Last summer my friend Ella had an extremely inflamed shoulder joint that left her with mind-numbing pain for months. She is an acupuncturist healer by trade and after spending thousands of hours helping others she couldn't help herself.
Finally after months of pain she consulted a chiropractor/body worker that her mother recommended. This chiropractor told her that she needed to come every day for a couple weeks in order to set her shoulder right again. Ella didn't think she could afford him because chiropractors typically cost upwards of $70-100 per session and are not covered by insurance. But this doctor was different. He charged an affordable $29 per session. His goal was to be affordable and heal people.
After a couple of weeks of everyday care, Ella's inflamed shoulder was completely healed and she could return to everyday life.
Within 6 months of her shoulder healing experience Ella completely changed her practice. Instead of working out of her home she opened a pain clinic. Her trifecta success was to 1) adjust her treatment time per patient from 60-minutes a session to 30 minutes, 2) to treat only patients in pain, and 3) to adjust . She still had her VIP clients for more severe cases, but the new basic pain treatment service allowed her to treat multitudes more of patients. Her healing impact on the community exploded.
Ella eventually realized that her shoulder pain had been a gift. It led her to the chiropractor that eventually inspired her to rethink her entire business model.
We all deal with maladies, loss, or bouts of misfortune at some time or another, and in the storm of our pain it's usually much too difficult to make any light of the situation. But pay attention. Observe where the pain leads you. You never know what gifts you may find along the path to your healing.
