I call myself a healer very reluctantly.
As a writer I care about words, and the word “healer” is one of my least favorite—because it’s a word that simply makes no sense to anyone!
To some it conjures up images of snake-oil salesmen or the relic merchants of the middle-ages—and understandably so. For so many years people have been offering solace as a false promise, as a lie.
To others it conjures up hope—the hope that this or that “healer” can truly “heal” me. And again—understandably so. How easy it is to feel powerless in this world and to fall into the trap of believing that salvation lies in the hands of another—perhaps more charismatic, more seemingly powerful, more at-ease—individual.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Let’s forget about the misuse of the word ‘healing’, and look at what we know about real healing:
What happens when you cut yourself?
Your body heals itself. Your body heals itself automatically, and if you really think about it, it’s nothing short of miraculous.
And this is the key to understanding real healing work. I don’t really heal anyone. I just help people along on the journey to self-healing. I see myself more as an Empowerer—but try telling that to people in response to the question: “What do you do?”!
In my last piece of writing—Why Life is So Difficult Today (& Mankind in Such a Mess)—I said that our problems are caused by subconscious blockages that are the result of trauma. At the end of that piece I said that I’d explain how to heal those blockages… here goes:
Wild animals, after surviving trauma, go through a process that scientists call “completing trauma.” This usually looks like a shaking of the body. The theory is that the accumulated energy of the nervous system’s survival response (usually fight or flight—otherwise freeze) is being shaken out, released.
Human beings, at some point in our evolution, stopped “completing” trauma. Instead, we internalize it.
The energy is suppressed.
What happens to that energy is that it creates a blockage. And the blockage can be on a number of levels—physical, emotional, or psychological. But what is being blocked is the natural ability of our organism and mind to heal, and express itself freely.
Now, to remove the blockage (in order to facilitate true self-healing—which is what my job is, and the job of any healer / therapist worth their salt)—what we have to understand is what happened in the moment of trauma.
First of all, we survived. And really, that’s the key because it’s our relationship to survival and safety that has caused us the problem in the first place:
Because our search for safety has defined the vast part of our evolution.
Only relatively recently has safety become fairly assured, but our bodies haven’t caught up with that realization—hence our love for gossip, fear, stress, “bad news,” horror movies, etc. These things affirm our deeply rooted (although unfounded) fears.
Actually, the definition of trauma (in its broadest sense) is feeling unsafe (and if you think about that deeply enough you’ll realize that you’ve been through a lot of trauma).
And whenever we feel unsafe we almost literally regress back to our most primal form. We bypass many millennia of evolution and function momentarily in a very simple way: our intellectual potential (head) and emotional capacities (heart) are suspended, and we operate purely on the level of instinct—
in other words, in the gut.
What that means, in practical terms, is that our survival instincts kick in and our body reacts in whatever way necessary to keep us safe—almost always a variation of either Fight or Flight, or if either of those aren’t possible, Freeze.
And then, as scientists have observed, we suppress the energy of the trauma.
The problem is that as we suppress the energy of the trauma we also subconsciously associate safety / survival and whatever instinct kept us safe. In other words if you had to fight to survive, you continue to subconsciously associate fighting with safety!
“I have to fight to survive.”
In that case you may well often revert to aggressive behaviour in order to “survive” any future moment when you feel unsafe. Explains much of the abusive behaviour in the world today right?
If you had to run away or hide (flight instinct), you may well have a pattern of running or hiding.
If you froze, you may well feel frozen again and again and again.
And the point is, we all have these patterns. One of the reasons we all have them is that unresolved trauma is handed down generation after generation. That’s not New Age fluff—it’s epigenetics (links to a fascinating documentary that explains epigenetics and the significance of ancestral trauma).
And what happens when human beings—“the paragon of animals”—revert constantly to unconscious patterns of behaviour? We forge a society that commits unspeakable acts—acts that even “lesser” animals don’t do to each other. And you know— that’s where we’re at isn’t it?
So, how do we release these blockages that are caused by trauma? How to forge a “New Earth?”
It’s really very, very simple (almost as simple as the way in which your body heals itself after a cut).
First, we must understand the nature of the blockage: it is a subconscious resistance.
How do you release a subconscious resistance? The most elegant way I know of is to consciously accept it! By making it conscious, it’s no longer subconscious. And by accepting it, there is no more resistance. It’s like shining a light onto a shadow: it simply disappears.
So to be clear: to release a blockage, you trace it to it’s root cause: the survival instinct that underlies the symptoms of the problem. There are various tools for doing this, and I won’t go into it here (you need a little training for that).
When you find the instinct, which until now was subconscious, you acknowledge it—which means that you are aware of it, and you accept it. This is the meaning of acknowledgement: awareness and acceptance.
Then, there is no subconscious resistance. There is only conscious acceptance, and you are free.
Photograph: ‘Jump’ – www.paulprescott.comWhat happens next is so beautiful: you are free, you are light and unburdened, your old patterns and habits change, your relationships change, you feel better about yourself, there is less fear, more love, and a greater sense of inter-connection with the world around you.
And most importantly—to my mind—your descendents are also freed from those old patterns.
This is how we will forge a new society, a “New Earth.” One blockage at a time, one person at a time.
Starting now, starting here, starting with myself.
Please spread the love and share this. A facebook ‘like’, a tweet, an email to your friends, all go a long way. And leave a comment / ask a question. Let’s have a discussion about this right here!
Bonus Video:
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