Tag: Personal Development

How to release rage safely?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Self help techniques

When your life has been filled with disappointment and loss, a significant amount of rage can be built up inside. Rage at missing out, rage at being hurt so deeply. Rage at feeling unable to enjoy life. Rage at those people and events that hurt you, held you back or stopped you in some way from living life how you thought it should be.

AngerThe truth is everyone will experience loss and challenge. Life does contain ups and downs, good times and sad times, joyful and painful times. The rage is just blocked emotion. You have deep grief and sadness inside and you are stopping yourself from feeling it, it builds, it becomes a pressure, a weight, a burden on your shoulders pushing for your attention, asking you to feel it, to give in to it, to grieve what you lost and let go of the pain.

The more you resist it, the stronger the rage gets and the more easily you are triggered by day to day events. If your reaction is over the top, you know it is the pain underneath toppling out. The day to day events provides you with an opportunity to diffuse your bomb, to let out a little bit of steam so you don’t self destruct and explode.

When rage is felt at these extremes, it is dangerous and has the potential for harm to occur to others. It could be random strangers or people you love. When the top comes off the bottle it can be volatile and venomous. The challenge then becomes how to release this rage with as little damage to self or others as possible.

There are many ways to release the rage. Some people like to yell or punch a punching bag. You can run and stomp it out as you go. You can draw how you feel and let the energy move from within you out onto the paper.

You need to titrate it, to let it out bit by bit. Another powerful way to do it is to use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help release the stress, tension and trauma out of your body. You may have noticed that when you are enraged you start to shake. Your hands might shake with rage wanting to let it out, express it.

This is a sign that your autonomic nervous system is overloaded. It is highly activated and locked in fight/flight mode. You need to help it calm back down into a relaxed state. That’s what TRE does. It helps the nervous system to release that built-up tension. It unwinds the wound up tight muscles so that you can breathe more deeply and relax back down.

Whatever has triggered you on the outside may have been quite small. It’s the built-up energy and unexpressed emotion within you that leads to the overreaction, to blowing your top.

TRE is just a set of simple exercises to activate your body’s natural stress release mechanism. Just as your body automatically tenses up when a threat is sensed, it also has a process for it to relax back down. It’s just that most of us don’t know about it, so we don’t allow our body to naturally balance back up.

It does so through tremoring. Your muscles will tremor and move to use up the cortisol and adrenaline released in your body to prepare you to fight or run away. So your legs and arms may move, shake to use up this energy as if you were running or fighting. Your torso will twist and contort as well as shake mirroring defensive movements to avoid being hit.

When threat occurs we automatically contract. We hunch over to protect our self. We might stiffen and stand tall to show our strength resisting the urge to run away. All of this contraction, stiffness and hypervigilant energy stays in the body if we don’t actually fight or run. It’s this that leads to our stiff muscles, aching shoulders and backs. TRE is a natural process that you can use to help your body release this tension and calm back down.

If you’d like to learn more about TRE visit the TRE page of my website. There you will see what it looks like to allow your body to tremor and discharge the energy. You can learn TRE in a session or two, then you can use it as a self-care tool at home whenever you like for the rest of your life. It’s well worth doing for the sake of those you love and who hate to see you in pain or bare witness to your rage when it comes out in destructive ways. Give yourself and those you love freedom from that. TRE can help.

You can also use visualisation and ritual. Visualise a burial ceremony for the rage and acknowledge the grief underneath it. See a tombstone and grave in front of you, fall to your knees and allow yourself to cry. Cry for what you have lost, for what you missed out on, for what you haven’t been able to do. Weep for those you loved who left you or died when you were young. Release the pain to Mother Earth, she can take it.

Surrender to the process and let yourself grieve. You truly are mourning the aspects of life that hurt you. Be gentle with yourself over coming days and honour that grave and what it represents. Visualise yourself visiting each day and putting fresh flowers on it, caring for it, pulling up weeds and tidying up. Each day you go your pain will be less, you will find a sense of peace and belonging, a feeling of coming home to yourself.

Be humble and quiet and let yourself be strengthened. Love and light will fill the space in you that had been suffocating in pain. With that released you can now stand strong, welcome in the happier parts of you – your inner child – and you can start to explore life anew from this place of greater peace and freedom from the past.

