Overcoming Struggle Part One: Beginning The Healing Journey
Do you know struggle?
Many of us know struggle very well right now. Some of us have known it for a long time and our post-covid world of lockdowns and isolation has merely made our struggles more explicit - more in our face. Things that used to be okay; jobs, relationships, families, finances etc. are under increasing amounts of stress, strain and hardship. We may feel like the walls are closing in, that we are trapped and powerless to bring about meaningful positive change to our lives. Perhaps we feel lost with no idea about where to even start, or perhaps the task of starting is just too daunting. Maybe we’ve found ourselves playing out well ingrained behaviour patterns that are no longer serving us or perhaps we’re holding onto outdated identities of who we think we are. If this is you, I want you to know that you are not alone. I and all your brothers and sisters of the world are there with you.
Over the past few years I have relentlessly investigated the worlds of science and spirituality so that I may better understand myself and my own psychological and emotional struggles. In this article series I am going to try my best to briefly explain why we struggle and the steps that we can take to overcome it.
Why do we struggle?
Struggle is the most natural thing in the world. A sperm struggles to fight its way into the egg, a mother struggles to give birth to her new baby and a child struggles to walk and say its first words. Struggle brings growth. Struggle is inherent to the human experience. It is part of our design. The problems come when we become stuck in patterns of struggle; repeating the same mistakes; tripping up at the same hurdles; running away from the same battles; and crumbling under the same pressures. This is when struggle becomes suffering and it is also a completely natural part of the human experience right now, but it doesn’t need to remain that way. As humans, we are still evolving and now we have the collective insight, understanding and awareness needed in order to break these limiting behaviour patterns that are causing us to become stuck in struggle.
So where do our limiting behaviour patterns come from? Most are born out of trauma (birth, childhood & later life), some are programmed into our DNA (ancestral trauma) and the rest are conditioned into us from our environment, parents / caretakers and society.
Trauma
When most people think about trauma, they think of some horrific event that happened such as a car crash, child abuse or rape. However, it needs to be understood that trauma doesn’t necessarily relate to some terrible event that happened to us (Big “T” trauma), it can relate to seemingly insignificant events (Little “t” trauma). This can be anything from non-life-threatening injuries, emotional abuse, death of a pet, bullying, minor disabilities, harassment, and parents struggling with depression, addiction or a tumultuous relationship. Even not being held as a baby when we were crying or not getting enough attention due to work commitments can cause neglect and abandonment issues. On the other end of the spectrum, over caring and doing too much for us can cause issues of helplessness and anxiety when having to deal with the challenges of life alone. We used to think that babies had no awareness or understanding about what is going on because they can’t speak or understand language, but that is now known to be completely untrue. Babies and even an unborn fetus in it’s mothers womb is hypersensitive to energy and absorbs what is going on around it like a sponge. This information is stored in the body and the unconscious mind.
Ancestral / Generational Trauma
Research in the relatively new scientific field of epigenetics indicates that the trauma our ancestors experienced may have been passed down to us through our genes and it might be as old as three generations. Shamans have always believed in ancestral or bloodline trauma and believe it can go back as far as seven generations. Of course this type of trauma affects us very differently than it would of done our ancestors, and may manifest in a family as certain personality traits and behaviours like; emotional numbness; seeing feelings as a sign of weakness; having trust issues with “outsiders” and “others”; or feeling anxious and overly protective of the children, even when there is no threat of danger.
Conditioning
Conditioned beliefs are the unconscious internal beliefs we hold about how the world works that are not in line with reality or our true nature. These are most often outdated beliefs of our parents, which were likely passed down to them from their parents, but have no basis in the modern world. This could be virulent ideas about money and scarcity or that to be a valuable person you have to be successful in the capitalistic sense or that creativity is not as important as academia. We are most susceptible to conditioning in the years 0-5 when our brains are still developing with much of it occurring through non-verbal means - simply being in the environment and observing is enough. However, verbal conditioning continues well into our primary and high school years. Our masculine dominated society quickly teaches girls that their physical appearance is the most important value and if they are not “pretty” in the modern conventional sense they are lesser than. This creates a complex of low self worth and insecurity in both unconventionally pretty girls and the conventionally pretty ones as both are directed away from the qualities of their entire being while they focus on how to make themselves more superficially beautiful. This society also teaches boys that their femininity is un-masculine and thus is a bad thing, which causes boys to repress their emotions and their innate feminine energy, thus creating an imbalance in their being that can manifest as “toxic masculinity”. Even scientific ideas like Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” which we are all taught in schools are ingrained as a belief about how the world works, thus creating the environment for selfish and competition driven behaviour. The trouble is, as science and understanding progresses ideas like “survival of the fittest” evolve (pun intended). Now it is believed that evolution works on the basis of cooperation, not competition, but unfortunately most of those who were taught the old ways are still unconsciously running the old “survival of the fittest” behaviour program.
