What to do when you feel broken?

There are days when you wake up and feel broken, like it is all too hard. Sometimes these will be rare and sometimes common. It just means you are in a process of change. Old muck is surfacing to be released – old pains, fears, doubts, disappointments and hurts. When this occurs it can feel like nothing is changing and life won’t get any better, but it already is better. You are just releasing the old, to see more clearly.

Your lives are okay as they are, it is your judgement of them that creates the pain. There may be things you would like to have change, this will occur in time, but dwelling on it, getting upset, angry or depressed about it, doesn’t resolve it in anyway. Feel and release the emotion, then take steps to create what you want – action is needed for change to manifest. Action on releasing your hurts, altering your thinking and action to change your every day habits and behaviours. If you always do what you have always done, is it surprising that you get the same outcome. Change is inevitable, it will come in small or large ways, chosen or forced on you by life events.

If you are feeling low, broken, sad, angry, hurt, know your body is asking for your attention, for your help to clear out the old and refill your body with lighter energy, a higher vibration outcome for all concerned.

If you are feeling so flat that you can’t be bothered doing anything, accept that and rest. Don’t fight it. If you are feeling lost and confused, wait for clarity, pray for guidance, meditate. There is no point trying to make a decision, it is not the right time. Wait for clarity to dawn, then act.

You can take baby steps towards improving your life, but in reality your life is okay, it is the way you are thinking about it, judging it that is causing you stress and anxiety. So what if you don’t love your job or you are alone or your friends don’t treat you the way you would like. Are you treating yourself kindly? lovingly? Work on your self first, on self love and when you anchor that in, you will see more goodness in the world and attract it in.

If you are exhausted, recovering from illness or a disappointment in life, of course you are going to feel flat. Don’t judge it, fight it, resist it. Accept it and honour your body’s needs. If it need rest, then rest. If it needs nourishment then eat some yummy, feel good, hopefully healthy food. If you need some fun, have it, even if it is just reading a comic or watching TV or chatting to a friend on the phone.

Do what you need to do to let your vibration rise and for you to start to feel better. A bath, a walk on the beach or out in nature will help wonders. Soothing music, candles, aromatherapy – lots can be done to life your mood simply and cheaply.

It is not always going to feel like this. Your body is processing past hurts and issues that you are remembering. If you are doubting your abilities, don’t wallow, find a way to build your skills if that is the issue, or to practice what you are concerned about, so that you feel more confident doing it. There’s always a way forward, you just have to be prepared to take it.

Choose kindness to yourself and others, and know that there is support around you at all times. Seen and not seen, physical and non-physical. There are beings of light watching over you, encouraging you, caring for you, holding your hand from afar. You can call on them, your ancestors and others who have passed over to assist you, support you, to hold you while you are feeling vulnerable. There is lots of support out there. Reach out for it when you need it and give it when you are feeling better. Everyone has their ups and downs, know it is just a phase and choose peace. Don’t fight against what is, just ease your way forward, helping your body in whatever way it needs. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (14 October 2017).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

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Stop carrying responsibility for Mum and Dad’s issues – healing family trauma

Are the emotions you struggle with yours? Science has now shown how unfinished trauma is passed on genetically to future generations. We carry the wounds of our ancestors in an attempt to heal it. This process and ways to help release what you carry is explained in the attached article.

For example: Did your mom or dad reject their sadness and grief? Are you, or your kids, depressed or always grieving?

Did they hide or bury their anger? Are you or your children unusually angry, or did you choose an angry partner? Or perhaps you can’t access your anger at all, while feeling depressed and broken?

Did they disown their need for love and intimacy? Do you hunger for love and yet cannot find it?

Family systems seek wholeness by re-creating what was disowned by previous generations. These later generations (ours and our children’s) try to bring this wholeness by acting out rejected family aspects.

Family Constellation work shows us when these patterns run our lives and how to disentangle from them.

Depression: why it is so common and effective lifestyle changes that reduce it

In this 22 minute TED talk Stephen Ildari explains that depression largely results from us living busy, stressful lives that our bodies are not designed for. Our DNA and bodies are basically still geared for a hunter gatherer lifestyle, where there may be moments of stress such as when you are facing a bear or tiger, but then once you have run away or fought the predator, the stress reduces and your body gets to relax.

