This is a brilliant article explaining how Family Constellations work and providing examples of the powerful healing and insight that clients receive from doing a constellation.
http://www.nasconstellations.org/blog/disease-as-chance-every-symptom-and-disease-has-a-message
If you would like to experience this in real life I am holding a Systemic Family Constellation Workshop 28 Oct in Meadows, South Australia. For details click here.
Many people say that to have peace we need to forgive those who have hurt us, to let go of the pain and any resentment, judgement, hate or anger we may feel towards the other person. It is true if we hold onto these emotions we are keeping our self stuck in the energy of the past events and keeping it alive in our body. By focusing on the “wrong doing” we keep our self reliving it and replaying it in life, as we attract in other similar situations – in a subconscious attempt to heal the wound.
If we have formed beliefs that the world is dangerous or people can’t be trusted or everyone’s out to get me, then we live life with that viewpoint. Our eyes can’t perceive all the data that is there when we look at a scene. Millions of bits of information is sent to our brain which filters it based on our beliefs of what is most vital for us to see for our survival, our well being. So if we are locked in fight or flight or trauma from the past with beliefs that we are in danger all the time, then that is what the data gets searched for and we only see that subset of infomration about the scene we are viewing. We don’t notice the beauty, the love being shown between people or animals and their owners, etc, we just see the potential dangers, threats and situations to avoid in order to best protect our self. It is a self protection mechanism called a ‘negativity bias’. It is an evolutionary tool, a mechanism that makes sense biologically to keep us alive.
The sad part is that if you have those type of negative beliefs or buried trauma inside your body you miss out on seeing and feeling all the goodness in life that is their waiting for you to see it, to let it in, to trust and believe it is possible, that you deserve it and to accept it. You are worthy of good things, of fun, of love, of laughter and joy. You are worthy of wealth, abundance of food, shelter, clothing, health, etc.
The world is abundant, there is goodness out there, all around us, we just have to do the work to heal our programming – our negative beliefs and to shift out the pain and trauma in our bodies so it knows the war is over and can relax and start to enjoy life more.
Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) helps you to clear out the stagnant fight, flight, freeze energy out of your body so you can relax. It helps to complete the old trauma activations by shaking and using up the cortisol and adrenaline released during moments of stress, tension and trauma. If in those moments you didn’t flee or fight back then those chemicals stay in your body adding to tension, rigidity, pain and numbness. This can be reversed by completing the trauma activations so your body can calm and relax back down knowing it’s over, you’re safe now and all is well.
If you are holding on to a grudge about what has happened to you or onto what you have missed out on because of your experiences – then you are keeping yourself caught in that dynamic of feeling bad, victimised, empty of joy and vitality. You are punishing yourself with your choice of thoughts and actions that will result from that level of thinking.
Forgiveness is not about letting go of wrongdoing, it is about realising that whatever has happened in your life has happened and accepting it and getting on with your life to let more goodness in. You accept what is and turn towards life, to focus on the now and what is to come, instead of being turned away from life focused on the past, entangled with it and missing out on your now. Focus here, now and move forward, you can do it. It is a choice you have to choose to make.
Many people hold on as they think it is punishing their parents or those that hurt them. They don’t want to let them off the hook, but doing this just keeps you caught up in the pain. You need to choose to let it go for your own sake, so you can move on and enjoy life. Your parents may not have been perfect parents, but they did what they could for you with the knowledge and emotional maturity they had. They too may have been suffering and caught up in the pain of their past.
Family Constellations shows us that when people are entangled with ancestors and the traumas or unfinished business within the family system, their energy is literally stuck there in that event or with that ancestor who may have been rejected, died young or suffered some tragedy that wasn’t spoken about or fully grieved. That stuck energy, that trauma occupies their energy, they are bound to it, turned towards it, enmeshed with it and literally unable to look away and focus on their now.
If your parents were entangled in the past in this way, they simply could not focus all their energy on being present with you, giving you the love and nourishment that children desire, hunger for. They literally were not available to live their lives fully and you missed out on their attention, the full connection with them that you wanted. They too missed out on being fully present in their life and on being an attentive, loving parent with their children. They missed out too.
See how the trauma continues down the line. If you judge your parents and turn away from them, reject them, assume you are better than them or know more than them – then you too turn away from being present fully in your life. A lot of your energy is caught up with your past and what you missed out on, on the pain and disappointment or anger over what happened. You say no to them and in essence no to life. You stop letting whatever goodness they can give you in. When you have kids they too will feel the lack of your presence and feel like you are not fully present or available for them. They too will feel they have missed out and they may judge you and turn away as they get older. The pattern repeats unless you heal the trauma, so that all who are entangled can finally let it rest and turn to focus on their own lives, to live them fully, joyously, focused on creating and accepting the goodness of life.
Family Constellations can help to untangle the traumas and past hurts, it can help free everyone involved, so they can focus on the now and enjoy it.
Your parents didn’t deliberately hurt you. If it seemed like they did, this was just their pain seeping out, being projected onto you. They too have wounds from their childhood and from their ancestors which they carry. They too are burdened and lived out all this pain the only way they knew how to do so. The result was what you experienced as their child. They didn’t have the tools to do it differently. Now we can. Now we can set ourselves and them free, to enjoy life more fully.
Do the work to heal and let go of the pain, accept what happened and see your parents for who they truly are, and thank them for your life. Focus on the goodness they gave you and let it in. Even if there was trauma and abuse, they gave you life and that is a great gift. Accept that and honour them for that.