So I hope this makes it clear that no-one escapes trauma and conditioning. We all have it and we’re all working with it the best way we know how. Grasping this can be overwhelming as we try to tackle thoughts about what is “the real me” and what is simply a behaviour pattern we learned from our trauma or conditioning. The truth, at least from my own experience, is that there is A LOT of trauma and conditioning and unraveling it is not something that is done overnight. It is something we might be working on our whole lives. But this is not something to get disheartened about or a reason to cast blame on our parents and our society. This is what it means to be human. This is what it’s all about. There is no other game to play, so no point wishing it were any different. It may be a lifelong journey, but it doesn’t need to be a lifelong struggle. It is actually a beautiful opportunity for us. We can finally break the cycles of struggle once and for all so that we do not pass our struggles onto our children and our children's children. And that is something that may bring a smile to the faces of the ancestors who struggled before us.
Why should we overcome our struggle?
We may have been told life is about “being happy” or “making something of yourself” or “finding the dream partner, landing the dream job and creating the dream family and living happily ever after”, but none of these perspectives truely encompass life’s natural struggle. A more up to date perspective might say something like life is about healing our trauma, deconditioning our belief systems and learning the lessons that life delivers us so that we can remember who we truly are beneath the circumstances that created our current personality - so we can remember our true, unconditioned Self. And of course we can still have the dream partner, dream job, dream family and be happy (and are in fact more likely to achieve these dreams if we do the healing work). But those dreams will likely change - often quite drastically, because we are no longer the same person. We have evolved. Our wants and desires are no longer driven by our fears, insecurities, pains, shames and longings. They are driven by our truest essence and fullest authentic expression. True happiness is a bi-product of this way of being.
The “healing journey” is synonymous with the “spiritual journey”, because the journey takes you deeper into yourself and your true nature. This is where your Spirit dwells. However, “Spirit” is just a word, and if you are not spiritually inclined you can call it whatever you want - your “True Self” for example. However you want to frame it, I believe this “healing journey” to be the most vitally important journey a person can embark on. I don’t believe it to be an exaggeration to state that this is how we save humanity from the self-destructive path we have been on. You can bet your bottom dollar that the people who are causing the most suffering and destruction in the world right now are running on trauma and conditioned behaviour patterns and programs. Saving humanity begins with us, saving ourselves and it begins with the healing journey. What we do now in our lifetime matters, not just to us, but to our kids and their kids, not to mention our friends, family members and communities.
I believe we all have greatness, I believe we all have genius, and I believe we can all be a force for good if we can let go of the shackles of the past and embody our truest nature in the present. This process will make us more resilient to the challenges of life, which is vitally important nowadays, because life doesn’t look ready to stop throwing us challenges. Right now challenges cause us struggle, but further down the healing journey challenges are just challenges and we can get to a place where we actually welcome them - a place of inner resilience and empowerment. Below I have compiled five steps that I wish I was aware of when beginning my own healing journey. These can be approached in any order we feel so inclined, but taken all together I hope they amount to a powerful map to overcoming our struggles, beginning our healing journey and cultivating inner resilience.
Step one: Honestly assess whether we are struggling or not
Firstly, how do we know if we are struggling? Well, it starts by being honest with ourselves and asking ourselves, “Am I struggling?”. I heard someone say once that “We can bullshit ourselves, but we can’t lie to ourselves”, which I think is a humorous way of saying that no matter what stories we use to trick ourselves into believing something, deep down, there is always part of us that knows that it is just a bullshit story and not the truth. However, if we struggle with being honest with ourselves, we should extend our honesty to our closest friends and family and ask them what they think. We may ask them whether they have felt we have been struggling recently. Although they may be initially taken aback by this candid communication, the sincereness of the asking should engender them to tell you what they honestly think. They will be our mirror if we are willing to stand vulnerably in front of them and listen.
