spiritual meaning of head injury

A head injury can be caused by a sudden bump or blow to the head. The word “Injury” means harm done to a person, body, mind or spirit. It may be an emotional disturbance.  In this article I will explain that emotional disturbances are experienced in various ways.

Right here on Churchgists, you are privy to a litany of relevant information on spiritual meaning of swelling, spiritual meaning of foot injury, fibula spiritual meaning, and so much more. Take out time to visit our Website for more information on similar topics.

The spiritual meaning of head injury is often considered to be the most difficult affliction to cure. A person who has suffered a blow to his or her head may feel psychological repercussions that outlast the short term physical pain and discomfort. He or she may suffer from anxiety, headaches, nausea, emotional instability, confusion and other aspects of unknown origin. Traditionally, learning disabilities and hyperactivity have been identified with brain trauma as well.

Significance and symbolism in head injury. The Hindu culture is rich in symbolism. In fact, ancient Hindu scriptures are full of symbolism. Although every symbol has a unique meaning, there are basic principles of symbolism that apply to most of them. When you understand these principles, you can interpret any symbol more easily.

Head injury is a common problem that can have many spiritual meanings.

The first is that, while the brain still works, it has been injured and is not functioning at its full capacity. This may mean that you are unable to think clearly or focus on things that you used to do with ease.

Another meaning is that your spirit or soul has been damaged by some kind of trauma or stressor. This could be anything from a physical injury to a death in the family or even just about anything else that would make one feel sad or depressed for an extended period of time.

A third meaning is that you have lost faith in yourself or others around you because of something bad happening recently within your personal life such as losing your job due to downsizing at work or having trouble finding another one after being fired from one company for doing something wrong on purpose like stealing money from customers accounts without their permission first etc…

When you suffer a head injury, it’s important to consider the spiritual meaning of your injury.

Your head is associated with your mind and memory. When you forget something or can’t remember something, it can be frustrating. But when you experience frequent memory loss or have trouble remembering things, it can be even more upsetting.

You may be able to use your spiritual side to help with this problem. For example, when you are trying to remember something, hold an object in your hand that has significant meaning for you. If the object helps you remember what you need to know, then this will help you get back on track with your life without having to rely on technology as much!

spiritual meaning of head injury

Head injury – first aid

Brain injury; Head trauma; Concussion – head injury; Traumatic – head injury

A head injury is any trauma to the scalp, skull, or brain.

Head injury can be either closed or open (penetrating).

• A closed head injury means you received a hard blow to the head from striking an object, but the object did not break the skull.
• An open, or penetrating, head injury means you were hit with an object that broke the skull and entered the brain. This is more likely to happen when you move at high speed, such as going through the windshield during a car accident. It can also happen from a gunshot to the head.

Head injuries include:

• Concussion, in which the brain is shaken, is the most common type of traumatic brain injury.
• Scalp wounds.
• Skull fractures.

Head injuries may cause bleeding:

• In the brain tissue
• In the layers that surround the brain (subarachnoid hemorrhage, subdural hematoma, epidural hematoma)

Head injury is a common reason for an emergency room visit. A large number of people who suffer head injuries are children. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) accounts for over 1 in 6 injury-related hospital admissions each year.

You’ve fallen and hit your head. It hurts a little, but you’re not bleeding and you feel okay. Do you have a head injury, or are you fine? Knowing how to tell a minor head injury from a serious one could literally save your life. Let’s talk about head injuries. Millions of people get head injuries every year. They get into car accidents or fights, they fall, or they get hit in the head while playing sports or working on the job. Most head injuries are minor, because your head comes equipped with its own natural hard hat, a protective skull that surrounds and protects your brain. But sometimes that protection isn’t enough. More than a half-million people each year get head injuries severe enough to send them to the hospital. The most common type of head injury is a concussion. That’s when a hit in the head makes your brain jiggle around in your skull. You can also get a bruise on your brain, called a contusion. Brain contusions are a lot more serious than bruises from a bump on the arm or leg. Other types of head injuries include a fractured skull or a cut on your scalp. If you get hit in the head or fall and you don’t bleed, you’ve got a closed head injury. If an object enters your brain, like glass from a windshield during a car accident or a bullet from a gunshot, then you have an open head injury. It can be very hard to tell if you’ve got a minor closed head injury or a serious one. Your head might look perfectly fine from the outside, when you actually have bleeding or swelling inside your brain. To tell the difference, look for other signs of a serious head injury, such as a severe headache; Clear or bloody fluid coming from your nose, ears, or mouth; Confusion, drowsiness, or a loss of consciousness; Changes in the way you hear, see, taste, or smell; memory loss; mood changes or strange behaviors; slurred speech or recurrent vomiting. If you or someone else has any of these symptoms, call for medical help right away. If you don’t have these symptoms and you think it’s just a minor head injury, you probably don’t need to be treated. Just ask a friend or family member to keep an eye on you. If it’s your child or someone else with the head injury, wake them up from sleep every 2 or 3 hours to ask questions like, Where are you? and What’s your name? just to make sure they’re alert. If you’re in any doubt about whether a head injury is serious, play it safe and get medical help. To play it even safer, protect your head during any activities that could lead to an injury. Wear a helmet whenever you skateboard, roller skate, ski, snowboard, or ride a bike or motorcycle. Put on your seatbelt whenever you’re in the car. And put kids in an age-appropriate car seat or booster seat.

