Trauma Can Be Healed With Gentleness and Trust
I am not a fan of forceful, harsh processing of emotions. I flinch when seeing such sessions being shared in social media, observing how some people are stuck thinking that to be liberated they must go through something akin to an ugly exorcism.
Contrary to what seems to be the collective belief today, trauma can be healed quietly, gently and without drama. Catharsis can be reached without screaming, bodily contortions or thrashing about. You may choose to go through your liberation doing the latter, but also know that is not the only way.
Some may prefer these dramatic processes. For others, it can be too harsh on their system; these processes can cause them to be retraumatised and an already fragile nervous system more stress. I have seen a lot of damage in individuals as a result of being subjected to these kinds of aggressive healing practices. It can take us backwards in our healing, as the weakened system now requires stabilisation before it can be further restored.
There is another way. In today’s technological age of fast-tracking everything, the softer approach is dismissed as boring and unexciting. People are addicting their way through their healing along with everything else in life. Humanity has been diluted to a skeleton of its divinity-rich potential owing to this artificial manner of doing life.
But all is not lost. If more people can be guided back to what’s more healing in healing, we can restore some of the fundamental structures that allow us to shine as the true illuminant beings that we are. With this in mind, here are some of the factors we need to consider and respect when embarking on healing ourselves:
1. Timing (Rhythm)
I believe there is a natural rhythm that exists beneath all of healing. Working with this rhythm is the way to go. It is not necessary, and can even be harmful, to force a healing to happen.
Your healing may not happen when you want it to, but neither can forcing it. Sometimes, when it appears as if you’re not healing or seeing the breakthrough you want, it may be a timing issue. That window for optimum healing has not yet arrived, and wouldn’t you want to wait to be in this window by respecting the timing of it?
The amount of time it takes for healing to occur is another factor we need to respect. It is our egoic mind that judges healing to be too slow; the ego mind, however, lacks the intelligence to see beyond its limited perspective.
If you’ve been in the healing path for a while, you’ve probably experienced the “timing effect” when all of a sudden things shift in a big way after being seemingly stagnant for some time. There’s a palpable sensation of energy moving, coupled with a deep understanding that it is simply the “right time”.
2. Personal Readiness
Like me, you’ve probably declared to the Universe at least once, “I am definitely going to heal this issue once-and-for-all!” With sincerity, you embarked on healing it and you were determined to do the work to heal it. The healing did not happen, however, and you blamed yourself.
Most of the time, you just weren’t ready to be healed then. But there was an element of you forcing the healing. Forcing yourself to be less angry, to love yourself, or to stop hiding, when your system isn’t there yet can make that symptom even worse.
It’s easy to judge yourself as lazy, weak and indecisive, or maybe I didn’t do enough… but it could be that your system needed this period of time to rest, recover, and to become ready.
Forgive me if this sound insubstantial but ultimately you are ready when you’re ready. Just like the sudden movement of energy when the timing is right, you’ll have a deep knowing that you are here because finally you are ready.
3. Power of Void
Healing is a process that takes place within a mysterious structure. There are things we can do to encourage healing towards a certain direction, but fundamentally there is much about it that is still unknown.
There is no need to convert all unknowns into knowns, however. In fact, the unknown is what allows for magical possibilities in healing.
This Unknown has been called by different names. The Sacred Void, Divine Nothingness, Zeropoint, The Space of Infinite Possibilities, the Quantum Field of All Potentialities… Their names tell you there is something juicily-mystical within it.
When it comes to your healing, where it appears that nothing is happening, the invisible medicine is working its magic. Connecting with these unseen workings rather than judging it as “nothing is happening” is the extent of your role during such times.
4. Elegance
I believe that healing can be elegant. There is more power in being gentle than coercing something into being. We’ve all heard horror stories about someone who tried to open their third eye or activate their kundalini. Rebirthing, which was very popular in the nineties and early 2000’s, is an example of forceful, aggressive, confrontational and potentially harmful techniques. In 2000, it resulted in the death of a ten-year-old girl who was coerced into a process that ended up suffocating her.