If your parents are still alive and you interact with them, let yourself receive their love in whatever way they can show it to you. They may not be able to express it, but perhaps you can see it in their gestures, their gifts, their contact with you and wanting to spend time with you, their compliments or money or food – whatever it is, let them give to you, let yourself receive the goodness, love and energy from them, so that your cup is filled, so that you are nourished and can live your life from a place of fullness, not emptiness, barrenness, darkness.
If your parents are dead or are not able to give you love then you can visualise receiving the love and goodness from them and from other relatives who you may have had more positive interactions. Recall positive times and relive those memories, anchoring in the fun, the love, the goodness. See those ancestors around you in Spirit, supporting you, encouraging you, cheering you on as you live your life.
Let the goodness in. There is much waiting for you to receive it, but to do so you have to let go of the old emotions and traumas, so your arms are free to receive the new. You can do it! You can do it for yourself, for your children, for your family. All will benefit when you heal and let go of the past burdens that you have carried. The whole family system is affected when a member of it chooses love and does the work to heal. It is a true gift that you can give to yourself and your family, so all can live more peacefully.
Forgiveness is not about right or wrong, about who did what and atoning for it, making up for it. It is simply about accepting what occurred and healing the wound so you are free from the pain. It takes effort to heal and become free. Simply saying “I forgive you” does nothing, very little. It actually has a negative effect because in essence it is a judgement on the person and their action. It says “I know you should have done better, but you didn’t, and I begrudgingly accept that and I will forgive you because I am a better person, a bigger person than you”. See the judgement in this, feel how it stops the flow of love.
It is like putting a boulder in the river, disturbing the flow of life force energy from your ancestors, your parents, to yourself. It is like you are trying to politely cover up something that is disgusting and pretending it is no longer there – like putting a white cloth over the top of some vomit or dog poo. It still stinks, it is still there, but it appears to be gone, buried, hidden. You then tiptoe around it, trying not to look at it or step in it, but it is still there, just waiting to be seen, festering, decaying and having a negative impact on your vitality.
You are not bigger than or better than your parents. They are the BIG ONES and you are the LITTLE ONE. They came first, they gave you life and the life force flows from them to you. If you resist them, you resist life. Let the life force flow to you unhindered. It is not about forgiving them, it is more like accepting them for who they are and letting them stand there with no judgement or condemnation. Just let them be who they are and thank them for what they did give you. Anything they couldn’t give you, you can get from elsewhere. You can make something good out of what they gave you, make something good out of your life and the opportunity presented to you. In this sense forgiveness is about peace, acceptance and harmony, and restoring these to the family system for the wellbeing of all. Blessed BE, Amen.
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In this video, Mark Wolynn, author of the book ‘It didn’t start with you: how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle’ explains intergenerational trauma, how and why it happens and how to stop the trauma being passed on to future generations. I loved this book and got many useful insights from it for myself, for the courses I teach and the clients I serve.
Worry is a form of self denial. Humans do it to negate their circumstances and keep themselves feeling small. If they would boldy choose, make a decision, act, life would proceed much more smoothly, but this would enable greater rates of change and change can be scary, confronting and uncomfortable. Worry therefore avoids this future discomfort by creating discomfort now!
It is like a brake on a car. It gets stomped on to slow things down. And just like pushing the accelerator and brake at the same time results in no movement, just wasted fuel and strain on the vehicle, the same occurs to the human body which feels pulled forward to act and worry stops it doing so.
Worry creates strain in the body, it improves nothing and in that sense is useless. Instead speak the truth to yourself. When facing potential conflict or a decision you are scared to make, simply say “I am unsure of what to do here. Instead of being nervous or worrying, I give myself permission to go slow until I have clarity on what to do”. That way you can still feel good and take the time you need. You don’t have to worry and feel bad to slow down taking action.
Likewise if the worry is due to fear of conflict or rejection, you can say to yourself “I am scared of being hurt in this situation. I am going to nurture myself and be kind to myself, knowing I feel vulnerable. I will love and accept myself, and that is what matters most. Whatever else does occur, I will be okay, because I will be loyal to myself and treat myself well. I am strong enough to cope with whatever occurs because I am my own best friend. If I sense danger I will simply leave and I will let someone know where I am going so they can check in with me after to see if I’m okay. I won’t force myself to do things I am not ready for. It is okay to take small steps towards my goals. It is okay to do what I need to do when I can and to wait and rest until I am able”.
Many of you push yourselves too hard. You simply expect too much of yourselves and then wonder why your body is feeling fatigued or less than 100% well. If you toss and turn at night, instead of sleeping, it is your body’s way of telling you – choose peace, choose calm, choose rest. If you toss and turn at night it is a sign that your nervous system is wound up tight, activated in fight or flight or worse in freeze or collapse. You can use Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) to help down-regulate your nervous system, to discharge the stress and tension. When your body is more relaxed and your mind quieter it is easier to sleep.
As your body relaxes through tremoring your nervous system calms and you start to feel safer in your body, less danger signals get sent to the brain, so your defences soften. You don’t need to be hypervigilant worrying about things so much. The body is only hyped up, worrying because part of you feels unsafe.
Honour yourself. Heal the part of you that is worrying, comfort and reassure them, they need your love. For it is just a part of you that is worried or scared. It is not your whole self. Just a part, a younger part that needs to feel safe, protected and looked after. That is your job, to support that younger, inner part of you, so they don’t need to sabotage your efforts to protect you from what they fear will happen. Send them love, thank them for caring about you and bathe them in healing golden light, so they can drop their burdens and cares. Invite them into your heart, hug them and welcome them home, to rest and recover in your heart centre, your sacred room of love. There they can rest and recover feeling safe, loved and at peace. They no longer need to be afraid as you will take care of things, they can relax. You will listen to their concerns and take any appropriate measures as a result.
