Why Healers Must Stop Trying to Heal
Wendy Lee is a Holistic Healer and Trauma-Informed Coach from Hong Kong, now based in Italy. She founded KusalaFlow® and specializes in nervous system regulation, energy medicine, and emotional healing through the Spinal Flow® Technique, breathwork, and Compassionate Inquiry.
I came across Dr. Issam Nemeh's work because of a question that has been growing inside me for years. What is actually happening when one person helps another person heal? Dr. Nemeh is a physician who is also known for his faith-based healing work. One statement he repeatedly makes stayed with me: “I don’t do the healing.”
For him, God is the source of healing. My language is different, but something in that statement felt deeply familiar. I have always felt like a healer. I do not want to deny that part of who I am. But over time, I have come to understand that healing is not something I can force with my mind. The healing energy is within me and moves through me. It is part of me, but I experience it as connected to something deeper and greater than the identity I know as “me.”
The client is not passive either. Their body has its own awareness, responses, and innate intelligence. The more I understood this, the less I felt I had to force healing. Strangely, the less I tried to control healing, the more clearly I could support it.
What is healing?
As healers, we naturally want the person in front of us to get better. We want their pain to change. We want the session to help. Of course we do. We care. But caring about someone and believing that we must personally make their healing happen are not the same thing. This distinction changed the way I work.
Instead of asking: “How can I heal this person?” I began asking: “How can I support this person’s own healing intelligence to respond?” That shift changed everything for me.
I still see myself as a healer, but also as a facilitator. I bring what I have learned, what I sense, and the healing presence I carry. My role is to create and support the conditions for something within the client to respond. Healing, for me, happens through that meeting.
Why healers try so hard
I think many people who become healers, coaches, therapists, yoga teachers, bodyworkers, or caregivers are naturally sensitive to other people’s needs. Sometimes that sensitivity began very early. We may have learned that being good, helpful, successful, easy, or useful brought us love, approval, or safety.
So we became very good at giving. We learned to notice what other people needed. We learned to help. Later, helping became part of our identity. There is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes an old pattern quietly follows us into our healing work.
If another person improves, we feel successful. If they do not improve, something inside us wonders whether we have failed. That is where helping can quietly become proving.
When helping becomes proving
This is hard for healers to admit. Sometimes we become attached to the outcome. We need the client to feel better. We want the transformation to happen. We want them to recognize that something important happened. If it does not happen quickly enough, we may start trying harder. More techniques, explanation, effort, and intervention. But healing does not always respond to force. The person in front of us has their own history, beliefs, body, awareness, readiness, and timing. We cannot control all of that. We are not meant to.
What faith taught me
I used to think faith meant certainty. Now I think of it differently. Faith is the willingness to stay open when you do not know exactly what will happen next. For Dr. Nemeh, that openness is grounded in his faith in God. In my own work, I experience something related through trust in healing energy, the body, and innate intelligence.
I trust that the body is not simply broken. I trust that symptoms may be communicating something. I trust that beneath fear, tension, protection, and pain, intelligence still works within us to move toward balance. This does not mean every symptom disappears. It does not mean we reject medicine. It does not mean belief alone cures disease. It means we stop approaching the body as something we must fight or force. We begin listening.
The love we learned
This question became very personal for me. One day, I sat quietly with my hand over my heart. I explored the question of love, not romantic love, but the love many of us spend our whole lives trying to earn.
I said softly to myself:
“I am here. I am with you.”
Something changed. My chest softened. I felt warmth. Then I noticed a wave of nausea. I cannot tell you exactly why my body responded that way, and I no longer feel that every physical sensation needs an explanation.
What mattered was that something happened when I stopped analyzing myself and simply stayed present. It felt as though something I had held for a very long time was beginning to soften. Underneath it was a simple realisation.
So much of the love I had searched for outside myself had been connected to doing. Helping. Achieving. Being useful. Being needed. But in that moment, I did not have to do anything. I simply stayed.
You do not earn love
Many of us learned love conditionally. Be good. Do well. Make people happy. Do not cause trouble. Help others. Achieve more. Give more. Eventually, we can begin to experience love and worth as something connected to performance. So even when we are exhausted, we continue doing. Even when we need rest, we keep giving.
Even when another person has their own healing journey, we may still feel responsible for carrying them through it. Eventually, healing asks us to stop. Not to stop caring. Not to stop serving. But to stop proving our worth through service. That change matters for the healer as much as it matters for the client.
What I see in my studio
This understanding has changed the way I work with clients through Spinal Flow®. Many of the people who come to me are not looking for a spiritual experience. They come because something hurts. It may be persistent physical pain, tension, headaches, back or neck discomfort, or a body that never seems to fully relax. For others, the pain is more emotional. They may feel overwhelmed, disconnected, anxious, exhausted, stuck, or aware that they have been carrying something for a very long time. Sometimes physical and emotional pain cannot be separated so easily. I do not need to decide which part is “physical” and which part is “emotional” before we begin. I listen to the person. I listen to the body. I work with what is present.