For most of us today our lives are constantly stressful and busy, resulting in a prolonged stress response and being in fight or flight much of the time. This is detrimental to the body and over time results in depression. Our bodies simply have not adapted to this massive change of lifestyle yet, and the result is the epidemic in depression. One in nine Americans over the age of 12 is taking an anti-depressant.

Stephe Ildari advocates for a change in lifestyle to reduce stress, improve your body’s neurochemistry and decrease depression. He outlines a 6 step Therapeutic Lifestyle Change (TLC) program to beat depression without medication.

His research has demonstrated that the TLC program is an effective treatment for depression, with over 70% of patients experiencing a favorable response, as measured by symptom reduction of at least 50%. That is a lot of relief!!!!! The 6 steps are:

  1. Exercise – he claims exercise is more effective than any pill. Just brisk walking for 30 minutes, 3 times a week can help a lot.
  2. Omega 3 Fatty Acids – our bodies can’t make Omega 3 and 6, we need to get them from our diet. He recommends a supplement that gives you a 1000 mg of EPA and 500 mg of DHA per day.
  3. Sunlight – he recommends that people get at least 30 minutes of bright light exposure per day.
  4. Healthy Sleep – at least 8 hours sleep a night is needed
  5. Anti-ruminative activity – stop yourself ruminating on negative thoughts and feelings. Focus instead on doing something pleasant, calling a friend, exercise or journalling.
  6. Social connection – resist the urge to isolate, reach out and connect to people, socialise and you will feel better.

Doing the above will help your body to relax and return to a greater state of peace and happiness. To learn more about Stephen Ildari’s program visit his Therapeutic Lifestyle Change website.


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How do you know what you really want?

Life presents you with many opportunities to have what is your heart’s deepest joy – love, connection, inner peace, but you cannot feel these things fully until you clear out the blocks to them.

Throughout life all beings suffer in some way. All have layers of disappointment, hurt, betrayal, emotional pain locked inside them. This forms a wall or barrier to not let people truly close again, just in case they may hurt you in some way. Depending on how much pain depends on how strong the defensive wall.

For some people the wall is small and you can just hop over it. They easily form attachments and can enjoy life connected to others, showing who they really are and feeling relatively safe to do so.

For others the wall is massive, you cannot get anywhere near them without shutters going up, dragons flying over the moat and alligators snapping their jaws warning you to stay away. This extreme reaction shows the person has deep emotional pain stored inside. They are scared to connect, scared to be hurt again, and scared to love. They desperately want love and connection, to feel safe and accepted, but have deemed it too risky. They have turned away from love, from the essence of life feeling it is too risky. They say “No to life”. No to receiving whatever closeness is on offer to them, no to feeling peace, joy, happiness, abundantly fulfilled. They stay locked in pain, in isolation, sad and alone, because it feels too risky to let people in, to feel vulnerable and feel and release the emotional pain inside.

Such a person’s heart is weighed down with grief and what it truly wants is to be free from this, so that it can beat strongly with passion, with zest for life, leading the person forward to embrace the activities that person loves to do and will gain most fulfilment and personal growth from. The heart beat is the signal home, listening to the heart and its messages is the journey. Unloading the emotional pain, the baggage, the unneeded passegers or defense that talk to you in your head – these are the pit stops along the way, and the further you go, the better you feel, the more space you have, as you let go of that which weighs you down and isn’t needed.

Many people resist the jouney, they don’t know how to feel safe and access the emotional pain that needs to be released. They try to push it away, pretend it isn’t there instead. This just clogs your arteries, blocks the fuel lines and leads to your engine not working properly. You are still on the journey, you are just making it harder, creating suffering through your resistance. Eventually the pressure will become so strong that the radiator will blow, forcing yout to stop and pay attention, to do the maintenance needed, so that you and your vehicle (your body) can function effectively again and travel where you need to go.

Life is a journey of healing, of expansion and what the heart really wants is to be heard, to sing joyously as it goes on meeting people deeply with love and joy for life, celebrating all that is and the opportunity to evolve that is given to us by being here on Earth.

Once the heart is free from the weight of emotional pain, the connection to self and Source also deepens, enabling it to share great wisdom and messages with you, to guide you forth to your destined purpose here on Earth. This will be something you love doing, something that makes your heart sing and is of benefit to others, something you do and time passes quickly without you realising it because you are so deeply immersed in it and enjoying it. These are clues of your purpose, your true joys, your real heart’s desire. It will be different for all of us, but the first step to accessing it is the clearing out of the old baggage, the accumulated emotional pain, so you can step forward joyously in life.

apple loveLife will help you do this, it will guide you forth – to the right book, course, movie or song to trigger you so you feel and hopefully release the emotional pain. The right people, situations and events will happen to force you to face what is stored inside, to stop and listen to your heart and its messages. The more you choose to do this consciously – through stillness, meditation and dialogue with your heart, the less life needs to bring painful situations to make you listen.