There are many parts of you that have strong feelings or preferences as to how you act and listening to their concerns, befriending them and then deciding after weighing up their input, will result in much smoother outcomes. They won’t need to shout at you any more or keep you small. The loud inner voices which may have kept you in pain will quieten, as they feel heard, valued, and supported. You can then go about your life without negative interference from within.
In this sense you can see worrying is a form of protection, a part of your inner guidance system that you can learn from. When you do so, the worry drops away and life becomes much more peaceful and enjoyable. Blessed BE, Amen.
There are many reasons for choosing to stay small – less risk, more comfort, safety from abuse or attack or ridicule, less effort required, less challenge faced. There are many reasons, but life won’t let you stay small for long. Outside events and inner forces will combine to propel you forward, to jettison you into the next greater version of yourself.
Life is about growth and expansion, it is about stepping beyond your comfort zone and doing what you love. To stay small is to shrivel and decay, to rot, to not grow and that is impossible.
Some stay small because that may have been a time when they received love, when life was simpler, less confusing. For others it was a time when they felt good things happened, when they trusted life and felt taken care of. There are many reasons people would prefer to stay child like or to bask in younger years, as opposed to truly being present and facing their now.
For many people the now is scary, too intimate, too confronting. To be fully present requires facing your feelings, acknowledging how you feel and if you are happy with your life. Much easier to be distracted, too busy, then you don’t have to think about it, feel too deeply into it.
Yes, let’s be busy, busy, busy – then we don’t notice our vitality and joy dropping, we don’t notice the stress building and ill health creeping in. Keep busy, busy, busy, with lots of noise and competing demands, that way you don’t have to face the truth of your life, your inner depths or your heart’s requests. So many people live like this.
Of course it is not ideal, but it is understandable, especially if you don’t feel you have any power to change things for the better. The truth is you always have the power to do so, just most don’t realise it or fear taking that first step into self leadership, self mastery, creating your life how you want it to be.
Resistance to being present in the now occurs when your body feels uptight, anxious and restless. There’s this baseline energy that you can feel when you slow down. For most people that energy isn’t calm and peaceful. It can be a slight unease, a feeling of being unsafe, anxious, uncertain of what to do or what’s needed to feel better. This is your nervous system in low level activation of fight or flight. If the activation is stronger then it can literally feel wrong, dangerous to be still. Your legs may bounce when you’re sitting down. Internally you’re agitated, wanting to move, to run away.
These activations occur at the subconscious level. We’re not even aware of them and we’re certainly not consciously choosing them. They result from the built up tension, stress and trauma in your body that sends signals to your brain telling it you are in danger, even if you’re actually safe right now.
The body isn’t at ease, hence many of us distract ourselves from being still, present in the now, which would lead us to feel that unease. Rather than distracting yourself from it by escaping or keeping busy, there is another choice. You can use embodiment practices like Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to shake out the tension, stress and trauma, then your body will calm down and it will be easier to be present, to enjoy your now as your body will know it is safe to do so.
When we just keep busy we don’t heal the underlying issues. With TRE you can slowly shake out the unease bit by bit, gently and easily in your own time and space. Once learned you can use TRE whenever you like as part of your self-care routine. It is well worth learning so you can relax more, worry less and enjoy your now.
You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to decline that invitation and take time to rest. You are allowed to work less and live more simply. You are allowed to do what you want, not what is expected. You are allowed to honour yourself and do what you want. It is not selfish, not wrong. As long as you aren’t harming another, it is okay to choose self, to honour self. Our society would be a lot healthier if people did.
Because when you honour yourself and drop into your heart, what your heart wants is peace, harmony, stillness, connection, and love. The heart beats fast for love, for pleasure, for joy. It doesn’t have a selfish bone in its body, it is all about love and kindness for all. And when more people are resting in this state, there will be a lot less violence in the world. There will be a lot more sharing, compassion and understanding, a lot more assisting each other, accepting we are all the same race, the same species. We all suffer and go through loss and pain. We all grow and heal and need support. We all want to be loved and accepted for who we are. We all want to be seen and accepted, heard and valued, cared for and loved. That is our deepest need.
Many hide because they fear it won’t happen – they won’t be loved or accepted, they will be ridiculed or hurt in a myriad of ways. But to hide keeps you stuck, small and hurting. To come out into the light of day enables change, enables freedom, enables peace.
If you take the risk you will be guided forth to love and happiness. There will be obstacles to overcome along the way, but you will get there. You will find your tribe and your home, deep within your heart, connected to the mysteries of life and all that occurs here on Earth.
May we all stand up and shout “Here I am“. May we all be seen and valued. May those around us yell back “We see you and you are magnificent. Welcome home!” May we all find peace as quick as possible. Blessed BE. Amen.
When one’s body has been locked in fight or flight due to traumas that occurred earlier in one’s life, it can be nearly impossible to slow down, relax and enjoy life. Adrenaline, fear, cortisol flow through the body keeping it revved up, primed to react in a split second and to not cool down, rest or BE. It is like a race car with engine roaring, just waiting for the driver to put it in gear and let it loose.
In this hyped up state, even when you are doing nothing, you are still burning up nervous, restless energy, the body is not resting, its reserves are slowly being depleted. In time exhaustion comes, depletion of your energy reserves and then loss of joy, sadness and depression, as a result of feeling so flat, so unable to motivate yourself into action. The gas tank is empty, nowhere to go. This is part of the issue behind chronic fatigue. The body eventually is so depleted it is hard to do anything.
