When people come to an energy healer, they often expect a magical removal of their symptoms and a radical shift in their long-standing, stuck patterns. I have found that energy healing can indeed produce such change, but, for the change to last, it has to penetrate to the roots of the issue. This involves a commitment from the patient to persistently explore their condition with open-minded awareness.
In the movie Ground Hog Day, Bill Murray’s character repeats the events of one particular day over and over and over again until he makes the right choices and changes the trajectory of his actions.
Like Bill Murray’s character, we all sometimes wish we had the opportunity to review our past mistakes and do a replay, changing the outcome. When we commit to changing some pattern that is ingrained in us, it can often feel like we are just repeating the same reactions, even though the key players and the situation are different.
So What Are the Outward Stages of Inward Change?
There are four stages of awareness that most people go through as they try to change and heal long-standing, chronic patterns in their lives.
Stage One: You just become aware of a stuck pattern, and it shows up everywhere! For the sake of this example, let’s consider hair trigger anger.
In stage one, you realize how many times a day you get angry, and yet you can’t stop yourself. You feel justified in your anger and won’t take responsibility for your reactions. At this point, if there is a true desire for growth and healing, you develop the capacity to witness your anger. Simply being able to say, “There’s my anger again,” instead of, “I am angry,” indicates the presence of a tiny gap between yourself and your anger, and you begin to identify less with the anger.
Stage Two: As you become increasingly able to witness your anger, a window of curiosity opens, and you find yourself wondering: “Why is it that whenever I feel dismissed, rejected, unloved, shamed, etc., rage rises up within me?” From this position of curiosity, you start to trace back your anger to feelings, sensations and beliefs that have their origins in your childhood or in a previous traumatic situation. You can begin to process these layers of feeling and, in this way, uncouple the past from the present situation.
Stage Three: As you work with the earlier childhood reactions, you find yourself able to look at your childhood with adult eyes and re-parent the parts of you that were not met, not seen and not heard. Miraculously, the hair trigger reaction of anger seems to lessen in current situations.
Stage Four: The habitual reaction of anger doesn’t come up, and you find all of your relationships improving. You have the capacity to listen to others without reacting angrily, knowing that their view of reality is simply that – their view of reality. It doesn’t have to impinge on your own, and you don’t have to defend your position as if your self-esteem depended on it.
At each of these stages, energy healing is helpful because it supports the person in anchoring a new pattern of relating. If there has been a traumatic event in the person’s life, I employ Somatic Experiencing techniques to allow the nervous system to be regulated, and then new sensory/motor/neuro pathways form. This, in turn, leads to a lessening of hair trigger reactions. In addition, I encourage my clients to use meditation, mindfulness, and sensory awareness techniques to focus on the positive changes trying to take root.
The Outward Signs of Inner Change Are:
- More resiliency in the face of life’s ups and downs
- Less emotional volatility
- Less anxiety and depression
- A sense of inner contentment and peace
- A willingness to listen to others with compassion
- More kindness, empathy and patience towards self and others
- A complete absence of the previously habitual reaction
I would like to end with this quote to inspire you to take the first step in your journey of inner transformation:
“An authentic and genuine life grows like a sturdy tree. And like a tree, it grows slowly. Every time you make a different and better decision, it grows a little. Every time you choose to do the right thing, even when nobody would find out otherwise, it grows a little. Every time you act with compassion, relinquish your right to strike back, take a courageous stand, admit fault or accept responsibility, it grows a little.”
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