Choose Your Own (Healing) Adventure

Greetings! Thanks for stopping by; I hope I can shed some light and spark some insight that helps you on your journey. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but am happy to report on my experiences and observations.

If you’re on a spiritual path, the process of integrating all the parts of yourself will eventually reveal any suppressed emotions lurking beneath the surface. When they come up, perhaps you will choose to accept them so they don’t continue to clog the flow of energy in your system.

Or maybe you’ll stuff them back down, in which case, you’ll have another chance some time in the future. No worries, they’ll come around again and again until you finally take the meeting.

You’ll notice that I don’t prescribe a black and white approach. We’re all different and I think it’s best to feel into what you’re needing in each moment. I also don’t believe that this is a comprehensive list of options. These are the techniques I’ve found to be helpful for myself and my clients, but I’m sure there’s more that I don’t yet know.

Modern culture promotes distraction, which might feel good temporarily, but only prolongs the inevitable disruption, which often occurs at the least opportune moment. You have probably experienced this at least once in your life. Or hundreds of times if you’re like me. 🙄

There’s nothing wrong with taking a break from feeling the discomfort and choosing distraction, but you might like to consider a strategy that has minimal side effects.

For example, I love beer. A few sips will take the edge off and leave me feeling lighter. But it wrecks my gut, wreaks havoc on my sleep pattern, disrupts my hormones, muddles my mind and causes hot flashes. The price is quite high for a few hours of escape. Watching a silly movie can do the same thing without the side effects.

Sweets are always tempting, but the next day I am visited by extremely unpleasant nerve pain. Online shopping is good for a lovely diversion until the credit card bill comes. Better to read an entertaining novel or dabble in my art journal and skip the detrimental consequences.

Knowing when to check out to preserve our resources is a valuable skill. And knowing when to check in and do the work so we can heal and be free of unnecessary limitations, is a superpower.

When you’re feeling up for facing the challenging emotions, know that you don’t need to do it alone. You can rely on your soul’s guidance as well as the infinite power of the divine. (Some people call this power God, Goddess, Source Energy, the Universe, Love or Spirit. You can call it whatever makes it easiest for you to connect.)

Bringing your own attention to any upset is an incredible balm. Sitting with yourself, your emotions, wounds and limitations with a compassionate presence will activate the healing process. Reiki is really helpful for regulating the nervous system so you can stay tuned in to your inner wisdom when the urge to run away or get busy organizing your junk drawer or crawl under the covers comes up. It can help soothe the survival responses and amplify your efforts, but your attention is the primary remedy.

When you’re tuned in to your soul, you might be guided to metabolize the energy that flows when the blockages begin to melt. Your body might want to move vigorously in order to process stress hormones or your senses might crave certain stimuli. You might want solitude or good company, a hot bath or a cool shower. When the motivation is coming from your soul, it will have a less urgent quality than when it’s a compulsion from the sympathetic nervous system. Over time, with practice, you’ll easily distinguish the difference.

If you’re dealing with trauma, limiting beliefs that have been hardwired through cultural conditioning or ancestral patterns, you might want to get some support. Reiki can also help with this, as can counseling, somatic therapies, and EMDR, just to name a few modalities.

We can also work with the divine in its expression as nature. One way to do this is to give the intense emotions more space by using the power of nature to dilute them. When I spend time in the woods, on a mountain or at the beach, the innate energies of these places can diffuse harsh feelings. It doesn’t necessarily change the emotions, but creates more spaciousness so they feel less intense.

Another technique is to use imagery and a process of surrendering that which is no longer serving us. Imagine dropping your fears and worries into a volcano and watching them dissolve into the molten lava, shooting them into outer space where they fizzle in the stratosphere or hurling them into the sea to be swallowed by a whale. You can play with different symbolic images of giving over your difficulties to forces that are big enough to handle them.

If you have a relationship with a higher power, prayer is a tremendous support. You can give your troubles to the divine and pray for trust that you will be guided.

The trick is to not retrieve the worry or suffering after offering it over!

It’s in our nature to be comfortable with the suffering we know and to get attached to the familiar. I often find myself needing to surrender a problem over and over and over again. I seem to be addicted to the belief that my ego-mind is the authority in charge of creating solutions; however, it’s really only interested in keeping me in my cramped comfort zone.

You might find that a combination of these tools is needed. That prayer is more effective when also bringing awareness and kindness towards yourself while lying in a meadow under the stars. That shadow boxing and journaling go quite well with cute cate videos when you need a break.

Photo by Loan on Unsplash

There’s no one-size-fits-all rule when it comes to healing. The goal is to integrate all parts of ourselves, to reassemble body, mind, heart and soul into one cohesive unit. The more connected you are with your inner guidance, the easier it will be to find your starting point, that loose end of yarn in the big, tangled mess.

Taking some quiet time on a daily basis to drop in and be with yourself, to befriend yourself, to listen to your inner voice will be invaluable on your healing journey.

Distraction, metabolism, presence, compassionate attention, diffusion, surrender, imagery. Consider these ingredients available for your healing endeavors. You can experiment with mixing them into different recipes depending on what will be most supportive on any given day.

I like to start my mornings by checking in with myself and seeing what’s brewing before the day’s activities take over my headspace. There are many benefits to having a daily practice, including deactivating potential landmines before they have a chance to blow up, building capacity to be with discomfort, greater resilience and more ease in returning to homeostasis if things do occasionally explode.

Most importantly, please know that stored emotions will arise and this is a normal, natural occurrence when you are on a healing journey. It isn’t a problem and there’s nothing wrong with you. Know that you’re on your way to a more peaceful and joyful place, but first you have to release some of the debris that bogs you down.

Healing is sometimes messy. That’s ok. Keep going anyway.

I’d love to hear how you work with your emotions. Is there a technique you find especially helpful? Do any of the above thoughts sound intriguing?

If you found this article helpful, please hit the heart button so others might find it too. That has the added benefit of making me smile. 😃