Causes

Common causes of head injury include:

• Accidents at home, work, outdoors, or while playing sports
• Falls
• Physical assault
• Traffic accidents

Most of these injuries are minor because the skull protects the brain. Some injuries are severe enough to require a stay in the hospital.

Symptoms

Head injuries may cause bleeding in the brain tissue and the layers that surround the brain (subarachnoid hemorrhage, subdural hematoma, epidural hematoma).

Symptoms of a head injury can occur right away or may develop slowly over several hours or days. Even if the skull is not fractured, the brain can hit the inside of the skull and be bruised. The head may look fine, but problems could result from bleeding or swelling inside the skull.

The spinal cord is also likely to be injured from falls from a significant height or ejection from a vehicle.

Some head injuries cause changes in brain function. This is called a traumatic brain injury. Concussion is a traumatic brain injury. Symptoms of a concussion can range from mild to severe.

First Aid

Learning to recognize a serious head injury and give basic first aid can save someone’s life. For a moderate to severe head injury, CALL 911 OR THE LOCAL EMERGENCY NUMBER RIGHT AWAY.

Get medical help right away if the person:

• Becomes very sleepy
• Behaves abnormally, or has speech that does not make sense
• Develops a severe headache or stiff neck
• Has a seizure
• Has pupils (the dark central part of the eye) of unequal sizes
• Is unable to move all or part of an arm or leg
• Loses consciousness, even briefly
• Vomits more than once

Then take the following steps:

1. Check the person’s airway, breathing, and circulation. If necessary, begin rescue breathing and CPR.
2. If the person’s breathing and heart rate are normal, but the person is unconscious, treat as if there is a spinal injury. Stabilize the head and neck by placing your hands on both sides of the person’s head. Keep the head in line with the spine and prevent movement. Wait for medical help.
3. Stop any bleeding by firmly pressing a clean cloth on the wound, unless you suspect a skull fracture. If the injury is serious, be careful not to move the person’s head. If blood soaks through the cloth, do not remove it. Place another cloth over the first one.
4. If you suspect a skull fracture, do not apply direct pressure to the bleeding site, and do not remove any debris from the wound. Cover the wound with sterile gauze dressing.
5. If the person is vomiting or about to vomit, to prevent choking, roll the person’s head, neck, and body as one unit while stabilizing the head and neck onto their side. This still protects the spine, which you must always assume is injured in the case of a head injury. Children often vomit once after a head injury. This may not be a problem, but contact a doctor for further guidance.
6. Apply ice packs to swollen areas (cover ice in a towel so it does not directly touch the skin).

Do Not

Follow these precautions:

• DO NOT wash a head wound that is deep or bleeding a lot.
• DO NOT remove any object sticking out of a wound.
• DO NOT move the person unless absolutely necessary.
• DO NOT shake the person if they seem dazed.
• DO NOT remove a helmet if you suspect a serious head injury.
• DO NOT pick up a fallen child with any sign of head injury.
• DO NOT drink alcohol within 48 hours of a serious head injury.

A serious head injury that involves bleeding or brain damage must be treated in a hospital.

For a mild head injury, no treatment may be needed. However, call for medical advice and watch for symptoms of a head injury, which can show up later.

Your physician or health care provider will explain what to expect, how to manage any headaches, how to treat your other symptoms, when to return to sports, school, work, and other activities, and signs or symptoms to worry about.

Both adults and children must follow the doctor or the provider’s instructions about when it will be possible to return to sports.

When to Contact a Medical Professional

Call 911 or the local emergency number right away if:

• There is severe head or face bleeding.
• The person is confused, tired, or unconscious.
• The person stops breathing.
• You suspect a serious head or neck injury, or the person develops any signs or symptoms of a serious head injury.