When you consciously choose to tune into your body and invite it to share with you what needs to be felt and released it will. The body holds all of our tension, stress and trauma locked into the cells and muscles. It is this build up of unexpressed emotions, of not honouring how we feel or not speaking our truth when we wanted to that leads to the tightening up of our necks, backs, shoulders – the parts of us that lock up and ache with tension and stress.

One way to release this is using Trauma and Tension Release Exercises (TRE). It is a way of accessing the body’s own natural mechanism for releasing stress, tension and trauma. It is a tremoring process – the body shakes out that which it no longer needs. The shaking uses up the adrenaline and cortisol that get built up in the body when we are triggered into fight, flight or freeze and don’t run or fight.

When we swallow how we feel because it isn’t appropriate to tell your boss how you really feel or to tell your In-Laws that you don’t want them to visit again, that tension, that triggered charge gets shoved down into the body. TRE helps to release it. It lets your nervous system unwind, to use up the stress chemicals and relax back down to its calm state.

TRE can be learned in an individual appointment online or an appointment in person. Once learned you can use it regularly for the rest of your life to release tension, stress and trauma, so it doesn’t build up in your body and you can live in a more relaxed and joyous way. It’s well worth learning it as a self-care technique that you can use to support yourself.

It is up to you to choose to face what is within, so you can be free of it and enjoy life more fully, loving and connected to self, others and Source. It is worth the effort and Jodi-Anne and others can show you how. There are many guides along the way who have parts of the map that they can share with you to make the journey easier. Noone has all the puzzle pieces. We are all learning and growing together. Each has its own way, unique to them, others can only point the way. It is up to you to heed the messages from deep within that will guide you to freedon and Heaven on Earth. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (20 November 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How to love your wounded child back to love and innocence.

inner-childYour 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.

By Jodi-Anne (15 October 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How to let go of disappointment and expect the best?

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?”.

toddler-sulkingIt 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.

pathThere 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.

By Jodi-Anne (08 October 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

What is the family soul?

reflective-treeThe 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.

By Jodi-Anne (15 September 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How to let life be easy?

amazing-nature-sunrise-hd-wallpaperLife can be easy, very easy, if you don’t fight against what is. Wars happen, corruption exists. This doesn’t mean you ignore it or allow it to continue, it just means you don’t fight against it. You do what you can peacefully to make a difference, to serve the whole, then you let go and surrender.

All is happening as it is for a reason, it is part of the evolutionary process occurring here on Earth. It will take time for violence and hatred to stop. Fighting against it will prolong it. Choosing love and peace, alignment to Source, accepting what is, living peacably wtih love and kindness to all helps reduce it. It is more peace that is needed on the planet. More open hearted, loving people willing to serve  for the benefit of all. Each of you can make that choice and positively impact all those around you.

You don’t have to save the planet or stop a mass murder. All you need to do is love. Open your heart and love, your positive vibration will then travel out making it easier for others to do the same. When you heal your own wounds, you help to heal the wounds of many in the collective who have experienced the same thing as you. That is enough. That is all you need to do.

In healing yourself you become a catalyst for others. Just drop out of your head, into your heart and LOVE.  That is all the world needs, more loving vibrations, then the fighting will stop, the pain will be resolved and peace will reign.

So stop thinking you have to do so much, effort so hard, try to rescue or save anyone. Just flow and BE. Let life guide you where you need to be and bring you who you need to interact with for your and their highest good. It will all come to you, just stay alert to your intuition, your inner guidance and the synchronicities around you.

Trust the process of life to lead you forth, to your greatest unfolding here on Earth, to embody your higher self and shine your light and be of service. That is what life is about, to be authentically you, shining your light for all to see, inspiring them to do the same, to let go of all pretenses and pretending, to let go of hiding and staying small to be safe, to let go of defense mechanisms and armour, to feel and be safe in the arms of the Divine and your fellow man, to love and accept yourself fully as the wonderful child of God that you are, to treat yourself with kindness and tenderness as you grow, as you slip and fall and rise again, as you process each wave of energy, emotion and past density, to come back into your state of innocence and love, birthing your authentic self here on the planet, flowing with ease and grace, wherever life takes you.