You are not really angry at life, you are just hurting and need to release the grief. You can do so safely with little damage to self or others. Love and honour yourself and those you interact with. No one deserves your rage, your judgement or blame. Each has done the best they could. Each is coping with their own internal struggles. If they could have done better they would have. Let it go and accept what is. Choose love and peace in all you do and you will find happiness. It is inevitable and it will happen. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (30 June 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 our purpose?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Conscious Evolution

Your purpose is to love, to clear away all that holds you back from love, so that you can receive it fully and manifest it in the world. You all need to receive love, to let go of the blocks to it, the self doubt, the fear of rejection, the isolating to protect yourselves, the hiding of who you truly are.

light of godHealing all of that is life’s purpose to move from wounded to shining light, from darkness to freedom and to be that example in the world, helping others to also obtain freedom. Each person has a unique destiny to walk towards the light. Each has a specific path set out for them and when they are clear, each has a way to serve the whole, a way to do what they love to do and make a positive contribution to the evolution of humanity.

The healing you do, you actually do for the whole. You are contributing to the raising of the vibration on Earth. As the vibration of the collective rises, great shifts can occur on the collective level, the falling away of racism, hate, judgement, greed, callousness. When there is enough love flowing in the hearts of mankind they will see and solve the refugee crisis, the hunger and starvation, the homelssness and reducing damage to Mother Earth through our lifestyles. When hearts are open and clear, people will take action for the highest good of all. They will do so because they feel it is the right thing to do, the loving thing to do and love is our true nature.

When you are in a state of inner peace and connection to Source, you know we truly are all one, all connected, so letting someone suffer is like letting a part of your own body suffer, ignoring an infection in your toe doesn’t make it go away, it is part of you and it has to be treated, addressed, healed, even if it is inconvenient, if it slows you down or makes you change your planned activities. You can’t ignore what is, to do so hurts you.

To turn a blind eye to the suffering in the world hurts you, it hurts all of you, it lowers the vibration as you look away and try to pretend the ugliness is not there. It is there and it needs to be addressed. People need to stand up and say ‘All human beings deserve dignity and respect. All human beings deserve to have food to eat, clean water to drink and a safe, warm place to sleep’. We can do that much. There is plenty to go around, there is plentitudes of food and space if we shared it. There are solutions to the sustainability issues facing the planet, people just have to be prepared to look, to see what is going on and take action.

open hearts see love everywhereWhen people’s hearts are full of pain, when they are living in denial of what is, hiding from it, pretending all is okay, self medicating through addiction, avoidance and loss of self connection, when people are in these states they see pain everywhere, it feels overwhelming so they look away. They don’t see the love and goodness everywhere, they don’t see the kindness and goodness of the human race. They see pain and retreat further in fear, hopelessness and desolation.

You can help yourself out of overwhelm and shut down using Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). TRE helps to calm your nervous system so that you can drop out of freeze, fight and flight back into a calmer state where you can think and feel more clearly. You can be present to what is occurring and face it. TRE is a blessing for those of us who are sensitive and don’t want to look away or ignore what is but find we need to retreat to protect ourselves and our energy. TRE can help us to be able to stand strong, face what is and act on causes we care about. When our bodies are calmer, we can take on more and feel good that we are making a difference, a positive impact on the world.

Mother Earth is mirroring our collective consciousness back to us – our vibration affects her, she becomes desolate and barren when our hearts are that way. As we blossom so does she, as we love and see abundance it springs forth, new life, new births, new growth. It is cyclical, it is seasonal, and it is affected by us.

Each of us can make a difference. Choose love in all you do, heal yourself so your heart opens and you can be a shining light in this world. Do what is your unique gift and way of assisting the whole. Spread joy and laughter, give people hope that there is another way, that human beings are lovable creatures who can do honourable things for the benefit of all. Choose from a loving space and be that in the world. That is what is needed and that is our purpose here on Earth, to heal ourselves and love as much as we can for the benefit of all. Be the peace and light needed in the world. This is a great service and gift you can do for all mankind and nature. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (26 June 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 know when to rest and when to push?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Conscious Evolution, Self help techniques

A lot of you who are focused on healing push yourself way too hard, seminar after seminar, therapist after therapist, session after session. You push yourself in the hope that you will feel better, escape the pain, sadness, anger, depression, grief, etc, but you can’t escape it. You have to feel it in order to release it. You can’t just exorcise it from your system.

hurting againEach time you push forward with yet another healing modality or technique, your body has to try and adjust to the changes you are forcing upon it. It is already coping with the baggage and emotional density inside. It is already juggling the defense patterns, the compulsive energies rising to the surface for release and now you are forcing a change in the vibration of your body by doing healing or release work. It is a fine line between helping yourself and pushing yourself over the edge into exhaustion, depletion, fatigue and consequential depression.