During Spinal Flow® sessions, I use gentle contact and work with specific areas of the spine and body while observing how the person responds. Sometimes there is movement. Sometimes breathing changes. Sometimes the body softens. Clients may describe warmth, waves, tingling, spaciousness, emotional shifts, or energy moving through them. Other times, the changes are much quieter. What matters to me is not producing a particular response. It is noticing what is happening and helping the client notice it too. The aim is not to force something out of them. It is to create enough support, awareness, connection, and safety for the body to begin responding in its own way.
At the same time, I honour my own role. I am a healer. The healing energy I work with is within me and moves through me. During a session, I still use my mind, but not to force the healing. I use it to remind myself to trust. To trust the love. To trust the deeper source within me. To trust what is unfolding. For me, healing feels most natural when my mind and heart are connected in that state of love. From there, I can be present rather than constantly asking myself whether I am doing enough.
We all respond differently
Every person comes to healing from a different place. Some already practice yoga, meditation, breathwork, energy work, or other forms of inner exploration. Through these practices, they may have developed greater body awareness, so they often notice subtle sensations more easily and understand the language of breath, energy, movement, or inner awareness more quickly.
What may be different is not the amount of healing intelligence within them, but how familiar they already are with noticing what is happening inside. That intelligence is already within all of us.
Someone with no spiritual background may respond deeply when they are open to the possibility that their body can heal. Someone with years of spiritual practice may still need time if a deeper part of them continues to believe something is fundamentally wrong with them.
This is why I have become increasingly interested in perception. How do we see ourselves? Do we believe our body has failed us, or can we begin to see it as something intelligent that has protected, adapted, and communicated with us?
For me, healing is not about becoming more spiritual or more advanced. It is about gradually changing our relationship with ourselves and becoming more able to recognize and trust the intelligence that was already there.
Trust yourself first
One of the most important things I want a client to understand is this: The first thing is not to trust me. The first thing is to trust yourself. Trust what you feel. Trust your boundaries. Trust when something feels right. Trust when you need to slow down. Trust that you do not have to perform healing correctly.
I do not want someone leaving a session thinking only:
“Wendy healed me.”
But I also do not want to erase my own role. I would rather they leave with a fuller understanding:
“Wendy helped me, and my body responded.”
That feels closer to the truth for me. I honour what moves through me, and I honour what responds within them. Neither side needs to disappear.
Healers must stop forcing healing
This is why I believe healers must stop trying to heal. Not because we are not healers. Not because our presence does not matter. Not because the healing energy we experience is unimportant. We need to stop trying because trying can become forcing. Forcing can become controlling, and controlling can make us believe that everything depends on us.
I no longer want to carry healing that way. I can use my skill. I can bring my presence. I can connect with the deeper source within me. Then I can trust. Trust what I feel. Trust the person in front of me. Trust their body. Trust what unfolds between us.
My role is not to own another person’s healing. My role is to participate in it. Perhaps that is one of the deepest lessons this work has taught me. Not, “How can I heal you?” But, “How can I support the healing intelligence already within you?”
Try this today
Place one hand over your heart. Take a slow breath. Then say quietly:
“I am here. I am with you.”
Do not try to create an experience. Do not search for a release. Do not decide what should happen. Just notice. What happens in your chest? Your breath? Your belly? Your jaw? Your shoulders?
Maybe you feel warmth, tension, sadness, or maybe nothing at all. Whatever you notice, let it be enough. The practice is not about producing a result. It is about learning to stay with yourself without immediately trying to change yourself.
Begin your ReTune journey
People often come to KusalaFlow® because they are living with physical pain, emotional pain, chronic tension, stress, or a feeling that their body has been holding too much for too long.
Through the ReTune Pathway®, I work with the whole person: body, nervous system, emotions, awareness, and innate healing capacity.
This work isn't about forcing pain to disappear. It is about creating the conditions for the body to begin to soften, release, regulate, reconnect, and respond differently.
Whether you already practice yoga, meditation, breathwork, energy work, or none of these, you do not need to understand healing before you begin.
You only need a willingness to become curious about what your body may be trying to tell you. I work with people both in person in Italy and online. You can learn more here.
Read more from Lee Suet Fong Wendy
Lee Suet Fong Wendy, Holistic Healer & Trauma-Informed Coach
Wendy Lee is a Holistic Healer, Trauma-Informed Coach, and the founder of KusalaFlow®, a healing studio based in Italy devoted to energy medicine, nervous system regulation, and trauma-informed care. Born in Hong Kong, Wendy draws from an integrative healing toolkit that includes Spinal Flow® Technique, breathwork, sound healing, Compassionate Inquiry, and Star Magic remote healing. She helps clients release emotional, physical, and energetic pain, supporting them as they reconnect with their true selves and awaken their innate intelligence.