Secondly, stress is one of the strongest indicators that we are struggling and is an important one to become intimately aware of, because stress is one of the major causes of physical & psychological illness. You may be stressed if you are; facing big changes; under lots of pressure; worrying about something; feeling like you don’t have control over the outcome of a situation; feeling overwhelmed by your responsibilities; working in a job that is not right for you; feeling uncertain; not working and not having much activity or change in your life. This list sounds like a run down of symptoms from living through the pandemic, so it is no wonder we are stressed! Psychological stress affects our mind and can lead to depressive and anxious states, while physical stress affects our bodies and immune systems and can lead to illness and disease. Physical illness and symptoms are very often the physical manifestations of stress. If you are experiencing; aches and pains; chest pain or a feeling like your heart is racing; exhaustion or trouble sleeping; headaches, dizziness or shaking; high blood pressure; muscle tension or jaw clenching; stomach or digestive problems; skin problems & breakouts; trouble having sex; weak immune system or abnormal menstrual cycles, you are likely experiencing the manifestation of the stress in your life.
Stress begins in the mind with how we perceive, process and interpret the experiences of our life. If our experience is overwhelming (too much data to compute) it will create stress. If the experience triggers a trauma it will generate fear, which in turn triggers a stress response. Quite often we perceive, process and interpret our experiences, especially challenging experiences, through the lens of our trauma and our conditioning. So, if we find ourselves resting in a state of sadness or anger at the world, it is quite likely because there is a deep sadness or anger already within us that is being triggered by the events of the world. Similarly, if we find that our relationships are often triggering us into sadness, shame, guilt or anger then it is because those feelings already exist deep within us. This is of course not to say that events and experiences won’t or shouldn’t spark genuine sadness or anger, but it is to say that our reaction is disproportionate to the natural level of sadness and anger that would occur if we didn’t have the trauma within us being triggered. Childhood trauma specialist, Gabor Maté, puts it this way; “yes people and experiences can “trigger” us, but we are the ones with the gun barrel, the stock, the grip and the explosive ammunition within us.” Emotions are natural and they will come up and pass through us in their due course without creating stress if we heal our trauma and learn healthy ways to process the emotions.
Repressed emotion & illness
Expressing our emotions in unhealthy ways creates stress, but repressing our emotions can be even worse. If repressed emotions don’t boil up to a head during times of extreme stress, they are likely too deeply entrenched and may manifest themselves as serious illness, such as cancer or an autoimmune disease at some point in our life. For example, if we grew up in a household with an angry and domineering parent who threatened us with physical or verbal retribution if we expressed anger, we will have likely been conditioned to repress our anger. Today we may act out behaviour patterns of submissiveness in challenging situations and repress more anger rather than authentically expressing how we feel. Another example is if we were different from our parents and siblings and felt like we didn’t fit in. Today we may be harbouring deep shame about our being and may act out behaviour patterns of insecurity and low-self worth, which in turn builds up more shame within the body. This is how negative emotions build up and become blocked or stagnated and this is how illness and disease can manifest. Serious illness and disease are of course the biggest signs that you are struggling, but the good news is that nowadays many people are reporting that they have healed themselves of cancer and autoimmune diseases by healing their childhood trauma and changing the way they think about themselves and their illness. Many are doing this in tandem with traditional Western medicine and many others are doing it without it, especially those with autoimmune diseases that are considered ‘untreatable’ by Western medicine.
Tip: See movies; Heal & The Wisdom of Trauma or the work of Dr Joe Dispenza - his books ‘Becoming Supernatural’ and ‘You are the Placebo’, Gabor Maté - his book ‘When The Body Says No: The Cost Of Hidden Trauma’ & Peter Levine - his book ‘In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness’, Bessel Van der Kolk’s book - ‘The Body Keeps The Score’ & Mark Wolynn’s book - ‘It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle’ for more on this.
Step Two: Overcome our fear and bring loving awareness to our struggles
Understanding the struggle dynamic
Struggle can enter our life for a few reasons; to let us know what we are doing is not meant for us; to tell us to slow down; to tell us to reprioritise our life; as a sign to focus our attention on our mental, physical, emotional or spiritual well-being; or to challenge us to grow into a better version of ourselves. Whatever the reason, don’t resist the struggle. Resisting the struggle only prolongs it, represses it (which may cause illness) or offloads it into other areas of your life. Also, don’t distract yourself from the struggle by drowning out the negative feelings and emotions it generates with alcohol, drugs, sex, smoking, dissociation, overeating, undereating, overworking, gambling, shopping and social media. Instead, look inside and use your heart to understand what the struggle is trying to tell you. What lesson does it have to impart? Struggle almost always involves a fear of some kind, so ask yourself, what are you afraid of? What are you avoiding? It is important to try and pinpoint the fear, because below the fear lies the behaviour pattern that is generating the struggle and as mentioned in the introduction, this behaviour pattern is likely a trauma response developed in your childhood - a defence mechanism created to protect us, make us fit in or be accepted by our parents and peers so that we may receive love.
