Why I Don’t Call Myself a Healer…and why it matters

I am so grateful for all the opportunities I’ve had to learn about the body and how to apply principles of treatment to help people feel better. The skills I use were handed down to me by so many — teachers, mentors, fellow therapists, even students at times. We all have something to offer that can support healing.

But I’ve never felt comfortable calling myself a healer.

I know the term is well-meaning, but it just doesn’t sit right with me.

It’s too much pressure.

For one thing, the title comes with a heavy sense of responsibility — as if it’s my job to heal everyone who walks through the door. It reminds me of an episode of Little House on the Prairie I watched as a kid, where a charlatan “faith healer” was going around faking miracles on people who weren’t actually sick. Eventually, the townsfolk caught on and ran him out of town.

I don’t work well under pressure like that. In fact, that’s one of the first things I learned in my very first Craniosacral Therapy class — we must drop our agenda to get good results. Even just getting paid can create an unconscious agenda. But if I go around calling myself a healer, now I’ve added a whole ego trip to the equation.

What happens when I can’t help someone? Am I no longer a healer? Have I failed?
I don’t think I could work under that kind of pressure.

Who’s really doing the healing?

In all reality, it’s the client who is doing the healing, not me. The body is designed to heal.

Think of how many cuts, bruises, traumas, and imbalances your body has recovered from over the years. Even when you go too long without food, your body has backup systems — like releasing glucagon from the liver — to stabilize your blood sugar. You get a cut, and your body kicks off a full cascade of healing events to stop the bleeding and close the wound. That’s built-in wisdom. I can’t make that happen. Even doctors — with all their training — can’t force healing. They, like the rest of us, rely on the body’s innate ability to do its job.

As bodyworkers, we can support healing. We can facilitate it. We can remove barriers to health.
But we never cause it to happen.

The girl with one lung

Not long ago, I got to work on a young woman who had her right lung and kidney removed at a very young age due to cancer. Her left lung had expanded to take up almost the entire thoracic cavity, and her heart had shifted up and over into the top right corner — a tiny little nook of space left just for it.

I was curious. What would her heart be doing in that position? Would it still have its embryological motion? (Not the heartbeat — but that deep, fluid, subtle motion we feel in cranial work.) I placed my hand under her armpit and just listened — no agenda. Her heart was barely moving at first.

But as I stayed with it, just present and holding, it started to move rhythmically — up and down, like a tide. I waited. Slowly, her heart began to complete its full embryological motion — the same exact motion I feel in people whose hearts are still in their original position.

It was incredible. I didn’t make that happen. I didn’t force it or direct it. Her body already knew what to do. The blueprint was there. It just needed a little attention to wake it up. That’s healing from within.

Honoring the client — and the Creator

I want to honor the clients who show up on my table. They take time, spend money, and often bring a deep readiness to do their work. Their willingness to heal matters.

I also want to honor the body — and the one who designed it. Anyone who knows me well knows I believe deeply in God. The way everything in the body works together — the elegance, the timing, the design — I just don’t think it could happen by accident.

So I don’t see myself as the healer. I see myself as a collaborator in the process.
I use what I know about anatomy, embryology, and motion to help wake up what’s already in there — the body’s original intelligence. I try to get things moving that have gone still, and make space for fluids to flow again. That’s the level I work on. And I know that I’m not the director of anyone’s healing.

That job is way above my pay grade.

Integrity matters.

After my father passed away last fall, I remember talking to a good friend who had lost her dad, too. She said, “For a while after he died, I felt like… nothing really matters.”

I knew exactly what she meant. When you're walking through grief, everything else can feel trivial.
But eventually, I came around to the realization that some things do matter. And one of those things is integrity.

In this work, I want to operate with integrity in everything I do.
Calling myself a healer feels… off. It implies that I have some special gift that others lack — and that’s not true. It also risks disempowering the person on the table. Instead of building reliance on me, I want to empower my clients with tools they can use in their daily life. Whether it’s movement, breath, or self-touch, I always try to send people home with something they can do for themselves.

That’s where the real healing lives — inside them.

So what do I call myself?

Honestly? Just a bodyworker.
(Though yes — people sometimes think I fix cars. 😂 I tell them, “Nope, I work on bodies. Human ones.”)

When they ask what I do, I might say:
“My license is massage therapy, but I work with people fully clothed, and I try to find what isn’t moving — and get it to move again.”
Or sometimes:
“I look for what’s already working well in the body… and I help it do more of that.”

Other times, I say I’m a student of the body — because no matter how many classes I take, books I read, or teachers I learn from, the people on my table teach me the most. Every person brings a different puzzle to solve, a new challenge to meet. And most days, I’m able to meet those challenges. Other days… I miss something. And I just hope they’ll come back, give me another chance to listen harder and try softer.

What does healing mean to you?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. And I want to thank every client and student who’s ever trusted me enough to show up — and do the work of healing.

Because no matter how skilled a practitioner may be… if the client isn’t ready to heal, it’s not going to happen.
Mindset matters. Readiness matters. Willingness matters.

I hope I don’t sound too judgmental writing all this. I don’t mean to put anyone down. In fact, this was pointed out to me years ago by one of my mentors — and I’ve always remembered it. I want to give a little wink and a nod to him here, and remind myself to keep trying to be humble, to keep learning, and to keep showing up for every client with an open heart and curious hands.

But I never want anyone to look at me and think, She’s the one who healed me.
Because I’m not.