That is how you let life be easy, by flowing with it, accepting what comes, what goes and trusting in life to lead you forth. No rigid agenda – surrender and flexibility, allowing what is and what will be to birth in divine timing and divine will. All is as it should be, now and forever more. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (24 July 2016).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How to love yourself fully?

Most people do not fully love themselves. They may like themselves a bit, think that they are okay, but they don’t cherish the precious being that they are. They don’t look at themselves with love and reverence. They don’t honour their bodily needs and treat themselves with the respectful thought, touch and actions that they would do for others.

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Many of us have been taught to dislike ourselves. Life has shown us evidence that we are not lovable, good enough or okay. This is false evidence. It was just the interpretation of events that were not actually about you, even if it seemed they were.

Parents can rarely meet all needs of a child. It is too much to ask for. That is why traditionally they say it takes a tribe to raise a child. When one is tired and needs to rest, another steps in to care for the child. That way interactions can be mostly positive, loving, nurturing and accepting.

In today’s way of being parents are often trying to do it on their own or with occasional support from family or friends. The parents are tired, coping with work, money concerns, their own stuff as well as caring for the child. Out of exhaustion and frustration it is harder for all their interactions to be loving and kind to the child. There are times when they simply have nothing left to give and may feel resentful of the child and its needs. They may wish the child didn’t exist or they could give them away. This is just exhaustion. Just a lack of support in the way that modern life operates.

The children however can sense the above. They feel that Mum or Dad is not available, distant, angry or upset. They feel the absence of love and joy when Mum is depressed and lonely, struggling to cope. While the parents actions are not really about the baby itself, it will feel like it is. It’s not that it is the baby’s personality, the being that it is, that is the issue. It is the demands of parenthood in a time when that role is undervalued and unappreciated. It could be any baby and it would get the same response. However, as a baby and a child growing up we do assume it is about us personally. We may think ‘if only I was prettier, smarter, more like Mum, Dad, brother, sister – whoever does get the attention more easily – if only I was like them then I’d be lovable. Then I’d be okay’. This is the foundation of self loathing, self rejection and self denial. We start manipulating who we are to please others, to get approval, to fit in and receive love. It is all about LOVE.

In the early stages of life we need to be nurtured and looked after by others, mainly our families and friends who care for us and our welfare. Without touch and care babies do not thrive and gain weight. It physically damages them to be left alone and not cared for. Uncontrolled crying, being left to cry, actually releases cortisol into the baby’s blood stream, a stress hormone, that eats away, dissolves parts of the baby’s brain. It actually damages the brain physically.

So don’t let babies cry. Find a way to be there for them. Ask for help and support when you need it. Go outside into nature and let the Earth’s energy support you if no one else is around. Ensure that you do have plans in place for those times when your personal reserves are empty, when your gas tank is on zero. Have someone you can call on or text that can come help.

Do loving and nurturing things to reduce your stress levels and support your body. Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) is a process you can use at home whenever you like to reduce tension, stress and trauma. It helps you to come out of overwhelm, to calm down and relax, so it is easier to deal with life’s challenges and connect with others. It soothes your nervous system making it easier to face the day ahead and the tasks you must complete.

The breakdown of community and isolation that most people live in, makes connection so much harder. So many people are lonely, scared to reach out to others for fear of rejection or further loss and pain. Instead they hide at home with their pets who provide them with their main source of love and affection.

If so many people are feeling lonely, unloved or deep down feeling perhaps they aren’t lovable, don’t deserve love or will never be loved, shouldn’t we just all take the risk to love each other, to meet each others needs? Acknowledge we are all carrying wounds around this and beliefs about ourselves that we need to change, emotional pain that needs to be felt and released, so that we can realise we are perfectly okay as we are. Take a step today and reach out to another human being. Offer your friendship, your love, your time and see what happens. Not all will accept, but some might and you only need one or two to start with. Offer them your heart and say ‘I will love and accept you as you are, will you do the same for me?‘ You may not say this out loud, but energetically it is what you are wishing to portray. Get out there, join social, sporting, art or other types of groups. Do what makes your heart sing and you will start to feel more fulfilled and full of love as you honour yourself and treat yourself in more loving ways.