It is therefore important to take action before this stage to nurture and nourish your body, to help it come out of fight or flight and replenish itself. You can do this through a wide range of methods. Massage and touch, gentle touch, can help the body relax. Various body work modalities, reiki, bowen, acupuncture, etc, can help release the tension and teach the muscles it is okay to relax. You can do emotional release work to shift the tension locked in the muscles and to feel the traumas into completion. It is safe to do so.
You can retrain your mind so it no longer feels in danger all the time or needing to be on high alert. Meditation can help calm your mind, enable you to witness your thoughts, and practice not reacting to them, just letting them pass by. Psych-K, NLP, Lifeline Technique and others can reprogram the subconscious mind so that the beliefs operating in your body are supportive, life affirming ones about safety, love, peace and happiness. This needs to be done, otherwise you are telling yourself with your conscious mind “Relax, it’s okay, it’s safe, there’s plenty of time, those tasks can wait” when there is an alarm going off inside saying “No, I must do it now, I have to keep going, my life depends on it”.
The subconscious programming is much more powerful than the conscious minds. The subconscious beliefs will win all the time. Your whole life experience has programmed it, so it is strong in its beliefs and it is more powerful in its capacity than the conscious mind. The subconscious mind makes sure all our bodily functions are working – we are breathing, digesting, eliminating waste, etc. It does all of this without our awareness. It also filters what we see, there is so much data when we look at a scene, that the brain filters it based on our conditioning to only see that which is most important to us for our survival.
If our programming is about danger then that is the filter used to assess what we see. If our filter was love then we would see a whole different scene, we would notice the beauty, peace and harmony occurring in nature and between people. If our filter is danger, abuse, threat then we see any potential sources of danger, we notice the person lurking in the shadows, the look of agitation on a passer by, we see the man reading the newspaper in the park and decide to walk two steps further away just in case he is a threat. Our world is hostile, because of the thinking behind our actions is that way.
Now I know if you have suffered abuse, trauma, cruelty in life then it makes sense that you would be cautious and concerned about avoiding it in future, that is healthy. What is not healthy is when you have no choice, no ability to relax, because your body is so tense, so wired up, so angry or fearful that it has no ability to be calm, peaceful or happy. When the subconscious programming is this strong it is a threat to your health and your enjoyment of life and action needs to be taken to get relief, to be able to rest and enjoy life, to know you are safe and the world is a loving place.
This freedom from the past and its triggers is possible. You just have to do the work to reprogram the subconscious mind and clear the body of the trauma, stress and residue of past experiences.
Just as the subconscious mind operates below our awareness affecting our behaviour, so does our nervous system. When our bodies are locked full of fear, trauma and stress from earlier events, we can become locked in a hypervigilant state. We expect more abuse, pain, danager because we feel unsafe in our body. We feel as if there is a threat around the corner.
If you do the work to relax your nervous system your body calms, it comes out of fight, flight, freeze and starts to relax, to calm, to breathe deeper and to see more goodness around you.
The body is sending signals to the brain advising whether it is safe or not. When you use processes like Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) it helps the body to relax, the nervous system to calm, and then your defence mechanisms melt as you feel safer and no longer need to be defensive, ready to fight, flee or freeze to protect yourself. You no longer need to dissociate to avoid the pain, so you can be more present and grounded in your body.
TRE is one of the most effective methods I have found to empower individuals with their own healing journeys. It is a simple process that activates the body’s own tremoring mechanism that uses up the stress chemicals – cortisol, adrenaline – and enables the tension and stress to be released. Once you learn how to do it TRE can be done at home whenever you want to as a part of your self-care processes to soothe your body, calm your mind and relax your nerves. It’s a powerful process and can be learned during an individual appointment online or in person appointment.
A relaxed, peaceful state is actually our normal state, it is just in this modern, busy world, most of us are rushing around all day, doing, doing, doing. We take very little time to be still, to rest, to rejuvenate. If we do stop for a short time we will be thinking about what else needs to be done or how something already done could have been done better. Our focus is on the past or the future, rarely on the present moment.
If we focus on the present moment we relax, we notice the details around us, the feel of the cool breeze and sunshine on our skin, the movement of grass and clouds, the rustling sounds of leaves moving in the trees, the gentle flight of the butterflies fluttering past. When we slow down and become still it is natural for the body to relax, for the blood flow to move away from the extremities and to go to the organs and elimination systems and purify us more fully, to ensure all our vital systems are working as they should.
When we are rushing all the time or stressed, our body is focused on the doing more than the internal processing – some of the attention is missing and therefore our bodily processes don’t function as well and dis-ease can result. Our bodies weren’t designed to be over stimulated constantly or always doing.
There was meant to be moments of stress and action, then returning to the natural, resting state for the majority of the day. We don’t have that. Most of us are functioning as if we are in danger all the time and the stress that results has a negative impact on the body. There is a lot we can do to reduce this and reverse the damage – good diet, exercise, plenty of sleep, water, vitamins – it all helps, as does the work to clear out trauma and stress from the body, reduce mental chatter through meditation and thought stopping, reprogramming the subconscious beliefs so you accept it is safe and okay to rest and that the world is a safe and loving place for you. There is much we can do if we choose to prioritise our health and we want to relax, have inner peace and joy in our life. What will you choose? It is entirely up to you. Blessed BE, Amen.
Your inner child is your barometer for your alignment with Source and your destiny. She or he tells you what feels good and what doesn’t. She lets you know if there are actions you need to take and being a child she will throw a tantrum if you don’t do them.