Prevention

Not all head injuries can be prevented. The following simple steps can help keep you and your child safe:

• Always use safety equipment during activities that could cause a head injury. These include seat belts, bicycle or motorcycle helmets, and hard hats.
• Learn and follow bicycle safety recommendations.
• Do not drink and drive, and do not allow yourself to be driven by someone who you know or suspect has been drinking alcohol or is impaired in another way.

spiritual meaning of swelling

Typically, the word inflammation is associated with the different ways that bodies respond to their environment. This can include reactions to certain types of food in which allergens are capable of producing an inflammatory or toxic response in the body. Ego is what happens when the personality gets inflamed. For example, when you see someone who is angry, they are in a state of emotional inflammation. To say that they’re in ego may be a true statement, but through the eyes of the Universe, you are able to see how they are having an “allergic reaction” to their conditioned state of being. This means ego is much like an allergy toward the unconsciousness that each of us came here to resolve. When the ego is active, the innocence within you, or within anyone else, exists in an exaggerated manner.

When you start to see ego as the inflammation of the personality, you notice how often you can become “puffed up.” Whether puffed up in righteousness, defensive postures, or in response to the evidence of injustice, an inflamed personality creates an exaggerated perception of life. When living with an allergic reaction to the vibration of the planet, an exaggerated level of consciousness causes you to oscillate between spiritual highs and emotional lows. This can create much suffering until you cultivate love as a potent form of energy medicine to return your personality to its original form.

I’ve come to recognize four basic types of inflammation:

1. Righteous inflammation. It is characterized by an ego structure that feeds on needing to always be right by making others wrong. Even in the presence of one who is saying something totally correct, the ego that is righteously inflamed must make another point in an attempt to be even more right than the other. This type of ego lives to have the upper hand and final word — even if both parties agree on the topic at hand. The theme of righteous inflammation is, “I’m always right.”

2. Victimized inflammation. This is the kind of inflammation in which an ego believes it is always a victim of circumstances. From this perception, even when life seems to be going right, something always happens to turn it upside down. A victimized ego holds very tightly to its judgments, beliefs, and opinions as the reasons their life is regularly in chaos. Whether a belief in light versus dark or pitting good against bad, a victimized ego typically acts as an instigator of turmoil that is guaranteed to be hurt or heartbroken by the way others respond to it. Even if others do not respond at all, a victimized ego uses such feedback to feel invisible or inferior to the world around it.

3. Entitled inflammation. This occurs when a person believes it is their right to have whatever they want, exactly when they want it, even at the expense or to the detriment of others. In entitled inflammation, the ego tends to believe that everyone must fulfill their every whim and demand with little to no regard for the well-being of other people’s experiences. As you can imagine, the theme of an entitled ego is “What about me?” Even when served by others, there is never an end to the requests and demands of an ego that believes it controls the characters in its life.

4. Needy inflammation. In this type of ego, no matter how much attention is received from others, it never feels like enough to be properly filled up. Despite how intently someone listens, there is always a lingering sense of being invisible, unrecognized, undervalued, or unheard. In needy inflammation, it’s easy to feel misunderstood. No matter how much time, interest, and attention you receive from others, it only makes this type of ego hungry for more. Whether active in you or someone you know, needy inflammation can be quite draining for those held in the grip of it.

While you may recognize yourself or others in these descriptions, it is common to embody combinations of those aspects or to flow in and out like the changing of weather patterns. I’ve even seen ego structures that are combinations of all four aspects at once. In each of these aspects of inflammation, there is always a kernel of truth.

By exploring ego in a more heart-centered way, you can have greater patience and compassion throughout your daily encounters. Instead of ridiculing or persecuting the characters within your life, you will be able to see the light of divinity dancing in a play of exaggerated perception. While the ability to see at this level may be limited by an inflamed personality, any amount of time spent incubating in a cocoon of ego prepares you to awaken a greater truth for all.

fibula spiritual meaning

A friend of mine slipped on the ice and broke her ankle one winter and was laid up for weeks and weeks. As I expressed my sympathy for her misfortune and suffering, a surprising phrase slipped out of my mouth. I said to her, “I didn’t realize you were breakable!”

But of course, we all are: our breakability comes with being human. Even the strong ones among us—the ones who, like my friend, are always there taking care of others—even the strong ones are breakable.

Any one of us may be in some condition of brokenness and in some stage of healing. It comes with the territory of being human. We are often “on the mend” from the slings and arrows life throws at us: the injuries, both physical and emotional; the illnesses, both mental and physical; the diseases in our individual bodies or spirits and in the culture at large; the losses and the old wounds.

Any one of us may be healed of some malady. A sickness vanished, a disease in remission, an injury healed and the bandage or cast removed, or an insult forgiven, an intractable grudge released, a second chance offered and received.

Broken hearts, broken bones, broken trust, broken ties—there is much brokenness in our lives and much to be mended. What does it mean to be broken? It means to be fractured or damaged and no longer in one piece, no longer in working order. The pottery has cracks in it. The machinery is broken down and doesn’t function properly. The system isn’t working. The person is not feeling whole.

Sometimes broken things can be fixed. Sometimes broken people can be healed. Sometimes the brokenness in our lives can be mended through a process of transforming our relationship to what is broken.

I’ve been dealing with chronic pain from injuries sustained in a car accident a while back. As car accidents go, it was not terribly severe, but my injuries persist, much longer than I expected. I have had ample opportunity over the last year to explore my relationship with brokenness and the long journey of healing.

Just for the record, I do not believe that we draw every experience into our lives for a purpose. But I do believe that we can learn from every experience in our lives, if we want to. The meaning I attach to my car accident is pretty basic, but worth stating. Accidents happen, sometimes out of nowhere and often when they are not our fault. One minute we can be fine and the next minute we can be injured or sick. Life and health are fragile.

On the physical level, I got hit by a driver who ran a red light. On the emotional level, I was blind-sided by my vulnerability. On the spiritual level, I received the message that perhaps I was driving myself too hard and it was time for me to slow down.

Healing from the accident involved learning and growing in some new ways. I learned about my pain threshold, pain meds and pain management. I learned to ask for help with things I suddenly could not do around the house and the church. I learned more about posture and office ergonomics than I ever imagined needing to know.

I learned to readjust my identity. I was not an able-bodied person for the time being. I had to drop out of dance class (my truest love) and go swimming instead, panting for breath at the end of each length of the pool. The illusion of my independence was revealed to be just that—an illusion. As I kept adjusting to a “new normal,” I learned to lower my expectations of myself. This, it turns out, was not a bad thing.

Most profoundly, I learned (again and again) that healing takes time. The first several months after my accident, I prayed for healing. When that didn’t seem to be working, I changed strategies, and prayed for patience. Right about the time I started asking for patience, a congregation member gave me a Teilhard de Chardin prayer, called “Patient Trust,” which gave me some needed reassurance:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.

The prayer continues, but what I needed of it is contained in these first few lines. It gave me such permission—to trust in the unknown, to understand and let go of my impatience. It named where I was at in my healing process: in the intermediate stages. Here I was in the seemingly interminable intermediate stage, but it was a worthy and essential in-between place. The prayer gave me assurance that instability is normal and that progress takes a long time. Even for me.

My car accident is not the first time I have been broken. But it is the most recent, and my freshest learning about being human. The thing about being breakable, as every human being is, is that just as you are vulnerable to being broken down, you are also given the opportunity to be broken open.

You’ve probably all heard the phrase: “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Well, yes, but only if you work at it. It doesn’t happen automatically. You can be broken down by life—by accidents and injuries, by chemicals in your brain going awry, by cells in your body turning against themselves. You can be broken down by individual illnesses or by sickness in society, like racism or sexism or homophobia.

You can be broken down and stay that way. Or you can be broken open, and move through the intermediate stages of healing—learning about yourself and others, growing in compassion—and emerge stronger in the broken places.

Dr. Jeff Kane writes in his book The Healing Companion: “There is a crucial difference between curing a disease and healing a person.” He points out that every time we get sick, we have on the one hand a name for the ailment, and then on the other hand we have our experience of the sickness. If we are lucky enough to get a diagnosis, we have a name for the illness, but then we also have the meaning that we attach to the diagnosis. He quotes the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus: “People are not disturbed by events, but by the view we take of them.”

Decades ago, when my mother was hospitalized with a recurrence of cancer, she went through kidney dialysis. It made her intensely cold and uncomfortable. The nurse applied heated blankets, but mom was still shivering. She asked my dad and me to each take one of her feet and cover them with our warm hands.

As I concentrated on sending warmth into her foot, the heat coming from my hands grew. Mom said, “Wow, where did you learn to do that?” I replied, “It’s chi!”—that universal life force running through all of us.

My hands were warm with chi energy, but they were also full of love for my mom and compassion for her suffering. My family and I couldn’t cure her cancer, and neither could the doctors, but we could try to ease her suffering. We could offer ourselves as conduits for healing. We could remember that she was more than her illness.

I am more than my injuries and so are you. We are more than our wounds and scars, whether they be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. We are breakable and we have each been broken in some way, shape or form. It’s part of being human. It’s part of what makes us human.

How we carry our scars and relate to our wounds is up to us. Our scars are potent. They carry lessons that we may not have learned even yet. I trust that we will know when to learn from them: when we bump into them again and again; when we get tired of the same old messages playing in our heads, the same patterns keeping us from living fully; when they send us down the wrong street again and again; when we notice ourselves reacting to situations in the same painful ways. Maybe then we can see our injuries as golden opportunities—not as shameful or something to repress, but as teachers.

I believe our wounds and scars are holy. Because our brokenness is what makes us who we are—imperfect human beings encountering an imperfect world.

But just as I know we are all broken in some way, I also trust that we are all “on the mend.” I know I am, and I hope and trust the same for you. Even though I really don’t know if I’ll ever literally get back to dance class, I carry these words from Rumi, the Sufi poet, to inform my healing process, and I offer them in closing:

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.