August-Integration

by Judy Tancinco

Last January when the Sanctuary members came together and we chose our “Hopes & Dreams” word for the year, mine was easy… Integration.  I was preparing to move my practice into my own private space that I would not be sharing with anyone else. I was very excited about that, but even more excited about having so much room!  It would be a much larger space that would allow me to bring into my practice all of the bits and pieces of my twenty-some years of learning, study and experience, and the word “integration” was the perfect word to describe my focus for the upcoming year.

The day I received the key to the space that would eventually become Medina Holistic Health, I walked around in awe of the size of the area I now had at my command.  I was no longer sharing one tiny room, and I felt a little overwhelmed by all the rooms I had to fill, decorate and transform into my new healing space.

But something interesting began to happen.  As I began looking around for things in my home that I might be able to use, it seemed as if things were calling to me, “Please take me!”  Each of the “things” that wanted to come to my new space had their own story of the unique part they had played in the evolution of my healing practice, and as I collected them I found myself reliving different parts of my journey…

• The huge wall poster of more that 900 yoga postures from my days as a yogini.
• The deerskin medicine wheel shield that I made while studying Native American spirituality and healing.
• The pillows, cushions and double-wide yoga mat that I used in my yoga therapy practice.
• All kinds of rocks and crystals that had found their way to me over the years, some of which were very familiar and had played major roles in the healing of myself and others, while some felt like I was seeing them for the first time.
• All my anatomy books and my skeleton which brought back to me all the studying, classes and workshops I had taken in my never-ending love affair with the structure of the human body.
• The Huichol yarn painting from Mexico depicting a shamanic healing.
• The print of the Tibetan monks’ sand painting that they constructed at the Cleveland Museum of Art which always takes me back to the powerful healing I received while listening to their sacred chants as they prepared to work.
• The various pictures and statues of my “team” of totem animals and spirit guides that have guided me over the years. 
• And of course all my Polarity and energy healing books, posters and tools from my most recent studies and practice.

Before coming into this new space, I had looked upon each part of my journey as separate, distinct phases: yoga, yoga therapy, Native American, the Divine Feminine, eastern spirituality, anatomy, etc…  But each time I brought in an item form one of those phases, it felt like I was reconnecting a part of me that I had disconnected from at some level.  It felt like I was coming home to myself.

It didn’t take me long to recognize that I wasn’t just decorating my new office, I was weaving together the yarns of many colors that I had collected and had stored away in closets and drawers in my home, to now create a wondrous living tapestry in this magnificent new space.  And I began to think about my word, integration…

The definition of integration is “the combining, blending and coordinating of separate parts or elements into a functioning or unified whole.”  That is precisely what happened as I brought all those personal elements together to create my new energy space. 

When people enter my office for the first time, they always comment on the beauty and wonderful energy of the space.  It is because they are experiencing at some level my own process of “coming home” and it resonates with their own yearning for integration.

The process of integration sounds a lot like the process of healing, don’t you think?  I believe they are one in the same.

Our minds tend to separate and organize the different aspects of ourselves and our lives into categories: home, work, relationships, family, even within ourselves as having spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical layers or levels.  But these are all integral to the oneness of who we are – individual, unique expressions of the Divine. 

We each have within us all the elements that are ready to be integrated into a unified whole whenever we choose to let go of the mental pigeon-holes which we use to compartmentalize our lives and ourselves. 

Perhaps that is the gift of the soul – the Divine part of ourselves that is beyond our mental constructs, the part that sees beyond all the disconnects and categories, the part that can only perceive us as we really are: perfectly unified, integrated and whole.

A true healer is one who does not focus on the disconnects and the dis-ease within the system but can clearly perceive and bring forth the inherent health that is always present within each person, regardless of what is presenting on the surface. 

We all have the capacity to be healers, to look at others and within ourselves with eyes that see beyond what is wrong and clearly focus on what is right: the unified, whole being which is ever-present, vital, healthy and fully integrated… the Divine Essence which is the core of who we are!

Judy Tancinco, RPP,RPE

Medina Holistic Health
4099 Medina Road
Medina, OH 44256
(330) 241-1954
www.medinaholistichealth.com