There is much that you can do to show yourself that you are loved, lovable and deserving of good things in life. Tell your friends how you feel and you will be surprised that they feel that way too. We all have some self doubt and insecurities. We all have issues we are working through. Sometimes sharing with others is good. Other times put that aside and just have fun. Just go out and have fun.

This is how you love yourself fully, by honouring your own needs and meeting them. By doing for yourself what your parents could not do. You choose to be there for yourself, to meet your needs, to rest when needed and have fun. You follow your heart’s messages and do what it desires. You risk opening up and connecting with others who feel safe and play together, honouring each other.

Love is not hard. It is our natural state, the most natural thing for us to do. We have just been conditioned to be wary of it due to life experiences. It could be school events where you were bullied or teased. It could be workplace incidents that led you to feel incompetent or not good enough. These issues can occur at any time of our life, but the seed of them is planted during our time in the womb and as a baby.

A foetus knows whether it is wanted or not wanted while growing in the Mother’s womb. The foetus receives the Mother’s blood supply and all the molecules of emotion it contains, through the umbilical cord. It carries this from the start, this knowing, and it forms the start of its identity. Preconception, pregnancy and birth truly are significant and important events which shape the personality of the child and its feeling of being loved or not, safe or not, wanted or not. These are times when tenderness and care are needed. When loving touch is needed. Ensure that these are times of love and joy, and your baby will flourish and grow with less doubts about self and his/her self worth.

deserve good lifeThe important thing to realise is everyone goes through this. We are all carrying degrees of ‘Am I okay?’ questioning. Realise you are. You are enough. You are perfectly enough exactly as you are. Find the courage to show yourself to the world and stand strong in who you are. You don’t need to play games for approval or modify yourself to fit in. Let it go and be yourself. Let it go and be happy with what you have and who you are. As you do so your inner world will flourish and your outer world will alter to match it. You are okay. You are lovable, and you do deserve the best in life. Do the healing necessary so you believe in yourself and live life freely as the beautiful human being that you are. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (8 Dec 2015).

Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

How to overcome the tendency to isolate?

People isolate themselves when they are feeling overwhelmed by life. They may have been hurt badly and not trust anyone or they may be fearful and depressed. Either way hiding out alone feels safer than risking contact with a world that to them seems harsh, unforgiving, cruel and threatening.

Life is not like that at all. You are always surrounded in the love of God/Source Energy, however, most people are so busy in their heads that they don’t notice it. You rush from one place, one task, one test to the next. You don’t rest fully in the peace of God/Source Energy, in your heart or spend time in nature deeply connecting to the Earth and your true nature.

People rush, rush, rush and then feel exhausted, then they wonder why they have no energy to enjoy life, to go and have fun. They get caught up in negative thoughts and conditioning, which just play out on an endless loop, until they wake up from this state of exhaustion and seek the light.

Sadly all this busy-ness has led to diminished connections with other people. It is rare for you to stop and meet another fully, to look into their eyes and feel their essence, to hear what is going on in their hearts and to talk honestly, truthfully about their experience of life.

empty-cup

You are all walking around like empty cups. Your cups should be filled with love and be over flowing from you to others. Connecting to God, to nature, to each other deeply fills your cup. But most people, nearly everyone, thinks they are too busy to slow down and have their cup filled.

If conflict occurs and you feel fearful, your cup is drained of the little amount of love you have in it. Then you feel empty, drained, exhausted. You know that it was the conflict with that person who led to you feeling drained, so you vow to isolate yourself from people like that, so you don’t get drained further. But in isolating yourself out of fear your cup stays empty. You get stuck in fear and that is the opposite vibration of love.

To love fully you need to be filling your own cup from God/Source/Nature, then you have so much love it doesn’t matter if a little conflict occurs. You will be able to respond to it more lovingly and be less affected by it as your cup is full and over flowing. Instead of getting upset, angry or blaming the person for negatively affecting you, you would simply send them love, feel compassion for them, as they are obviously having a hard time and have an empty cup.

So the key to feeling good is not to isolate out of fear, but to connect with love to God/Source/Nature, to listen to your heart and do things that bring you joy. Do this and your cup is filled, then it is easier to face the other aspects of life.

With people that you do feel safe and good around, make sure you take the time to connect, to talk heart to heart, to fel seen, heard, validated. You will never have that kind of connection with everyone, but when your cup is full the interactions that are less pleasant don’t bother you so much.