Being a child she wants what she wants NOW, and will get angry or sulk when it doesn’t happen. If you ignore her, refuse to listen to her, she will slam a door in your face and go into her room and hide. There she will be forlorn, mope and go into depression. When this occurs your vitality drops, your joy and ability to enjoy life plummets, you feel burdened, over responsible, plodding through life doing what must be done, as each day passes in this way your heart flame dims, your vibration lowers and a coldness and darkness sets in. Life seems less exciting, less vibrant and less meaningful. In the extreme it can feel numb and like a robot going through the motions.
Your inner child while silenced, is still watching and when the opportunity arises she will let you know know how pissed off she is. She will tell you in words if you listen and connect in with your heart. If you don’t, she will take over your body, come to the fore with rage or sadness or fear. You will get triggered by life events and react from a child like space. The mature adult will disappear and you will responded from the wounded child – tantrums, sulking, hurtful words, immature behaviours, because that is the age the child is and it is her energy that has come to the fore.
She can be a drama queen and pout or order that someone’s head be chopped off, metaphorically, for some minor infraction, such as not saying hello and noticing her pretty new dress or not appreciating the unicorn hidden in the garden. “How dare you not notice or care, how dare you ignore something so important to me!” The inner child will stomp and kick and throw stones. She will punish you and others for not doing what she needs most, which is to be loved, to be noticed, to be cared for, played with and held.
The inner child, like all children, just wants to be loved and listened to. She wants the chance to play and do things that make her happy. She will skip through life singing if you let her. She can help you enjoy life so much, but only when you connect with her and come from a heart centred space, operating from love in all you do.
She is your guide back to your heart, back to your innocence. She lets you know what is meaningful to you, what you shouldn’t ignore, what can help you to feel whole and stress to melt away. It may be simple things like patting your cat, admiring your garden, walking in nature, playing with children, painting, cooking speacial food, whatever it is that you truly find as fun, calming and satisfying. Activities that make your heart sing and that when finished, you look up and are suprised at how much time has passed by. These are your passions, your joys and the inner child reminds us that these are what is truly important in life. She doesn’t care about work, chores, deadlines. She hates boredom and apathy. She embraces life, lives it to the full and bubbles over with enthusiasm.
If you are not feeling such joy and vitality, there is a strong likelihood that your connection with your inner child is not strong enough. If she is unhappy, you will be unhappy. Make the effort to connect. Close your eyes and ask inwardly to connect with her or him. Ask and wait patiently. See if you can sense him or her. You may see a door way or a couch that they are hiding behind. You may see a cave or a dungeon that they have been trapped in due to your total neglect of them and your true passion for life.
At first they may not want to connect, not trusting you to care for them or to stay around. They may feel hurt, abandoned and vulnerable. Send love, see loving energy flow towards them and let them know you are there, you are willing to connect and you are sorry you haven’t done so before or regularly. They may come out from their hiding place and take a peek at you or a step towards you, they may come running for a hug, as this is what they truly want. They may start talking a million miles a minute teling you everything they have been waiting to say. It is up to you to earn their trust, to win their heart over, so they feel safe enough to come out of hiding and open up to enjoying life again.
As you build your relationship, you will notice your energy level rises, your joy rises and your sense of peace and satisfaction with life. Instead of looking out and seeing dullness everywhere, you may start to notice the flowers, the colours, the blue sky. You may start to slow down and just BE, taking time to rest and even time to play. This is important, we all need balance between doing and being, so our bodies don’t get exhausted and depleted.
You can build your connection with your inner child by connecting in regularly, it only takes a few minutes to close your eyes, connect with him or her, send love, ask how they are feeling and what they would like you to do. They may want a hug or icecream or to play in the park. You can literally do these things in real life or you can visualise them, giving the inner child an icecream as you walk side by side down the path at a beautiful park. The inner child just wants your time and attention, same as a living child, for that is what the inner child is, a child living within you that holds your pure essence, your Source connection and innocence. Once you help him/her to heal their wounds and to feel loved and peaceful again, then that becomes your experience of life, the energy you get to live from.
When you are facing challenges or have big decisions to make, you can comfort your inner child and let them know it is okay, you the adult will handle this and they can go play. You can ask them how they feel or what their view is on the situation, but make it clear that this is adult business, not child business and they can go play. If they feel threatened by what is occurring in your life, reassure them that they are safe. When you are in a confronting situation, tune into where your inner child is and how they are feeling. You may discover that they feel exposed and scared. In your third eye see them moving behind you for protection or into your heart where they can be held and supported. This is what they need, for you to be the good parent looking after them, meeting their needs, so they feel safe to relax and enjoy life. When they do, you do. It is well worth the effort to build a loving, strong, playful relationship with your inner child, so you can return to a state of peace and happiness within. Blessed BE, Amen.
When a person has suffered many disappointments in life, they learn to switch off from life, from expecting good things or even believing it is possible for their life to work out okay. This is a self defense mechanism aimed to limit the pain received and protect from further disappointments.
But switching off from life, hope, faith is a disasterous thing to do, it is a giving up of life force energy, of joy, of hope, of happiness. It will inevitably lead to judgement, ridicule, low self-esteem, depression and feelings of unworthiness.
If the major traumas occurred when a young child, 0-7 years old, it is highly likely that a pattern of learned helplessness was embedded in the child’s unconscious and as an adult plays out constantly in all aspects of life, leaving the person feeling a victim, feeling unable to change anything and accepting life is always going to be this way.
With such pessimism life becomes drudgery, one boring or scary or threatening and dangerous day after another. It is easy to see why people may self medicate through addictions to avoid the emotional pain and sense of helplessness and hopelessness.
It is a cruel way to exist, it is a numbing out of life, a walking dead scenario, feeling as if there is no point in staying alive or trying to change anything, because it feels like it never works or changes, it never gets better.