Love is the most vital resource for a child and we will do anything for it if it is not given to us unconditionally. We will change or repress parts of ourselves or act out with anger if we do not receive the love we need. From the child’s perspective it is a matter of life and death, because it is encoded in our genetic makeup that if we don’t receive love, we don’t survive. This genetic imprint hails back to the times when those who didn’t fit in with the particular culture or tribe were either literally killed (burned, drowned, hanged) or cast out of the tribe, and individuals didn’t last very long on their own back then. We learned over generations and generations that the best way to survive is to fit in, but this “fitting in” comes at the cost of our true nature, parts of which are forced into the darkness of our unconscious mind and forgotten about.
Our fears manifest as a repressed expression or a reactive expression based on our character, our culture and the nature of our childhood conditioning. The repressed expression is introverted in nature and manifests as fear and anxiety, whereas the reactive expression is extroverted and manifests as anger, which is fear turned outwards. The reason we don’t like to look at what we are afraid of is because deep below the surface there is some form of trapped negative emotion, whether it be pain, shame, guilt, grief or anger. There are literally thousands of different ways in which the events of our upbringing can negatively impact us. We are all impacted, so perhaps it's not even useful to see it as “negative”. It is just the way it is. It is natural, and the bright side of this is that healing these “wounds” or “shadows” can often bring us the gifts, talents and personality traits that we need in order to build resilience and the life of our dreams.
What to do when we become aware that we are struggling
So, if you are struggling it is important to understand that there is nothing “wrong” with you. You are not defective or genetically inept because you are struggling. Struggle is the nature of the human condition and it is built into each and every one of us. Our ancestral genetics, our environment and childhood traumas program struggle into our life from birth and our societies condition us to believe things that are not in alignment with our true nature. Everyone has trauma and conditioning, so everyone struggles. There is no avoiding it. Instead, we must understand and admit to ourselves that we have childhood trauma and conditioning that is limiting our ability to overcome the struggle we are facing. We must understand and admit to ourselves that we have limiting beliefs about ourselves that make us doubt ourselves and limit what we think we are capable of. This is not about blaming ourselves or anyone else for our problems. It is about bringing loving awareness and acceptance to the fact that there have been events in our lives that have negatively impacted us that now must be balanced and healed. With this loving awareness and acceptance we open the doorway to healing and growth.
So, next time you come home after a bad day at work or you wake in the morning feeling angry or sad with no idea why, rather than distracting yourself from these uncomfortable feelings or trying to change them in any way, try allowing them. Try acknowledging them and accepting them completely without resistance or judgement. You may find that all they want from you is to be fully seen and fully felt. Stanislov Grof, the pioneering psychedelic researcher and creator of the Holotropic Breathwork method says “An emotion fully felt is the funeral pyre for the emotion.” There may be tears. There may be rage, but this is how we healthily process emotion. This is how we heal.
Tip: A great way to bring loving awareness to our struggles is through journaling and meditation. Journaling is a natural way for you to access your unconscious that can often reveal the deeper reasons of why we are struggling, whilst meditating can help our mind sink into the unconscious to allow trapped emotions to come up and make themselves known. Insight Timer app is an amazing free meditation app that has thousands of meditations to help bring loving awareness to our emotions. So next time you feel struggle or stress, instead of distracting yourself from the feelings, pop on one of the meditations, go into the feeling, see where it takes you and journal about what you experienced after. You may find that you have been able to move through the feeling on your own and found a deeper understanding of why the feeling was occurring, which can be incredibly empowering.
Step three: Stop giving energy to the things that are not serving us
Now that we have awareness of our struggles, the next step is to take inventory of everything in our lives and make an honest assessment of each thing to see if it is aligned to our heart and soul. If it is aligned it should fill us with love, joy, excitement or promise. If it is not aligned it will fill us with fear, dread, shame, guilt, frustration or disgust. We must ask ourselves “what (or whom) is currently in my life that I know isn't good for me or isn't in my long term best interest?"
