Short Pain, Long Gain

A little while ago, I started learning a really cool 'alternative' health therapy called Su Jok, which is Korean for 'Hand and Foot'. In a nutshell, the therapy stimulates acupressure points, or 'pain points' in the hand and feet, to send a message to the related part of the body that it needs to start healing.
 
Say a person has a headache. That headache will show up as a 'pain point' in the area known to connect to the head on the person's head and foot. Once you find that pain point, and press on it for a bit, the healing process begins and often, the symptoms begin to ameliorate immediately.
 
I know it all sounds a bit too easy and too good to be true (and I've clearly given a very simplified version of how it works here) – but I can tell you from my own experiences, it really does work.
 
A while back, my husband hurt the top of his pinkie finger. The ligament somehow snapped, and the top of his finger was flopping around all over the place. He went the conventional medical route first, and ended up with his arm in a half-cast up to the elbow, that was preventing him from going to the mikva.
 
After three days, he decided to take the cast off and splint his finger instead, so he could still use the mikva. When he took the cast off, he discovered that the doctors had shoved his hand into the cast with his pinkie finger all bent. If he'd left the cast on for six weeks, as instructed, his finger would have come out permanently deformed.
 
After three weeks of splinting, there was only a little bit of improvement in the finger, which is when I asked my husband if he'd be willing to try Su Jok. He was sceptical that it would make any difference, but he was still willing to try. Why not? At this point, he had nothing to lose.
 
The first time we found the corresponding pain point for his pinkie finger (on his other hand, not on the injured finger itself) – my husband yowled in pain. It really, really hurt, and he almost gave up.
 
But I told him it was good it was hurting, because it meant we'd found the right spot, and now we were sending his pinkie the message to start healing. To his credit, he persevered. Before I tell you what happened, let me tell you that my husband also started to ask G-d to show him what teshuva he needed to make, for his finger to heal.
 
After all, nothing happens 'randomly' for no reason. What message was G-d trying to send him? What did he need to change?
 
He got back the answer: "Go and learn the Jewish Codes of Law, the Shulchan Aruch, every single day. The pinkie corresponds to all the small halachic laws that you are breaking all the time, because you don't know about them."
 
He made a commitment to learn Shulchan Aruch every day; he kept stimulating the pain point – and within a week, his finger had straightened up considerably. One day the next week, his finger started inexplicably aching, until he realised he'd forgotten to do his learning that day. Once he sat down with the Shulchan Aruch for 20 minutes, it was fine again.
 
There is so much to learn out from all this. Firstly, G-d doesn't do anything randomly. Absolutely everything is a message. If we get sick, G-d is behind it, like He's behind everything else, and we need to include Him in our healing processes, to really get to the bottom of what's going on.
 
Also, G-d has put so many 'healing arts' out there to help us that are gentle, non-invasive and really work, especially if combined with some heart-felt soul-searching and teshuva.
 
Su Jok is just one that I happen to have started learning about, but there are so many wonderful, holistic ways of healing that relate to people as a body AND a soul together.
 
When we get ill, it can often be a very painful experience, particularly if it's serious. But spiritually, we're just being sent that short-term physical pain for the long-term gain of encouraging us to make teshuva and come back to G-d.
 
Yes, it really does hurt. But just like in Su Jok, G-d is just pressing on our external 'pain points' to stimulate some deep, internal healing of the soul. And the sooner we get that the message, the faster we heal, and the easier it is to get through the process in once piece.
 
 
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You're welcome to write Rivka Levy at rivkawritesback@gmail.com