This is a very painful place to be in internally, to feel this hurt and broken that you don’t know how to go on, how to survive, how to live. You give up trying and just survive one day at a time. Life is monotonous, bland, boring and suffocating. Sadly this is a common state of being for many people. Gladly, you don’t have to stay stuck in it.
You only feel so helpless because it is younger parts of you that got hurt and disappointed, whose pain is so high, that it is over ruling everything else. If you heal these wounds and help free your inner child or younger selves then that pain will not be your primary emotion or experience of life.
You the adult has every opportunity to make different choices, to have fun, to be positive and enjoy life. It is just hard to do when your vitality, your life force is stuck in the past, playing out a repetitive loop of negativity.
So how do you free yourself of the wounds? There are many ways that help. At this stage it is just important to know you can break free, that you can heal and that life can become better. To let a glimmer of hope exist.
Just because people in your past hurt you or disappointed you, doesn’t mean it has to reoccur over and over. If you heal the wounds you can flourish. You will no longer attract in that treatment as you will no longer be a vibrational match to it. Once you have released the pain, your body can relax, come out of fight or flight and shut down zombie mode. Life force energy can flow freely through your veins again, revitalising you to live life fully, embracing possibility and taking action to live your dreams, your greatest potential while here on Earth.
To achieve this the wounds must be healed, the emotional pain must be released / transmuted and your heart opened back up to allow love in, to trust and take action, to risk changing / trying something new and letting people close.
When people are closed down out of disappointment, it is like they have bolted the door, put up a security fence, have guard dogs snarling, attempting to keep out anything good from occurring, so that they will not be disappointed or hurt further.
People with good intentions attempt to come close and they are faced with snarling dogs, electric fences and machine guns aimed at them, as if they are the enemy, when all they want to do is love you. It takes a strong and determined person to persevere in this situation and say “Let me in, it is okay, you can trust me”.
Many just walk away, they see the wounding in the other, the closed door, so they turn away. Hence the hurt person ends up alone, isolated, desperate for attention, for love, but not allowing it. No wonder they feel so hopeless.
There is a war going on inside, keeping the goodness away. When someone does come close they can over react with anger, feeling like “How dare they expect me to let them in, how dare they expect me to take a risk”. You push the person away so hard.
Depending on how deep the wound will depend on how automatic this rejection process is. It can be so strong that rage is triggered and a feeling that you could set the person on fire because they have threatened you and your safety by daring to enter into your closed kingdom, and it literally feels like a threat to your existence. So sad when really the other is saying “Hello, do you want a friend? Do you want to play?”.
It is like two young children meeting in a playground and the first person has planted their feet, crossed their arms, stomped on the spot and said “NO”, shouted “NO, you will not play with me, go away, leave me alone”. They are totally closed off in their tantrum about how they feel and what has occurred to them in life. Then they sulk, pout, kick and scream about how unfair it all is. Most of us can see this behaviour in toddlers, young children quite easily, but we fail to see that as wounded adults we are doing the same thing.
Life can’t change dramatically for the better unless you uncross your arms, suck in your bottom lip, and you open up to connection, to playing, to having fun. While you are shouting NO nothing much can change. So you have to be willing to lower the defenses, to open up to another way of being and to feeling and releasing the emotional pain underneath the wounds, then it dissolves, then you walk free of it and you can see the blue sky and sunshine and let it in, you can see the beauty in life and let yourself be replenished by it and experience good things and have your life work out more enjoyably.
It is clear that it is up to you to take action to heal the wounds. Noone else can do it for you. Even those brave souls who wear suits of armour and non-flammable overalls who come close wanting to help you move forward. Their efforts can only help if you let them in. If you keep shouting NO energetically or actually saying it through your words and actions, then their efforts can’t help.
It is up to you to take the risk to let life be different. You can do it and it is worth it, so worth it, to walk free from misery and enjoy life, to be pleasantly surprised by the mystery of life and finally see the goodness in all things. You can achieve this, simply by healing the past so it doesn’t cloud your future. It can be done and I and many others can help you do it, if you let us, if you open up and say “YES to life, YES I am willing to move forward and to risk being happy. YES I can do this, I will do this, I choose this”.
Then life will lead you forth to the right people, places, books, courses and whatever else you need that best suits you to help you heal and break free from the pain. It will be different for each person based on their current state of awareness, willingness, and ability to feel and release their pain. Some will need to do self-study at first, before they would be willing to risk seeing a therapist and trusting someone to help them move forward. Some may prefer talk therapy as they don’t yet feel safe enough to go into their bodies and feel what is there. Some may prefer to start with body work modalities to help the body relax and let go, preferring this as they are too scared to voice their concerns or speak the truth that they have tried to hide from their whole lives.
Inside your body are all the trapped emotions and memories from the traumas you’ve experienced. It results in muscular tension and holding patterns that are so common in our society. It results in tight, sore shoulders, necks and backs. It is literally like the body has clenched, locked down, armoured up in order to protect itself.
A large part of healing is releasing this tension, melting the armour and the hypervigilance that comes from being in fight, flight, freeze so much.
This has to be done slowly, gently. You can’t take the top off the volcano and have all the pressure escape at once. It’s too volatile, too dangerous, too overwhelming. You need to let out the pressure and steam slowly, gently, so you don’t explode emotionally, but also so your body can integrate the shifts and changes.
There are many ways to reduce the internal stress and pressure, soy ou can cope more easily with whatever life brings you. When you’re already stressed up to your eyeballs internally it makes it so hard to cope. It’s like you’re exhausted with nothing else to give or any capacity to take on more – whether that be a challenge at work, a family member wanting your support or asking you to do something.
