It wasn’t until I studied holistic therapies that I became aware of the word ‘practitioner’. For me, this meant someone that had trained in something specific, such as massage, physiotherapy, counselling or aromatherapy. If I am really honest, once I got my qualification in Reflexology and holistic therapies and started practising, there was definitely an element of “Here I am – I have finally got somewhere in my life,” even though I knew I was kidding myself and it was only the beginning and there was a lot more to learn.
Indeed, there was a lot more to learn! Even though I was a ‘practitioner’, I was not looking after my health and wellbeing, or taking care of myself. I was not eating well, I was eating on the go, and not listening to or honouring my body, which eventually led to an illness that forced me to stop being a ‘practitioner’ and go back to work in an office environment while looking at my health.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I heard the term ‘practitioner’ being used in the office workplace. People were calling themselves practitioners and at the time I felt this was really strange. Why would you do that? A practitioner was someone that had a qualification and worked in the bodywork / therapy industry, not a team Manager!
Through Universal Medicine, what I have come to realise is that actually we are all practitioners, no matter what our age, qualifications or job role; that each and every one of us has something to bring or reflect to another person.
This was made really clear to me while I was on a recent training course, where the room was set up with the person at the front of the room as the trainer ‘teacher’, and the people listening as the ‘students’.
It was a long and painful day and it wasn’t until the end of the day, when we did a group exercise, that everyone in the room came alive. The ‘students’ were talking about the young people they were working with, sharing their experiences until eventually at one point everyone in the room was helping each other with the cases they were working on.
For me this was gold and very valuable, far more valuable than everyone sitting facing one person listening to them talk. It emphasised that we are all practitioners, that is, we all have our lived experiences and know if these have truly supported ourselves and others, or not. We all have access to the same innate wisdom within us, whether young or old. It is just a case of whether we know how to connect to this or not. Being a practitioner is not a title, it is a way of living – how we live and what we learn from choices, either good or bad, that we have made. It is a forever learning and evolving.
I am continually inspired by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine who consistently reflect to me that we are all practitioners of life.
By Vicky Cooke, London
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I Thought I Was a Great Healer
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Yes, I also love it in workshops when participants all start to interact, share together, help each other… It’s the way it can be.
True Vicky ‘being a practitioner is not a title, it is a way of living – how we live and what we learn from choices, either good or bad, that we have made. It is a forever learning and evolving.’ It is a responsibility we have 24/7 where ever we are or what we are doing, the accent is on the quality we bring.
I totally agree we are all practitioners of life, we all come with a different flavour and see things from different angles and because of this we all reflect the same thing slightly differently to each other.
I love the idea that I am a practitioner of life and that I am here to share my vast lived experience with the world. But I also realise that just because I have lived for many years it doesn’t make me any wiser than the young children that I am with often. Even though these beautiful children haven’t lived as many years as I have, the wisdom that they share that often stops me in my tracks makes them also, practitioners of life.
Hi Ingrid, very true, it is great to dispel the ill belief that the older people because of their age are wiser, they are not. A child can hold and express equally the same wisdom (if not more!) than an adult.
A practitioner to me, means responsibility, so why would we all not want to be responsible for how we are living and effecting others?
We are practitioners of our own lives as we observe and understand the choices we make in every aspect of our lives. We each have our own wisdom and light to share from our livingness.
“We all have access to the same innate wisdom within us, whether young or old. It is just a case of whether we know how to connect to this or not. Being a practitioner is not a title, it is a way of living…” This is a diamond of a sentence. So many young children speak pearls of wisdom – they have access which so often gets hidden as they grow, due to forces coming at them form their environment. But though hidden it need not be buried forever and can be re-discovered, as so many students of Universal Medicine have found.
Being a practitioner is simply the way we live… What a beautiful statement, and how this is so absolutely embodied in the esoteric practitioners association.
I recently attended Sacred Esoteric Healing Level 3 held by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine in the UK. The course, amazing pails into insignificance with what was presented here. The quality, integrity, wisdom, care and absolute love was clearly felt. So much was given and nothing spared or held back .. it was life changing. During the course there were many times where each person is either a practitioner giving a session or a client or is a client receiving a session. I reflected this morning whilst driving ‘do I live the depth of care, presence love and magic that was offered to me whilst being a practitioner in my everyday life?’ .. the answer was no, not currently. Highlighting once again that being a practitioner of life is in the way we live and each move we make not in the role or roles we do. No judgement but great to feel so this can be changed.
A practitioner in life is testing out life in all situations and exploring, experimenting and refining all the time. A practitioner is not a comfort situation where everything is mapped out and we can follow a book. A practitioner is engaging with life in every moment and dealing with it as it happens. A practitioner is someone who is committed to being in a relationship with life.
It’s empowering to let go of the idea that without a qualification we don’t really qualify to be a member of society. It’s amazing just how much is there to be taught and learnt from our own selves.
We all equally have the same access to the wisdom of the Universe when we choose to align and live in connection to our soul.
We all have great wisdom to offer and share at any age throughout our life. As this wisdom is accessible to each and every one of us and is embodied as such through the way we choose to live, in which we can naturally then support, inspire and confirm each other to grow and evolve.
We each bring a piece of the party and it’s amazing when we all work together with that, it’s brings a greater depth for everyone. Everyone is needed.
I agree with your comment that everyone is a practitioner Vicky. We all have something unique to offer the World. This energy that we have is actually part of the whole.
I love that every single one of us represent a piece of Universe that cannot be represented by anyone else. We could be at the same training but how we received and then reflect back to the others would be completely different from those of the others. We are constantly teaching and learning from each other. Such a beautiful picture together we form.
It is through the acceptance of who we are that we can break away from all the limiting beliefs that we have been aligning to delaying our return to soul and once again live life to the fullest simply by making it all about energetic quality first, that is then is expressed through every movement of our day- a true practitioner of life!
If we all saw ourselves as practitioners in our workplace, home, relationships and in the world, the reflection we would offer would be very different and bring responsibility and a quality to how we are moving and expressing in the world.
Yep I agree and it eradicates people feeling small or less than others as it would be felt within that all are equal and we all have a specific innate quality we can bring to either another, a space or a project or task.
The word practitioner goes hand with hand with the word integrity. Both of them are more than two words; they are deeply linked as what we live, say and do has to be one and the same, without having ‘hidden pockets’.