We want to cut out or at least significantly reduce the things that we know are not in alignment to our true nature in order to create space for things that are in alignment to our true nature. As human beings we have a limited amount of energy resources and so everything we do or even think about has an energy cost to it. How can we have space for what we want in life when we fill our lives with things we don’t want? Think; jobs we don’t like or are overworked at; “friends” we don’t like; partners we are no longer in love with; habits that are unhealthy; and hobbies that distract us from our emotions and struggles so we can keep on ignoring them. Our relationships with our friends, partners, colleagues and acquaintances can be particularly draining if we haven’t determined the proper value of the relationship to us and whether it is balanced or not. If the relationship feels imbalanced it is our duty of self-care to ourselves to create proper boundaries to manage how much we are giving in relation to how much we are receiving. Healthy relationships have a mutual exchange of energy, with the giving and receiving dynamic allowing energy to flow freely between the people involved. Unhealthy relationships leave one person feeling drained after an interaction.
Boundaries
On an energetic level this is how human relationships work; giving and receiving, talking and listening, holding space and filling space. Unfortunately very few people are actually conscious of this dynamic and so very few people have healthy balanced relationships in all areas of their life. People naturally inclined to give, end up giving too much of themselves (time, energy, mental capacity) away to anyone who asks. People naturally inclined to take, end up taking and using other people's time and energy on the basis that they never said no or because they said yes due to having weak boundaries. The solution, as previously stated, is creating boundaries.
Boundaries are created first on the mind level. We must mentally make the decision what is the right amount to give in our minds. Secondly they are created on the level of action. We must act like the boundary actually exists in reality and don’t go inviting people to cross our boundaries (like we may have used to). Lastly, they are created on the level of verbalisation. We explicitly state to people who have crossed our boundaries that we have a boundary there and we’d appreciate it if they didn’t cross it in future. You may be surprised to learn that when we follow the first two steps of creating mental boundaries and acting as if they exist, we very rarely have to do the third step of verbalisation, because people, as if by magic, unconsciously pick up the fact that there is a boundary. This is because we absorb far more information than our conscious mind is aware of, particularly on the subtle energetic level.
We should think good and hard about where in our life we are feeling drained; continually working overtime without pay; giving too much to our partners without receiving; or listening to our friends' problems without sharing what's going on with us for example. Consider whether there is anything we know is not serving us that we could cut out or significantly reduce today? How about this week? How about this month? We don’t need to cut everything out right away, but we should start with something and make a plan to wean off the rest in the near future. By doing this we are removing blockages and freeing up time, space and energy for the new, aligned and exciting possibilities the universe has to offer us. This can be a scary process and most will encounter some, if not a lot of resistance to letting go of things in their life, even if they don’t like them. We cling to what we know because we are afraid of the unknown. Remember, being comfortable isn’t always good for us, as it's our minds desire for comfort and safety that blocks our deeper hearts desire to grow and expand. We need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, especially in this day and age. However, once these blockages are removed from our life we are often totally amazed by the blessings that come our way; jobs we never dreamed of; perfect aligned partners; and general sense of magic and wonder in the air. This is how the manifestation of the life you truly desire can come through.
Step Four: Discover our true nature with a breakthrough experience
Having a breakthrough or transcendent healing experience is a powerful way to jumpstart our healing journey and can be a strong motivator to continue it for the long haul. This step can happen at any point and may even be the step that begins our healing journey, as it did mine. In as little as a one hour experience, we can have incredible emotional releases of pain and psychological trauma or we can taste the ecstasy of transcendence - a mystical realm beyond our everyday experience that can feel like pure unconditional love or something extraordinary and ineffable. A breakthrough can come all at once in one big paradigm shifting revelation or it can happen over a period of time with smaller and more subtle changes to our emotions, thinking and perspective.
With so many ecstatic and healing modalities today, it is easier than ever to get access to these kinds of experiences if you live near a city and have the finances - if you don’t, don’t worry as I’ll be sharing plenty of powerful modalities you can try yourself at home for free in ‘Part Two’. We are basically living in a time where it is a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ for healing. There is no “best” or “most powerful” healing modality, there is only what is best, and when is best, for you. We are all incredibly unique individuals with our own unique needs and preferences, and as with anything, the practitioner's own expertise and talent is a major factor in how effective the treatment will be. I’d advise tuning into your intuition and using your heart to guide you toward what type of experience is going to be ideal for you. You can also take recommendations from friends and family, as I like to think of recommendations from others as messages from the universe. Either way, it doesn’t matter greatly, as you will know after one session whether it was something that felt valuable to you or not. If it was, crack on! If it wasn’t, perhaps consider something different.