When you push too hard, too fast and get exhausted, you often feel depressed, because no matter what you do, you feel like it hasn’t helped, worked or fixed you. But the truth is you are not broken and you don’t need fixing. You just need to accept yourself, your life and the process. Trust the evolutionary impulse inside you to lead you forward, to guide you to what serves you, to tell you when it is time to push a little and see a therapist, do a course or have a healing session, and when it is time to rest – time to let your body integrate all the changes and adjust to your new vibration.

The body needs time to sift through the density inside and decide what it is now ready to let go of, what it believes you can cope facing and processing, and what needs to be kept within till a later time when you are feeling stronger and your body has the resources to process it gently, safely and as quickly as possible.

Emotional release, while intense, can be quite quickly done, enabling you to balance backup quickly and relatively effortlessly. If you just breathe through what arises and let it flow out of your system, it will leave. It is only when you resist it, try to ignore or deny it, or go into the story of it and feed it with your thinking, your judgement, your ‘Why me’ victim thinking or your ‘F*ck them’ retaliation mentality, that you prolong the pain and keep it going.

If you just breathe through it, witness it, welcome it up, be grateful for it leaving, then it can flow out smoothly as there is no resistance and a clear path out of your body, mind and field. There is an art to emotional release and consciously balancing back up to feel connected to Source and Self and Earth, here in the NOW. It is an art, a skill, a practice to Master which takes time.

You can’t try and rip the emotional density out, carve chunks of your body off and expect to feel good. It needs to be done delicately and with reverence, with respect for your inner child and younger selves that lived through the pain. You need to comfort them during the process and ensure that they feel safe and supported. You need to be there for them as the Adult that you now are, holding their hands and reassuring them that they are okay, that you can handle it and you are in control now, in the sense that you are connected to Source, to your body and you will listen to it for clues of what it needs. You won’t just go rushing off on a whim to another course, another therapist, another modality. You will stay grounded, check in regularly with your inner world, with your inner child and younger selves and see what they need, see how they feel. You will give yourself time to rest and play and have fun. You will make the effort to exercise and eat well, to show yourself love and kindness and compassion.

heart wateringWhen you do all of this your body trusts that you are capable of processing and releasing your burdens safely and it will start allowing it up with more ease and grace. You don’t have to hunt for what haunts you, just be in a state of calm and peace and allow the process to occur naturally.

If you listen within your body will tell you what it needs. If you pay attention to what is occurring in your outside world, you will see what past events / traumas / incidents are being triggered by those you connect with during the day. Your dreams also give you clues.

Your body is your ally, not your enemy. It releases what needs to be released at a rate that it believes you can handle. If you learn the skills to handle it well, then you can release your pain and emotional density relatively quickly, so that you can be in peace and happiness most of the time. Stuff will still come up, but it will release quite quickly and you return to a state of peace and balance almost immediately. Gratitude then comes as it feels so good to have glided through it, rather than been tormented, caught up in it, resisted or fought against it as you may have done in the past.

So listen to your body. It will tell you when it is time for a session with a therapist, when energy work would be beneficial or time alone in nature. Your body will tell you all you need to know. Don’t exhaust yourself by doing too much too quickly. Know that even when you feel bad, you are moving forward. Those feelings, be it sadness, anger, loss, betrayal, loneliness, etc are only temporary and they will leave and you will feel better again. Just breathe through it and in time you will feel better.

Treat yourself with the tenderness you would show to a young child or animal. You are just as precious and just as deserving of love and kindness, and that is what you are longing for and what you truly need. Give it to yourself and you will flourish. Each day your heart will open more and more, until it overflows with joy and happiness, that is a beautiful day and you will see it, reach it, feel it, if you treat yourself with love and kindness no matter what arises and what you are going through.

Give to yourself and you give to the world. For the world craves more love and kindness in all ways. Serve yourself and you serve the world. Your vibration goes out and touches many – those in your ancestral line, those in your physical vicinity, and all of those you interact with on a day to day basis. As you heal your higher vibration makes it easier for others to do so too.