Yes you should have boundaries between yourself and those who disrespect you, abuse you or take advantage of you. That is self love, to say no to their demands. But make sure you spend time with those who do love you, respect you and treat you well. Don’t isolate and hide – at home, in social media, in work, etc. Come out into the open and breathe in fresh air, absorb the love, take the risk to open your heart and be present to what life is bringing you. It is all helping you grow and all leading you forward to a higher vibration, to the vibration of love. It is a process, a long one for many who resist out of fear, but know you will get there in the end, everyone will.

When you are isolating out of fear it is like you are stuck, frozen, unable to move and life life fully. Symbolically, that is what is also occurring within you. Any buried emotions, trauma, stress and tension gets held in your body, in your muscles and it is this stuck energy that leads to physical pain such as aching backs, shoulders, hips knees, necks. It is this tension, this rigidity, locked-in that stops our bodies from moving fluidly, from gliding with ease through life.

When our body gets locked up tight so does our thinking. It becomes less flexible. We see more in black and white terms. We see less love and goodness in the world because we are seeing through the lens of pain, of tightness, of soreness, of defeat, anger, disappointment and fear. The way we feel inside our body affects our thoughts and way of seeing in the world. We see less opportunity for change, for improvement. We slump down into resignation, shut down, overwhelm. We curl into a ball to protect ourself.

All of this inner tension, stress and pain can be eased if we use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to activate the body’s natural process for releasing that tension, stress and trauma.

The body has a way to ‘shake it off’, to cleanse that energy adn use up all of the fight/flight molecules stored in the body from all the times when we were triggered, but didn’t fight back, run away or speak our truth. All the cortisol and adrenaline was released into our blood stream to prime us to act, but we didn’t so it never got used up and these chemicals stay in the body as incomplete trauma activations. They build up and it is part of what causes our muscles to then tighen up and ache.

TRE can help you to shake out those energies, to complete the trauma activations, so that your body can finally open back up, relax, see and feel more clearly from the now, rather than feeling from the past. Clearing out that stress and tension enables you to see differently, to have easier social interactions, to feel more playful and safe.

When our body is tight, wound up, on hyper-alert, of course it is hard to play or joyfully interact with others, but that all changes when you complete the trauma activations and enable your body to come out of high alert back into peace. It is well worth doing so you can come out of isolation and enjoy life.

When you have healed the hurts in your body, it is much easier to open your heart, to love yourself, others and just BE. You can be present to all that occurs, choosing faith and peace, knowing it is all perfect and all of life is made of God and is doing God’s will. There are no bad people or places or choices, just learning opportunities. Just people who have closed their hearts to love and the light and who will open back up in time. Nothing to do or force, just trust God’s plan and love all that arises.

Send love to your fear, to your pain and to your sadness. Send love to those who you perceive have harmed you. That is what they need most, love. Noone who is feeling good about themself and is at peace within would willingly hurt another. They know that to do so hurts themself. So know that anyone who does hurt you is suffering, they are struggling within themself and with life.

You don’t need to accept the poor treatment, but try to send them love instead of hate or anger or judgement. They are judging themselves harshly and that is what leads to their angst. It can be torture when you are stuck in self defeating patterns of self judgement, self hate and self loathing.

Sadly many people speak to themselves more harshly than they would speak to others. They beat themselves up internally calling themselves names and feeling not good enough. It can be a very dark place. Know that noone will treat you as badly as you treat yourself!

When you are in that dark place the whole world seems dark, but the light is there, just waiting for you to see it and let it in. This is the process of awakening to love, light, God, peace and joy. This is the path back to wholeness. Become your own best friend, be loving and kind to yourself, say nice things about yourself to yourself. Be the loving parent you wished you had.

As you become more loving to you internally, the outside world will mirror it, bringing you people who treat you with more kindness and love. Life is just a mirror showing us what we still have to heal.

Heal it and see the truth, there is nothing but love around us. Anything else is an illusion created by our minds out of fear, judgement and hate. Heal it and you wil see peace, joy and beauty wherever you go. for it is there, we just have to clear out the blocks, the filters to seeing it. Blessed BE. Amen.

Remember everyone is on this journey, you are all isolating out of fear to some degree, not showing your true self for fear of rejection or ridicule. Yet you all are longing for love and acceptance, so why not give it. Just love everyone as they are. If you could do this the pain and fear will drop away and you will all feel safer, happier and more able to enjoy life fully. Choose to love and be loving, that is the key. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (5 November 2015).

Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.