Here is a list of different ecstatic and healing modalities that I have either experienced personally or heard can reliably facilitate breakthrough and transcendent experiences. Notice that all these are completely natural and work with the innate healing capabilities already within the human body. I would advise you to do your own follow up research into any that interest you as they each carry a different style, intensity and health benefits / risks. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a good start!
Breathwork Workshops: Rebirthing, Shamanic, Holotropic, Wim Hof, Transformational, Pranayama
Utilising the healing power of the human breath these workshops are incredibly powerful and have high chances of inducing “experiences' ', especially with classes requiring breathing for an hour or more. There is a powerful connection between body and mind and the breath works to release pent-up energy and trauma that is deeply rooted within our body & unconscious minds. Beware that some are not for the faint of heart and can be very intense, but in my experience they are always facilitated by amazing people and beautiful guides. Note: the healing process is not meant to be pleasant, it can at times be extremely uncomfortable, mentally and sometimes physically, but being healed is well worth it and we can often experience feelings of intense joy and ecstasy for a while after.
Somatic therapy uses a body-centric approach to treat the effects of trauma and mental / emotional health issues through the connection of mind and body. Unlike standard mental health therapy types like CBT that focus prominently on the mind, somatic therapy incorporates body-oriented modalities such as breathwork and meditation to support patients through their healing journeys. Somatic Therapy & EMDR (below) are non-traditional brands of psychotherapy that deal with trauma release from the body, rather than the gradual mental reprogramming and intellectual understanding that comes from traditional talk therapies. Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic therapy believes that releasing trauma through the body is absolutely necessary to any trauma resolution and is a required step before addressing emotional and cognitive issues. These therapies can produce breakthrough experiences in as little as one session, which is why I have only included these two brands of therapy here, whilst other forms will get a mention in Part Two.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR is a psychotherapy that utilises a device such as a laser on a wall to distract the eyes and mind while you answer questions relating to traumatic events in your life. Amazingly this somehow allows a clear pathway from the traumatic event where the emotions are trapped to come up and be released. This has proven to be a very fast and effective way to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of psychological trauma. Who needs years of talk therapy when you got lasers? Note: It is recommended that EMDR be done with a trusted therapist after enough talk therapy sessions to feel comfortable with them - it is incredibly vulnerable to be in a conscious state processing your trauma with someone else in the room.
Hypnosis is another amazingly powerful healing modality because it allows us to get out of our own way. Here the controlling, fearful, know it all, ego mind we all have, is put to sleep while we are still awake. When our conscious mind (5% of our total mind) is out of the way it allows our normally inaccessible unconscious mind (the other 95%) to come forth to be worked with. The hypnotist will then ask your unconscious mind questions, which you will mysteriously have the answers to even though you didn’t know it prior to being hypnotised. You will likely be guided to visit traumatic childhood memories that were previously hidden from you. Bringing this unconscious material to the surface of your conscious mind is often profoundly healing and can change your life. For those who want to go even deeper you can also do a past-life regression which will take you back to memories of previous incarnations, believe it or not, because if it isn’t enough that we have trauma from this lifetime, many have discovered that they have had trauma from previous lifetimes affecting their current life. Before you dismiss this offhand or dive into it head first, I would advise you read the book “Many Lives, Many Masters” for a beautiful factual account of how a psychologist trained in hypnotherapy accidentally stumbled into this phenomena for himself.
Combining Eastern and Western healing wisdom, Kinesiology is a form of therapy that uses muscle monitoring (biofeedback) to look at imbalances (emotional, structural, chemical) that may be causing dis-ease in the body. It is completely holistic so you could be going in for one reason, but discover a whole lot more! You can have a breakthrough in one session (like me), but you may require more than one session. From my personal experience kinesiology facilitates a beautiful healing journey where you will learn a lot more about yourself and your mysterious body, and you may find yourself very eager to do so!
