Discover how the four dimensions of healing—spiritual, social, environmental, and physical—interconnect to restore life force energy and transform recovery from trauma.
Everything is energy. Everything is interconnected. I know that sounds kind of out there, but once you actually see it play out in real life, it hits different.
This is what happened to me a few years ago when I witnessed a struggle of a woman to get back on her feet. Literally. Even though I was mostly engaged as an observer and a friend, it made a huge impact on my view of spirituality, willpower, and healing dimensions.
I spent a lot of time thinking about prana and life force – how energy moves through your body, how your chakras work, all of that. Also in that context, how everything is interconnected – like, the different aspects of healing. It is not just your determination, but also the circumstances, the environment, the support you get, and so on.
But honestly, it used to feel pretty abstract to me too, like something you read about but don’t really get until you experience it.
Then I watched my friend’s mother go through something that made it all click into place. It was also an experience for me in a way, even though I was not the one who was directly affected. I guess this third-person perspective made it easier for me to understand the story from this angle.
I want to share this story with you. Hopefully, it motivates you, gets you thinking about the 4 dimensions of healing, and leaves some positive vibes in your heart and mind.
This is what happened.
My friend came to me one day, totally stressed out and scared. Her mom was in a nursing home – I knew that from before – and things were going wrong for her.
I did not know her mother, but when I met her mother a few weeks later, sitting in that depressing room with the bad lighting and that weird nursing home smell, I understood why my friend had been so upset.
When I first met her, she was in bed and couldn’t move much on her own. She was a bigger woman – around 280 pounds, she told me later – and getting around was really hard for her.
The bed sores started out small, just a sore spot that she mentioned to a nurse. The nurse said she’d come back to check on it, but never did. Looking back, I understood that this was the physical manifestation needed for her to get back on her feet. This is how it started.
She kept pressing the call button when things got worse. Sometimes nobody came for an hour. Sometimes they’d show up and apologize about being short-staffed and promise to bring supplies, then forget about it completely.
I know the staff at these places are doing their best – they’re overwhelmed, understaffed, running around constantly. But that doesn’t change what happened to her.
Days went by. She couldn’t move herself to take pressure off the sore spots. The pain got worse and worse until it was just always there.
The thing that really got me though – she told me she’d kind of given up on herself before any of this even happened. Years of depression, gaining weight, and health problems stacking up.
She basically decided she didn’t matter that much anymore. That maybe this was just what she deserved.
Then the sores got infected.
Her daughter came to visit and found out how bad things had gotten.
Bed sores that had turned into these deep, nasty wounds. The kind that can cause sepsis, that can go all the way to the bone if nobody does anything about them. Something that should’ve been prevented with basic care had turned into a serious medical emergency.
So they rushed her to the hospital. And through all of that chaos and pain, something changed in her.
She got angry. Really angry. First time she’d felt anything besides numb and ashamed in months.
That anger was actually the first sign that things might turn around.
Her daughter went home and started researching everything she could find about nursing home neglect. Stayed up way too late drinking coffee and reading about patient rights and what legal options existed.
She found lawyers who specifically handle these kinds of cases – people who’ve seen this happen way too many times.
When she came to her mom with all this information, her mom’s first reaction was basically “what’s the point?” Like, what’s done is done, why bother.
But her daughter wasn’t having it. She sat down next to the hospital bed, took her mom’s hand, and said, “This isn’t really about the money. I mean, yeah, there are medical bills, and you’re going to need care for a while.
But that’s not why we’re doing this.
We’re doing this because what happened to you was wrong. Really wrong. And you deserve to have someone held accountable for it. You deserve to know that you’re worth fighting for.”
That’s when they decided to reach out to professionals for legal options for bed sore injuries – to actually build a case and document everything that went wrong.
I started spending more time with both of them after that point.
We’d sit together and talk through the legal process – how to keep track of medical records, how to write down what happened while it was still fresh, how to keep going when the whole thing felt exhausting.
And I noticed something happening with her that didn’t have anything to do with lawyers or paperwork.
Standing up for herself – deciding to actually fight back instead of just accepting what happened – became this turning point. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true.
She’d basically shut down her life force energy completely. That’s what prana actually is – it’s not some woo-woo thing, it’s the energy that flows through you and connects you to everything else, keeps your chakras working right.
Hers had just… stopped. Completely blocked by feeling worthless and resigned to everything.
Taking legal action somehow got things moving again. She was pushed into it by her daughter, but then she took the lead.
The legal team really validated what she’d been through. They documented everything carefully and kept saying things like “this really happened, this was actual negligence, this violated your basic rights, you deserved so much better than this.”
When you’ve been telling yourself you don’t matter for so long, hearing other people say the opposite matters. A lot.
For the first time in years, she was actually standing up for herself and saying out loud, “I matter.”
Observing this gave me much insight into the four dimensions of healing.
When people talk about the spiritual dimension of healing, they mean stuff that goes deeper than just religion:
For her, the legal action was spiritual work.
Every time she signed a document or talked to her lawyer, she was basically saying, “I’m worth fighting for. What happened was wrong. I deserve justice.”
Once the legal stuff was moving forward and lawyers were handling most of it, she had brain space for other things.
She started looking around and realizing how cut off she’d become from everyone. How many relationships had just kind of fallen away over the years.
She started small.
Called her sister, whom she hadn’t talked to in forever. It was awkward at first, but then they found their rhythm again. She emailed an old friend from way back – wasn’t even sure if the email still worked.
I was there for a lot of this, and we talked about how hard it is to rebuild connections.
How to ask for help when you’re so used to feeling like a burden. How to actually let people care about you. How to tell who genuinely wants to support you and who just drains your energy and makes everything harder.