When you’re already at your limit, when your plate is full, any additional stressors can result in strong, undesirable reactions. You might react in anger or rage, or just be irritable and cold pushing people away or ignoring their needs. Not because you don’t care. You do care. You just don’t have any more capacity to cope with another stressor.
Thankfully you can use a range of methods to diffuse your internal bomb. Most people turn to addictions to try and numb it, escape it, avoid it, distract from it. They get busy or drink or shop or play video games or any other distraction that stops them from feeling what is occurring inside.
Clearly, this is not a healthy or long term solution. Your nervous system still has all the charge in it, all the pent up energy and emotion, so addictions just form a temporary fix that is bound to fail as the internal pressure continues to grow and the person eventually implodes or explodes.
A much healthier way to reduce the pressure, to let out the steam is spending time in nature, going for walks or swims at the beach. Anything that helps you to slow down, to have greater relaxation and ease in your body.
I have found Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) particularly useful, as it lets out that tension from the body bit by bit, calming your nervous system and giving you more capacity to cope with day to day life. As you release the pressure, it is like you’re taking some of the burdens and pressures from your plate, so there’s room, capacity, to handle life events with a bit more grace and ease. You don’t get shoved into overwhelm as quickly.
TRE is a set of simple exercises designed to help the body access its innate stress, tension and trauma release mechanism. This is an inbuilt tremoring process that uses up the stagnant energy, melts the armour and helps you shift out of fight, flight, freeze into relaxation and ease within. When this occurs it is easier to interact with others as you feel safer in your body, less threatened and defensive. It’s a powerful process for calming the body back down to it’s natural peaceful, playful state.
Excitingly TRE can be learned quickly and once learned you can use it for free for the rest of your life. You can do the exercises and tremoring releases in your own home, whenever you want.
If you want to go deeper, learn more or have some support as you go along, you can see a TRE practitioner like me, but you don’t have to do that regularly. You can just do it when you want to or if you need some extra support.
TRE gives you back your freedom to engage in your healing journey and to heal at a rate your body is comfortable with, listening to and honouring your body. It is well worth learning TRE to empower yourself and move forward with your life. You don’t need to stay stuck, defensive or hidden. You can be free.
There are many roads home, to healing, to your heart and wholeness. It doesn’t matter which road you take, what matters is your willingness to take a step forward into the unknown, into life being different. If you are willing, the Universe will meet you and guide you forth.
May you learn to run joyously along your path, knowing you are taken care of, and see the beauty of life and love all around you. For it is there just waiting for you to open your arms and embrace it. Life really is good once you heal your pain and can see more clearly. May you obtain inner peace as quickly and as easily as you can. With love, Amen.
An entanglement is an enmeshment with another person that affects your ability to be yourself and do as you please. You are so caught up with the other person that your thoughts and feelings are tangled up with theirs. It is hard to know where you end and the other person starts, there is no boundary or separation, the two people are entwined, tangled together into one messy situation.
This comonly occurs when a child tries to take care of a parent. The child sensing the parent’s pain or inability to cope with their life, steps up and takes responsibility for helping reduce the burden on the parent. This is a reversal of the orders of love – parents are meant to give and children receive.
Children are meant to grow focussed on life, play, having fun and age appropriate issues. It is not normal for a child to be thinking about adult problems and trying to solve them. But children will do this out of loyalty, out of love and out of a desire to stay safe and keep their home. No matter how dysfunctional or painful a child prefers to stay with its parent, rather than be taken away into the unknown, even if that unknown is a more loving home with other family members or foster parents.
Our loyalty to our biological parents is huge and stays with us our whole life. If we violate that bond, if we judge or reject our parents we feel a loss, an emptiness, a sadness deep inside, as the flow of love from the family line has been blocked. We are refusing to accept our parents and our life as it is. In essence we are saying ‘NO to life’ and we suffer as a result. The life force flowing to us is diminished as we are saying NO to our parents, NO to their love, NO to receiving any energy or support from them. We are saying “NO, you are not good enough, I wanted more, someone different to you”. This is fighting against life, fighting against what is. These are your parents for better or worse, they are your parents. They gave you life and if that is all they gave you it is a true gift. At the very least accept that, be grateful for that.
As we heal we can come to see our parents as not just ‘parents’, but as people with their own issues, challenges and emotional hurts. If we are trying to fix them, change them, influence them, we are still entangled. We are still caught up unhealthily over involved in their energy and trying to control life. This is like standing in front of a dam that is cracking and trying to order the water to stay there, not to move. It won’t work. As the dam cracks the water is going to gush forth, because that is what water does, gravity does.
Your parents have their own lives to lead and it is not our place to judge them or be overly involved in their business, to be entangled like this stops us from living our lives fully. It is best to accept your parents as they are, to say ‘YES to life’, YES to receiving whatever goodness you can get from them and to accept that as all they can give you, to say “That is enough. What you can’t give me I will get from elswhere. Thank you Mum, thank you Dad, you are enough”. When we can say this and mean it we are freed from the entanglement. The love strength and support from the family line can flow to us, helping us, supporting us to live more fully. We are accepting our place in life and letting ourselves receive the goodness from our family line.
Reaching that place of acceptance can be a long journey. It takes time to grieve what could have been, what you felt should have been and to accept what was and is. That is the journey of life. It is true and authentic emotional release work required until you do feel peaceful inside and accepting of your family.
You could choose to stay in judgement and anger over what has happened or hasn’t happened in your life, but this just punishes you and limits you and your ability to live life joyously. Best to untangle the web, to break free and accept what is and make the most out of it. This is one form of entanglement that can have a massive impact on a person’s life.