Shamanism is the oldest healing modality, having existed for around 50,000 years. Today, in the west there has been a resurgence of modern day or neo-shamanism, as there is a need for their specific brand of healing wisdom. Visit your local shaman to discover a variety of mystical healing modalities from; “extraction”, to release heavy emotions such as anger, shame, guilt and anxiety; to “soul retrieval”, to recover parts of you that were lost to traumatic events; to “cord cutting”, to cut attachments to toxic or codependent relationships that are draining your energy; to “tarot / divination” to access the wisdom already within you for guidance, clarity and answers to the deep questions you seek. Note: you don’t have to believe in the shamans world view to receive the healing.
Plant Medicine Ceremony
These may be a little more hard to come by and can be the most intense of any of the mentioned healing modalities, but plants such as peyote, san pedro and ayahuasca are incredibly powerful transformative healing tools. These ceremonies are often “illegal” in most western countries, but are still carried out by dedicated practitioners who want to bring their healing power to the West. If you can afford it and afford to wait (till after lockdown) you can have these ceremonies in several South American countries such as Peru. Otherwise you may have to be lucky enough to know someone who knows someone.
This one is also illegal currently, but some of our greatest scientists are working hard to make this a completely safe, legal and medically supervised service in the western world just like MDMA and Ketamine therapy in America. However, depending on your morals and access to magic mushrooms you may want to consider facilitating your own healing trip. Before ingesting the mushrooms (either by eating raw or brewing in a tea) it is good practice to set a strong intention out loud for what we hope the mushrooms to help us release or understand about ourselves. Afterwards, we lie down with an eye mask or in a very dark room with a friend or partner not taking mushrooms there to oversee. Like all psychoactive drugs, the mushrooms will likely bring up whatever emotions and unconscious material are dwelling within and manifest them as sensations, visuals and feelings. You are encouraged to go into emotions, even if they are difficult and painful in order to release the trapped emotion. This method of taking mushrooms is not designed to be fun, it is designed to best facilitate healing and the healing can be profound. Note: If you’re planning on picking your own mushrooms, make sure someone you trust to identify the mushrooms goes with you, as there are several similar looking mushrooms that are poisonous!
Utilising the healing power of human movement these events offer a space in which you can move freely to the beat of your own internal drum without drugs, alcohol or judgement. Everyone is there to let it all out and get out of their comfort zone. The music is often designed to take you on a journey, stirring up deep emotions trapped in the body and you are encouraged to express them through dance. You can often dance as much or as little as you like and you can even lie down if that is what your body calls for in the moment. Dance done like this is truly liberating and healing.
I can’t speak to instantaneous breakthroughs with this one as I’ve not heard about it directly or tried it myself, but I'm sure it is possible. I have, however, heard of great results happening over relatively short periods of time (a few sessions) with its combination of Chinese herbs and acupuncture. From what I have heard, this modality is especially good at healing physical symptoms whether that be from trauma or any other illness or injury - see link for impressive list of conditions that can be treated. Acupuncture works by releasing energetic or Qi (pronounced chee) blocks through the use of tiny needles placed along the meridian lines of the body. By restoring the healthy circulation of Qi, there is a healthy circulation of blood, which the body uses to repair itself.
Reiki is a form of energy healing, whereby the practitioner either lightly touches different areas of your body or floats their hands just above it in order to bring in energy, move energy and remove energy. I have heard of people coming out of a Reiki session completely changed having just released a massive amount of painful emotions and I have heard of others coming out of a session unsure if anything happened. Reiki is divisive because it works on such a subtle energetic level that our conscious minds barely notice a thing unless we have a big release in the session or are extremely sensitive to energy. The other thing is that most noticeable changes happen days and weeks after the session, so most don’t think to attribute it to the Reiki. The key thing to know about energy healing is that the practitioners are channellers for energy and are there to help you to facilitate your own healing, as opposed to healing you themselves.
Lastly, sound healing can be another incredibly powerful healing modality depending. Humans are about 60% water, with organs like the heart and brain being about 75% water and organs like the liver and kidneys being about 85% water. This makes us very sensitive to vibration and by extension, very sensitive to frequencies that create vibration. Now throw in the fact that our trauma is stored in our body in the form of trapped emotion vibrating at a certain frequency, and you have a modality which can liberate painful emotions from the body by matching their frequencies with various instruments and sounds. There are both powerful one on one sessions with an expert and group sound healing workshops to be had. Note: The effectiveness of a sound healing session can vary greatly depending on the size of the room, the number of people, the type of sound journey and the quality of the acoustics, which translates to a session being somewhere between a profound healing experience and a pleasant meditation.
