Healing Isn’t Linear: Embracing the Spiral Path Within
For much of my life—both personally and professionally—I’ve been taught that healing should look like a straight line. You identify a problem, work on it, and move forward. Progress means upward momentum. Higher, better, faster.
But lately, I’ve come to realize something that changed everything:
Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line. It happens in spirals.
This “ah-ha!” moment landed during a conversation about time—not the kind you track on a clock, but time as it’s experienced in energy work, memory, and the nervous system. In Reiki, for example, we understand that energy knows no time. We can send healing into the past or set intentions for the future.
This non-linear understanding of time aligns beautifully with what I see in therapy, too—especially in trauma work. When a client is triggered by something in the present, their nervous system reacts as if it’s still happening. That isn’t just memory—it’s a collapse of time, a return to an earlier layer of the spiral. I see this also in addiction work. A client will have a relapse, and will often feel as if they are in the cycle they can’t get out of. But what if they are reliving an earlier layer of the spiral?
The Spiral Path of Healing
Instead of imagining healing as a straight road, what if we saw it as a spiral?
A spiral allows for movement, growth, and return. It honors repetition, but not stagnation. We revisit old wounds not because we’ve failed, but because we’re ready to meet them with new awareness, new tools, and new capacity.
Each loop of the spiral holds a layer of insight:
The outer rings might hold early wounds or survival responses.
The middle loops are the patterns we recognize but haven’t fully shifted.
The inner spiral is where we begin to integrate. Where we say: "I’ve been here before, but this time, I know what to do."
And here's the key: Returning isn’t regression. It’s deepening.
Time Is Not Linear—And That’s a Good Thing
Culturally, we’re obsessed with milestones and “moving on.” But what if “progress” isn’t always about distance from pain—but rather intimacy with your truth?
In spiritual traditions, time is often viewed as cyclical or spiral-shaped. The past, present, and future aren’t separate—they’re layers. Echoes. Vibrations. That means your healing isn’t behind or ahead of you—it’s already within you, waiting to be tuned into.
And tuning in doesn’t always mean sitting still. Sometimes it looks like crying over an old story again, but this time offering yourself compassion instead of shame. Sometimes it means finally standing up for yourself in a situation that echoes something from childhood. That’s spiral work. That’s real progress.
So, Where Are You on Your Spiral?
Here are a few questions to help you reflect:
Is there a theme or pattern you feel you're revisiting lately?
What’s different about the you who’s meeting it this time?
What tools, awareness, or support do you have now that you didn’t before?
What would healing look like at this layer?
I created a visual to go along with this idea—a The Spiral Path Within you can use to journal through these questions.
You can even send Reiki or prayer to the earlier layers of yourself who struggled. Or invite your future, healed self to hold your hand as you walk this layer of the spiral.
You’re Not Behind. You’re Becoming.
This work is sacred. It’s nonlinear. And it’s never too late or too slow.
Let’s stop measuring healing by timelines and milestones. Instead, let’s honor our spiral paths—where every return is also a rise. Where every echo brings us closer to our center.
You’re not stuck. You’re spiraling inward. And that’s where the magic happens.