Another kind of entanglement occurs when a child takes on a burden for the ancestors present or ancient. It can be a sibling not wanting to live fully because they see their brother or sister afflicted with an illness or who died and they feel guilty for living or being able to do what the other could not. In essence they wish to join the lost sibling. This will result in poor health for themself or some other dysfunction in their lives, as in essence they are saying NO to life, NO to goodness, abundance, health and vitality. They are saying I don’t deserve this or I have no right to this. It is self sacrifice out of loyalty, out of love and entanglement with the fate of the other.
Instead of dying for the other choose to stay a while longer, choose to live fully for them, to do what they could not do, to achieve whatever you desire and to join them when it is your proper time. Whether it was a sibling who died young, your parent or your own child, you do not have to follow them into the grave. You can live and hold them in your heart, feel them in your heart. They are there, their energy is available to you. Your ancestors long dead watch you, pray for you and send you love. They want you to succeed and to advance the family line. It is okay to feel your sadness and to move through it back to peace and happiness.
Another type of entanglement which sounds a little more bizarre, occurs with past relatives whom you may not have even met. It is possible that a young woman having difficulties with infertility is actually entangled with a great Aunt who never married. The energetic connection is such that the present soul put up their hand to relate, to repeat the pattern that occurred in the family line. The same occurs with members of the family who suffered tragedies such as loss of a loved one, death, murder, suicide, etc. A present family member who is connected to the past ancestor may also have suicidal thoughts or mental health problems, they may have financial difficulties or other challenges in life.
Sometimes it is as if the current family member is atoning for the sins of the previous ancestor – they struggle to make up for the wrong doing of the other. In different situations it is as if the family member present today chooses the same fate out of love for the other, wanting to empathise with them. Either way it is not helpful to the present person and it hinders their ability to live their life fully.
When the entanglement is identified and healed the person is free to live how they like. They can consciously honour the past family member and their fate, but choose to be free of the entanglement now, with love and respect, bowing to the ancestor and leaving it with them. This is core Family Constellations work and it is beautful to watch these resolutions occur and people being freed from the knots that have bound them and limited their ability to enjoy their lives. With the knots untied they can walk forward easily to do what they wish, without hindrance. May we all walk freely and enjoy our lives. Blessed BE. Amen.
The family soul is the collective energy that surrounds a lineage of people from the same family. It contains all the memories and experiences of everyone in the family.
When there is trauma or exclusion a wound occurs to the family soul, a distortion of the energy, so instead of love flowing through the family line, pain now flows from the ancestors to the current and future generations. This also occurs when the orders of love are reversed, for instance if a parent is absent and a child does not receive the nurturing and connection it needs. The absence may be due to war, abandonment, physically if a child is given up for adoption or if a parent themselves is sick, unavailable emotionally or physically. When a parent is ill or emotionally unavailable, often the child will try to ‘give’ to the parent to help them cope or feel better. The child takes on responsibilities that are not theirs to carry – it may be helping out a lot around the house or caring for the other children or even caring for the parent. The orders of love are reversed in this instance as the flow of energy is child to parent, instead of it being the parent giving and the child receiving.
It also occurs when someone is excluded from the family, because everyone does belong to the family system, no matter what they have done. Excluding someone is like throwing a block, a big boulder into the flow of the family soul, the river of lifeforce energy flowing to all people. The block diminishes the amount of energy available to all people. Worse it creates a tear in the fabric of the family soul that will only be healed when that excluded person is bought back into your heart. If this does not occur, someone in future generations will subconsciously choose to relate to the excluded person and will end up feeling like they are not accepted or don’t belong, they will repeat the fate of the excluded individual as the family system attempts to heal the wound.
It is just like our personal journeys where life presents us with a repeating situation until we learn the lesson. This is the same thing, but at the family level. Discovering this enables those who are suffering to resolve it by welcoming the excluded person back into their heart, energetically welcoming them back to the family system and restoring them to their rightful place. This allows the lifeforce energy to then flow freely again to all members. This occurs at the soul level, energetic level, it does not have to be physically and often it is an ancestor long dead who was excluded and in need of reconnection to their rightful place in the family.
If there has been trauma in the family system, be it war, violence in the home, tragedy from loss of children, divorce, early death of parents, etc then this trauma can also pass through the family system to the current and future generations. It is as if the unresolved pain seeps through the blood of all involved instead of love, strength and support. This too can be healed so that those affected are freed from their over reactions to situations, the inappropriate feelings or thoughts they may have that don’t seem to be appropriate or consistent with their life experiences. For instance persistent suicidal thoughts or depression or anxiety could actually be resulting from entanglements with past family members, you are feeling their feelings, they are not actually your thoughts. These cease once the wound in the family soul is healed by acknowledging the tragedy, the loss and giving it it’s rightful place, allowing all to feel and move through the situation, instead of being stuck and controlled by it.
The family soul is a container of energy around all members of the same lineage, when all is well in a family you can feel the flow of love, flowing from the ancestors to yourself and the other current family members. This energy strengthens you, supports you and encourages you to live your life as you wish to do so, for you are the leading edge of consciousness, the person now evolving while here on Earth and expanding the consciousness within the family. The ancestors want you to succeed and do well, they want you to thrive and advance the family line. This is life as it was meant to be. This support is available once you heal any blockages to its flow. It is worth doing and quite easy when you know how.
There are many methods that can help. Family constellations is one of these, where the field supplies the information about what is missing and blocked and needs to be resolved within the family system. The challenge then is to feel what needs to be felt, forgive all involved and welcome them back into your heart. It is a similar task to our personal issues, just with some larger influences. It is a part of our evolution, our connectedness and oneness with the fabric of life. So be it. Amen.