anything else.
In our first session I had Dot give me a short version of what her life was like from her earliest memory on and describe her relationship with her mother and father. Then I had her recline so that she could totally relax, and I began instructing Dot to use a verbal technique called Voice Activated Integration. It is a process in which the client uses their own voice to communicate with their beliefs. Some clients even have direct conversations with their beliefs.
Once Dot was relaxed, the next thing that I asked her to do was open to the pain in her throat and notice if she could feel what was causing the pain. As she opened to the idea that her pain could lead her back to the original trauma that was causing the pain/cyst in her throat, she remembered when she was eight years old and she was trying to stand up to her father. She had done something that he misunderstood, and when she tried to explain it to him, he raged at her, yelling at her so severely that she had been unable to speak up for herself since that day.
Dot was fifty-two years old at the time of the first session. The pain and the growth in her throat were caused by the stress of constantly needing to speak up for herself but believing she couldn’t and feeling too terrified to even try.
Next, we talked about her relationship with her lover and her relationships with some of her friends. I discovered that she was having a hard time standing up to any of them. She needed to speak up for herself in a number of ways, but she couldn’t. There was one person in particular that she was having a hard time with and she really needed to stand up to him. I asked her to tell me how he treated her, and then, with her permission, I took on the role of her friend. Since she trusted me and knew I wasn’t a threat to her, she was able to tell me exactly what she needed to say to him. We were both in awe at how much she had to say! It was truly amazing to see her stand in her power for the first time since she was eight.
I taught Dot how to stand up to people with a wide-open Loving heart. It makes a big difference to communicate through Love. It takes the fear out of communicating and the people she is standing up to don’t feel like they are being attacked, more like Dot is simply establishing healthy boundaries. When Dot left that day, she looked like a new person and carried herself very differently from when she’d arrived.
When she came to see me two weeks later, she was excited. After our first session, she had successfully been able to stand up for herself with the people that mattered. She had changed a life-long way of relating to others. And that wasn’t all that changed. The cyst in her throat was starting to change. It was already much softer, more like the taut muscles on your palm.
The focus of our remaining sessions was teaching Dot how to grow in Love, so that she could empower her life with Love. Here is what happened for Dot in her own words:
I have been working with Raven for several months. I have a cyst on my throat; the Western Medical solution is a slightly complicated surgery. Not only did my progressive doctor tell me to have it cut out, even my acupuncturist said to have the surgery.
Needless to say, I was not happy and pretty scared. This cyst had been with me for over a year and it was getting bigger. Basically, it looked and felt like I had a golf ball lodged in my throat.
After working with Raven for about a month, it was 1/2 the size and much softer. I knew then that it would go away, and my fears also went away. As we have continued to work together, the cyst kept shrinking. It’s barely noticeable now.
This process is so powerful. I am learning how to heal through my own efforts, and I have full faith that the cyst will be completely gone as I continue to do this work.
In addition, I have experienced many added bonuses by doing this healing work. Other things in my life have gotten easier. Way more is being healed than just this cyst. The cyst is just an outward manifestation. I am experiencing more Love in my life through my choice to be loving. I am happier and often feel a sense of awe and inspiration. My life feels richer. I have more awareness of the ever presence of the Divine in my life.
I am grateful that Raven crossed my path when he did. He is a marvelous healer and a truly warm, generous human being.
This healing took place in early 2007. Nine months later Dot’s cyst disappeared completely and has never come back.
I would like to share with you one of the tools that I taught Dot to use so that she could grow strong enough to consistently overcome the old habit of not being able to stand up for herself.
It is called the power of a Loving Smile. Let me show you how a Loving Smile works:
Start by sitting up straight and proudly. Make yourself comfortable. Now slow your breathing just a little and breathe deeply. Concentrate on something that makes you feel Love. Smile really big and allow the smile to make you feel happy and Loving. You might envision what a person in a state of Love looks like and imagine yourself looking and feeling that way. Or go back into your memory and recall a time in which you felt a lot of Love and relive it. Maybe you have a lot of Love for your lover, your mate, a child, or a pet. Relive that experience in your mind and smile really big. You might think of sitting next to a beautiful waterfall or the ocean. You might imagine sitting up in a massive tree. You might think of something that makes you laugh or feel silly. Allow yourself to feel as much Love as you can.
Once you are feeling Love so much that you have a big smile with your teeth showing, read on.
Now, don’t change your posture, the way you are sitting or breathing, and especially don’t change your smile in any way — see if you can make yourself feel sad. Don’t change your smile.
You can’t do it, can you? Isn’t that amazing?! Let’s try another one.
While you’re still smiling and sitting in a strong posture, see if you can make yourself feel angry.
Isn’t that incredible? You can’t do it! No matter how hard you try to feel sad or angry, if your physicality and physiology is happy and Loving and you are smiling big, you can’t do it. Your inability to feel any unloving emotion when you’re expressing a Loving Smile with a strong, proud posture is a metaphysical principle of life. It just works that way for all people. It’s a truth we can rely on.
It is an incredibly practical tool, because all you have to do to feel and use Love is to smile a Loving Smile and think of anything that opens your heart and opens you to the experience of Love. By “opening your heart,” I am referring to your spiritual heart. Your spiritual heart gives you the ability to control how you feel, moment by moment, by affording you the choice to choose to be in Love or not. If your heart is open, you can feel Love. If your heart is closed, you will feel unloving emotions. Each quality of Love has a reversed quality: happy — sad; Loving — hateful; fulfilled — bored; confident or safe — afraid; peaceful — angry; excited — depressed, and so on. If your heart is open, you will feel Love, you will be smiling and feeling good. If your heart is closed, you will feel unloving feelings, you will not be smiling, and you will likely feel some kind of pain. This principle is what makes the Loving Smile a practical tool. It gives you the awareness to know if your heart is open. It empowers you with Love and gives you the benefits of being in Love, which are substantial.
The bigger and stronger your smile is, the more Love you will be able to feel and enjoy. Once you master the Loving Smile, you won’t even have to think of anything Loving to activate and utilize it. You’ll just feel Love from the smiling. This ease of feeling Love makes a Loving Smile one of the most useful tools on the planet, because isn’t Love and all the many qualities of Love what most of us want to experience all the time? Once you get the hang of smiling to open your heart, your smile will become your knowing that your heart is open. If you think you are feeling Love and you are not smiling, chances are your heart is not open. As you work with this more and more, you will come to know that your heart is open because you are smiling. This knowing becomes very important when we get into helping you heal different aspects of your life.
When you Lovingly smile, you are shining. You are radiating Love from within you in every direction, and it affects you and everyone and everything around you. This makes it one of the most powerful tools on the planet because when you use it, you are radiating the power of Divine Love, which is like blessing yourself and everyone and everything. And it is free. It costs nothing at all for you to spread it around to your heart’s content.
This is one of the tools that Dot used to empower herself with the Love and the strength she needed to stand up for herself. In my next blog, titled Love Time, I will show you how to make your Loving Smile incredibly strong. Until then, see how many rooms you can light up with your open heart and your radiant smile.