Step Five: Bravely enter the unknown and discover what the universe has to offer us
After we experience a significant change or transformation such as a profound healing or after we have left the relationship or job that was no longer serving us, we may find ourselves in the unknown. The unknown is the place of “what now?”, “what next?” and general uncertainty. Imagining what our life will be like without the job that we have relied on for years, or the partner we’ve been with through thick and thin is a daunting if not outright terrifying prospect for some of us. We fear we are not up to the task of being alone or capable enough to find a new job. We fear for our safety and security. What if I run out of money? What if I’ve made a terrible mistake? When we enter the unknown all the fears, uncomfortable thoughts and limiting beliefs that can come up, will come up. This is a normal part of the healing process, but it is also an illusion and can impede your healing journey if you let it. These fearful and worrisome thoughts are remnants of our old conditioned way of thinking and they can be very effective at playing on our insecurities and doubts. But there is an opportunity here...
Becoming aware that these are just thoughts and not reality can show us very clearly what our limiting beliefs are so that we can examine them and expose them for the illusions that they are. Say you have left your job and your worst fear is that you run out of money before you find more employment. This fear has the power to undermine your trust in the universe as a place of opportunity and abundance and most importantly it has the power to undermine your trust in yourself. If you let this fear get the better of you it may push you into making a hasty job move, choosing one for the money rather than because it is soul aligned with the most growth potential. As Tony Robbins says “A decision made from fear is always the wrong decision.” The opportunity here is to overcome the fear, let it sit there while you go about your business unaffected. Don’t be blind to genuine risks. Be smart about it. Be realistic. Do a budget and line up someone you could borrow money from if necessary. Take your time, stay in your self-worth and wait patiently for the right opportunity. Know that the fear is in your mind and not in reality and remember, if what you were doing wasn’t at least a little scary it wouldn’t be worth doing. Fear is where the growth is and our gifts lay its shadows.
The unknown is filled with infinite possibilities. On the border between order and chaos, it is where the magic happens. You have the opportunity to turn pure potential into a new life and a new you. You just have to be open and courageous enough to surrender to whatever comes your way. Maybe it will be an art class. Maybe meditation or yoga. Maybe it will be an unexpected job opportunity or maybe you will start thinking about pursuing that dream you had long ago. Maybe it's going back to college or university or maybe it’s learning a new skill. Maybe it will be a team sport or running a marathon. Whatever it may be, follow the passion. Follow the excitement, because that is as clear a signal as you are going to get from your heart and soul about what is in alignment to you. When you start following your passions and excitements, life really starts to become magical.
Final Words
So there you have it! Plenty of ideas to get us started on our healing journey. Just remember, we are all unique and we all have different personality preferences and biology. What works for me may not work for you, and what works for you may not work for me. It really is a personal adventure to figure out what does and does not resonate with our own minds, bodies and spirits. We are our own mystery! Another important thing to note is that healing is not linear. We will experience setbacks, triggers, ups, and downs. Triggers we thought we had overcome will resurface. Patterns we thought we had broken will reemerge in a different form and some days we may question why we bothered to start a bloody healing journey in the first place if it is just going to be a bottomless pit of hurt. Maybe ignorance really was bliss? Please, do not be discouraged! This is real shit! And remember, we are in this thing together. Know that you are not alone. Millions of people all around the world are on the same journey to make themselves better, happier and more compassionate people. Share your experiences with your trusted friends, family and loved ones. Be honest and vulnerable with them. Vulnerability can increase intimacy within relationships and engenders others to be open and vulnerable too. Find like minded people in facebook groups or women's / men’s circles. Take breaks when you need to and be sure to practice self-care. Treat yourself when you're feeling down and reward yourself for breakthroughs. And if you journal your experiences you will be able to look back when you feel you have achieved nothing and you will see just how far you have come. Lastly, remember that you are loved. Remember to love yourself. And remember, healing yourself is the ultimate act of self-love.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to share any personal experiences with these ideas and modalities. Also look out for my next blog post, “Overcoming Struggle Part Two: Maintaining and deepening our healing journey” coming out soon.
As your friendly Neighbourhood Shaman I offer Intuitive Readings utilising my unique combination of Tarot Cards, Crystals and good ol’ fashioned open and honest conversation that I developed along my own healing journey. I use these simple techniques as a means to access the higher guidance within you. Enquire or book a reading with me at www.neighbourhoodshaman.com
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Much love, Your Friendly Neighbourhood Shaman
