On this episode of It’s Beyond The Food, I sat down with Meg Pearson to unpack the often-overlooked side of spiritual healing. Meg’s story is one of transformation and reflection, but it also reveals the unintended harm that can arise in spiritual healing practices. Her honesty sheds light on the challenges and pitfalls in this space, making it a must-listen for those on their healing path.
What Is Spiritual Healing?
This healing practice often involves practices designed to connect individuals with their inner selves or higher consciousness. Techniques like meditation, yoga, plant medicine, and breathwork are common tools for achieving this.
However, Meg’s experience highlights a critical issue: spiritual healing is sometimes intertwined with problematic practices that can harm instead of heal.
The Dark Side of Spiritual Healing
Meg shared that spiritual healing, like diet culture, can carry harmful expectations and behaviors. Here’s what stood out:
- The Idealized Spiritual Image: There’s often a stereotype of what a “spiritual” person should look like—thin, vegan, adorned with beads, and drinking green juice. This expectation mirrors diet culture’s obsession with an “ideal” body.
- Attachment to Practices: People are told they must do yoga daily or drink green juice to be “spiritually aligned.” These habits, while healthy on the surface, can become rigid rules tied to self-worth.
- Spiritual Bypassing: Some use spiritual healing to avoid reality. Meg noted how this can lead to abandoning responsibilities or denying the existence of systemic problems.
Meg’s Personal Experience with Spiritual Healing
Meg’s journey into this healing practice began as a step away from a life consumed by eating disorders and addiction. Practices like yoga and plant medicine helped her reconnect with herself, but she also noticed a transfer of her old patterns.
“When I started eating raw vegan food, I realized I was still controlling my body, just in a different way,” Meg shared. This realization led her to explore the deeper layers of her behaviors and how healing methods could be misused.
Redefining Healing Spiritually
Meg’s insights remind us that true healing is about balance and intention. Instead of rigid practices or external validation, spiritual healing should be about:
- Embracing Authenticity: Your healing path doesn’t need to fit a certain image or trend.
- Balancing Individual and Collective Responsibility: True healing requires reflecting on how individual actions affect others.
- Challenging Harmful Narratives: Question messages that tie your worth to your spiritual practices or appearance.
What you’ll learn listening to this episode:
- The parallels between spiritual healing and diet culture.
- How to spot harmful practices in wellness spaces.
- The importance of balancing self-care with collective awareness.
- Steps to ensure your healing practices are intentional and inclusive.
Mentioned in the show:
