About Soraka's Healing...

We all know that Soraka heals others by weakening herself, but exactly how does she do that? To me, there are two ways that fit this theme.

1. She just generically weakens herself by using up energy and that makes her easier to kill. Her q just steals the energy from her enemies.

2. She sacrifices herself by taking on her allies wounds onto herself, healing them in the process. The downside is that she now has those wounds herself and must heal them. But as she is who knows how old, she knows her limits to the nth degree and never exceeds them. Her q also inflicts her enemies with her wounds, which increases her ability to heal herself temporarily, which then she can pass onto others.(if only her q did a dot...)

The second one makes more sense, as the healing part of her q would not have to treat her wounds and the wounds she took on differently. It also matches with her self sacrificing persona better. And, as part of her ult, the stars can heal her and others, so while she was still an immortal celestial spirit healing those who came to her shrine, she could just ask the stars to heal her after every patient, since at that time they were still on speaking terms...

Hopefully I explained my ideas in a way that made sense.