It wasn’t smooth.
There were failed attempts and uncomfortable conversations. She had to deal with a ton of guilt about asking people for things. Had to accept that some old relationships were actually toxic and needed to stay in the past. Had to learn that reaching out took way more courage than just staying isolated.
But slowly things started coming back together. Her social life rebuilt itself into something that actually worked.
The social stuff matters because:
Watching her relationship with her daughter heal was probably the best part.
They both had so much guilt – her daughter feeling like she should’ve caught the neglect sooner, her mom feeling like she’d become exactly the burden she always feared being.
Working through all that and coming out stronger on the other side showed me how powerful this social dimension really is.
She was still in a recovery facility, but she started controlling what she could.
Excuse my comparison, but it was like watching a dry plant coming back to life and just waiting for it to bloom.
She put up photos – her and her daughter at the beach from years ago, her parents on their wedding day, a garden she used to take care of.
Her daughter brought her a plant, something that needed watering and care. She got the staff to help move furniture around so she could actually see out the window, so sunlight could hit her bed in the morning.
Changed the lighting too – kept it brighter during the day so she’d stay alert, dimmed it at night so she could wind down.
These seem like small things, but they were really about taking back some control, making the space feel less like a hospital and more like somewhere she could actually heal.
Eventually, she moved to a completely different place. Better staff, better care, a room that actually felt like hers. She set it up with plants and familiar things, colors that made her feel calm instead of anxious.
Where you are – the environment – affects how you heal – that’s just true.
You can’t always move or change everything about your situation, but you can change what’s in your control. And those small changes create little pockets of peace that make everything else more bearable.
This part came last, and that’s important.
She’d tried before – Weight Watchers, gym memberships, diet plans, all of it.
Never stuck because nothing else was in place.
You can’t really heal your body when your spirit is crushed, and you don’t have people supporting you, and your environment is working against you.
But now she was ready in a way she hadn’t been before.
Started with physical therapy. Just gentle stretches in bed at first. Then sitting up for longer periods. Eventually walking short distances with a walker, her daughter on one side helping out. Every step took real effort but also made her feel proud of what her body could do.
This wasn’t about losing weight as the main goal.
It was about feeling alive in her body again, about actually living in it instead of hating it or ignoring it. Moving because it felt good to move, because it reminded her what her body could do.
She started eating differently too – choosing food that made her feel good instead of following strict rules that turned every meal into a guilt trip. Moving when she felt like it, resting when she needed to. Actually listening to what her body was telling her.
The bed sores healed over time. Slowly, with proper care and movement that got blood flowing again. The scars stayed – they’ll always be there. But the infection cleared up, the constant pain faded, and she could move more and more as her muscles got stronger and she got more confident.
But bigger than all the physical stuff – she just inhabited her body differently. Was actually present in it. Connected to it. Her energy was flowing right again through channels that had been blocked for so long. Her chakras were working again because everything else was finally supporting them.
Looking back at those months, here’s what I watched happen:
The legal fight gave her back her sense of worth, which opened up the spiritual dimension that had been closed for years. That spiritual work let her reconnect with people because she could actually let them in without all the shame. Having people support her made it possible to change her environment because she felt safe asking for what she needed. The better environment made it possible to change her daily habits. And then finally, the physical healing could actually happen for real.
These dimensions don’t work separately – for example:
The legal case wrapped up about eight months after it started. The nursing home settled – there was financial compensation for her medical expenses and ongoing care needs, plus they had to make policy changes. The money helped with practical stuff like paying for better care and physical therapy.
But that’s not what actually mattered most.
She’s alive again. Not just breathing and existing, but actually present in her life. Connected to herself in ways she’d completely forgotten about, connected to the people who matter, connected to the life force energy that runs through everything.
She’s not “fixed” or “perfect” – that’s not how this works. She still has rough days when the pain comes back or the depression creeps in. There are physical things she can’t do anymore, things she needs help with. The scars are still there, both the ones you can see and the ones you can’t.
But her energy flows now.
Her prana moves through her body the way it’s supposed to, not all blocked up by trauma and feeling worthless. She doesn’t question whether she matters anymore. She’s back in her life in a way that’s real.
I watched someone figure out through actual lived experience what all those spiritual teachers try to explain. Everything really is connected. The energy in her is the same energy that’s in everything else.
Her chakra points work right again because she cleared out the blockages one dimension at a time.
The connection was always there. She just had to fight her way back to it.
Balance your chi. Connect to whatever spirituality means for you. Make sure your chakras aren’t blocked by old trauma or shame or all the weight you’re carrying. This isn’t just ancient mystical stuff – it’s real and practical and it can actually change things.
When life knocks you down – and it will, it happens to everyone – fight back with whatever you’ve got.
Maybe that’s getting legal help when a system fails you. Maybe it’s making one phone call to someone who cares. Maybe it’s five minutes of breathing and being still. Maybe it’s moving your couch to get more sunlight in. Maybe it’s just walking to the end of your driveway and back.
Just start somewhere. Anywhere. With whatever you can actually manage right now.
These dimensions weave together. When you move one thing, other things start moving too. Your energy starts flowing again. Your life force reconnects to everything around you.
You’re made of the same energy as everything else – the trees, the people around you, the ground, everything. That connection is always there, even when it doesn’t feel like it, even when you’re at the absolute bottom and everything feels permanently broken.
It is there waiting for you to notice it again. The universe will support you – whatever your true inner intention is – to fight your way back to it one step at a time. To start healing wherever you can actually start.
Her story proved that to me. Maybe it’ll prove it to you too.
