By Dr. Keesha Ewers, PhD, ARNP, IFMCP
I am no stranger to life crises. I’ve experienced loss of family, friends, and treasured pets. I’ve been divorced. I’ve had cancer and live with autoimmune diseases. Right now, one of my dearest family members is dealing with a diagnosis no one wants to receive.
Chances are you’ve experienced a lot in your life, too. You might be going through a crisis right now.
These experiences don’t just affect your thoughts and your emotions. They ripple through your entire being—your body, your nervous system, your beliefs, your energy, and your sense of identity.
If you have an autoimmune disease that you’ve been working hard to reverse, a life crisis can cause setbacks and flare ups.
So, how do we keep making progress and healing in times of crisis? I’m going to share four foundational practices that help me stay grounded, supported, and connected to healing during life’s most stressful seasons.
Why A Crisis Impacts You More Than You Think
In my Freedom Framework method, you learn that you are not just a physical body—you are made up of multiple interconnected layers:
- Your physical body
- Your energy body
- Your emotional and mental body
- Your wisdom (belief and identity) body
- Your spiritual or “bliss” body
These layers are constantly communicating. Your emotions influence your nervous system. Your nervous system influences your organs and hormones. Your beliefs shape your behaviors—and your biology.
This is why whatever crisis you are experiencing doesn’t just stay in your mind. It gets stored in your body and expressed through your life. So when you’re navigating death, divorce, or disease, you need resources to recalibrate your entire system.
Four Ways to Support Yourself Through a Life Crisis
These practices are not about doing more. They are about tending to your whole system so healing can actually occur.
1. Create Safety and Grounding in Your Body
Before anything else, your system needs to feel safe.
Crisis activates survival patterns:
- Fight (anger, control)
- Flight (anxiety, overthinking)
- Freeze (shutdown, numbness)
Until your body senses safety, it will keep you in protection mode. This is why grounding is the first step in every healing process.
Simple practices:
- Slow breathing with longer exhales
- Sitting with your feet on the floor
- Time in nature
- Reducing overstimulation
In chakra-based healing, this connects to your foundation—the part of you that governs safety, stability, and survival. Without this foundation, everything else feels unstable. You cannot build healing on a nervous system that feels under threat.
2. Bring Awareness to Your Patterns (Not Just Your Pain)
Crisis doesn’t just create pain—it activates old patterns.
Beliefs like:
- “I’m not safe”
- “I’m not enough”
- “I’m going to lose everything”
These often aren’t new—they are early imprints that resurface under stress. This is where healing shifts from reaction to awareness.
Ask yourself:
- What story am I telling about this situation?
- What does this remind me of from earlier in my life?
- What belief is being triggered right now?
You are not just healing the current crisis. You are healing the pattern it activated.
3. Support Your Physical Body (Because It Holds the Stress)
When trauma or crisis hits, your body keeps score.
It shows up as:
- Fatigue
- Hormonal imbalance
- Digestive issues
- Sleep disruption
- Chronic inflammation
This happens because your emotional and mental layers communicate directly with your physical body through your energy system. So neglecting your physical health during a crisis doesn’t just slow healing—it prolongs it.
Keep it simple:
- Eat regularly, even if meals are basic
- Hydrate consistently
- Move your body gently
- Protect your sleep
This is not the time for perfection. It’s the time to stay connected to your body instead of abandoning it.
4. Integrate, Don’t Suppress (Emotional + Spiritual Healing)
Healing is not about “getting over it.” It’s about integrating the experience into your life in a way that creates growth instead of fragmentation. There’s a concept that resonates deeply with me called “Liquifying sorrow” that explores the role grief plays through tears and the expression of sadness, pain, despair, loneliness, longing, and fear. Read more about healthy grieving here.
That means:
- Allowing grief without judgment
- Feeling emotions without getting stuck in them
- Making meaning from the experience
In chakra-based work, this is where healing expands beyond survival into growth, identity, and purpose.
You begin to ask:
- Who am I becoming through this?
- What is this experience asking me to learn?
- What needs to change in how I live, relate, or care for myself?
Because a crisis doesn’t just break things down. It also opens a doorway to transformation—if you’re willing to walk through it.
Final Thought: Healing Is a Return, Not a Race
If you are walking through death, divorce, or disease right now, this matters: You are not broken. Your system is trying to make sense of something that changed everything.
So instead of asking:
Why am I still struggling?
Ask:
How can I support all parts of myself right now?
Because healing doesn’t happen when you push harder.
It happens when you:
- Create safety
- Build awareness
- Support your body
- Integrate your experience
And slowly, steadily, you don’t just recover. You return to your full self—clearer, stronger, and more aligned than before.
If you’re going through a crisis right now and need support, reach out to schedule a discovery call with my team. I want you to keep your sanity and your health no matter what life is throwing at you right now.
So much love,
Dr. Keesha