In this excerpt from my book Flowing Through The Void, I wrote about how a gentler form of breathwork is superior to the kind practised in Rebirthing:
Breathwork
Many forms of breathwork are available today. A lot of them involve using hyperventilation, or overbreathing, to induce certain physiological and metaphysical symptoms that are believed to be therapeutic and can alter one’s state of consciousness. Some of the reported symptoms are light-headedness, tingling sensations, dizziness, expansion of consciousness and feeling at one with the Universe. To induce these effects, it requires one to breathe rapidly and shallowly.
My reservation about this type of breathing is that it is often unpleasant and even painful to practise. It is also harsh on our system, as if we are forcing something out violently and unnaturally. I’ve seen people’s bodies curl up and distort painfully in response to constrictions in flow brought on by this kind of breathing, their faces contorted and covered in tears and snot, reduced to a heap of blubbering mess. Not a very elegant way of going about healing!
I am, however, not discounting the benefits of this type of breathwork. Some people prefer to experience the messy, cathartic process to feel that something has really moved for them. I also appreciate the total letting-go-of-control to release the effects of deep trauma, in a safe and supported environment. But it may be a one-time or periodic process rather than something that can be built into a regular practice as a self-empowerment tool.
A better form of breathwork to incorporate into a sustainable daily practice would be to breathe deeply rather than shallowly, and at a rate that is more gentle and pleasant than hyperventilation. When you combine this with the type of long, deep, relaxed breathing similar in the practices of tai-chi and qi gong; and the mindful meditations which focus on the natural movement of breath, you create a good balanced form of breathwork.
The kind of breathwork that I propound gently guides us to see where healing is needed. It makes us feel good in all our bodily levels when we practise it. There is no need to be gasping and reaching out desperately to “get it all out”. Instead, we greet each blockage that arises with clarity and respect, and we heal that blockage with love.
My kind of breathwork is to get you to deepen your connection with yourself. Using breath, you become more aware of your body and what is happening in your body. It brings you back into your body. It teaches you to love yourself again by breathing fully and consciously. Breath is so powerful that we need not use it forcefully.
5. Light Touch
Healing can be more powerfully done with a light touch. It should feel like a gentle blink of the eye.
The more powerful we are, the less we have to do to achieve the same results. Humanity has evolved by leaps and bounds in the last few decades alone. We have risen to a higher level of consciousness. Thus, a lot of the things we’d had to do to arrive at a certain place of healing are no longer required. Certain steps are now redundant because we have risen in consciousness.
In a way, we were more primitive, where we felt we had to force things out of our system. With the expansion of consciousness, we’re able to see that it can be done with the lightest of touch.
It ultimately entails just a choice. A decision, made clearly and simply, with no fluff or ambiguity. A no-drama shift in alignment. Notice it does not involve any pushing. Instead, it entails you being gentle, relaxed, trusting. By contrast, pushing or forcing feels heavy and tight.
When you employ a light touch, you access a higher form of intelligence for your healing.
Guided Journey to Release Trauma from the Body
Start by placing your hands onto your body – anywhere that feels comfortable.
Now that your hands are in contact with your body, the circuit is closed. The circuit I’m referring to is the nervous system. You know how when you’re stressed and anxious your mind tries to close the gap of the unknown? You’re driven to close the loop, so that you can feel more safe and supported.
Now that the circuit is closed, your energy is flowing and circulating internally. Let this knowledge allow you to relax deeper. Feeling safe and contained in your energy.
Slow down your breathing. Literally slow down the pace of your breaths. At the same time, soften within yourself. Soften towards yourself.
Allow spaciousness to arise within you. Notice the spaces in-between the units that make up your body.
Allow divine essence to flow through those spaces. As divine essence flows through, it is eradicating the toxicity stored in hidden places inside you – cleaning out the energy of trauma trapped in your body. These energies can make you draw in and tolerate people, places and situations of a similar resonance. If your life is full of people, places and situations that contain yucky energies, it’s usually a sign that there is trauma and toxicity in your system. This healing process not only clears your system of these energies, it will upgrade the contents of your life.
Just continue to relax deeply and allow divine essence to flow through spaces within you. Knowing you’re being cleared more and more of the heavy, toxic energies of trauma.
Once you feel you’ve cleared substantially in today’s session, let’s imbue those spaces now cleared of the old energy with youthfulness. See or feel these spaces transforming – becoming more illuminant, lighter, abundant with pure life-force.
Note: You may play this section of the audio version of the post (12:57) and be guided by my voice to do this process.