If you feel a discomfort, a racing inside, an urge to run or fight or freeze sit with it. This is your nervous system activated in fear. It is this unease that leads you to want to do something, to search for a solution, to look outwards for answers.

Know that inner unease can only be healed by turning within, by listening to and soothing your body. One of the most effective ways I have found to soothe and calm my nervous system and that inner unrest is Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE).

TRE is the body’s natural way to release tension, stress and trauma. Your body has its own internal mechanism for releasing tension by shaking it out. We call it tremoring. It uses up the adrenaline and cortisol released during moments of stress and trauma. It completes those activations so the body can relax. It realises there is no need to run, fight or freeze now. It’s safe, so it can relax and BE.

TRE is a simple process that you can use at home any time you want as part of your self-care routine. Once learned you can use it for free for the rest of your life. TRE lets your body lead the way with your healing journey. It leads the way. You don’t need to exhaust yourself searching any more. You can relax and allow your body to heal the wounds within so you can have greater peace and relaxation.

By Jodi-Anne (19 June 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 bad experiences in childhood lead to adult illlness

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Healing from child abuse, Health, Self help techniques

Yet another article with the science showing what survivors of child abuse have always known. Abuse in childhood leads to significant physical, emotional and mental difficulties in adulthood. The good news is that more and more people are recognising this and that we can’t simply “get over it”.  Abuse changes the way a child reacts to stress and constant exposure leads to changes in the child’s DNA resulting in the ‘fight or flight’ system being always turned on. The ongoing, chronic stress unfortunately leads to inflammatory and immune responses that damage health as adults.

Joan Kaufman, director of the Child and Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) programme at the Yale School of Medicine, recently analysed DNA in the saliva of happy, healthy children, and of children who had been taken from abusive or neglectful parents. The children who’d experienced chronic childhood stress showed epigenetic changes in almost 3,000 sites on their DNA, and on all 23 chromosomes – altering how appropriately they would be able to respond to and rebound from future stressors.

Likewise, Seth Pollak, professor of psychology and director of the Child Emotion Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, uncovered startling genetic changes in children with a history of adversity and trauma. Pollak identified damage to a gene responsible for calming the stress response. This particular gene wasn’t working properly; the kids’ bodies weren’t able to reign in their heightened stress response. ‘A crucial set of brakes are off,’ says Pollak.

It is great that science is catching up. They are also recognising that there are many ways to heal which can help survivor’s bodies relax and not be in ‘fight or flight’ all the time.

Science tells us that biology does not have to be destiny. ACEs can last a lifetime, but they don’t have to. Just as physical wounds and bruises heal, just as we can regain our muscle tone, we can recover function in underconnected areas of the brain. If anything, that’s the most important take-away from ACE research: the brain and body are never static; they are always in the process of becoming and changing.

Even if we have been set on high-reactive mode for decades or a lifetime, we can still dial it down. We can respond to life’s inevitable stressors more appropriately and shift away from an overactive inflammatory response. We can become neurobiologically resilient. We can turn bad epigenetics into good epigenetics and rescue ourselves. We have the capacity, within ourselves, to create better health. We might call this brave undertaking ‘the neurobiology of awakening’.

Today, scientists recognise a range of promising approaches to help create new neurons (known as neurogenesis), make new synaptic connections between those neurons (known as synaptogenesis), promote new patterns of thoughts and reactions, bring underconnected areas of the brain back online – and reset our stress response so that we decrease the inflammation that makes us ill.

In the article they specifically mention ‘Meditation, mindfulness, neurofeedback, cognitive therapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy’ as some of the tools that can help survivor’s to calm their bodies and reprogram their minds.

I have found a wide range of techniques helpful including:

  • Energy and body work, such as crystal bed sessions or reiki, to help the body unlock and relax;
  • Psych-K or Lifeline Technique to release trauma and reprogram the subconscious mind so you can change negative beliefs about life and the world into positive ones e.g. so you are not always expecting the worst and you can start to feel safe, so you believe that you do deserve good things and that people can treat you well;
  • Mindfulness and meditation techniques to still the mind and create space to witness what is occurring instead of reacting automatically;
  • Skill development including thought stopping, boundary setting, inner child, and self love skills, so that you no longer allow yourself to be abused by others or by yourself;
  • Family Constellations to heal the trauma in the family system and reconnect with love, thereby allowing greater lifeforce and harmony within.

There is lots that can be done. While adverse childhood trauma does have a massive impact on your life, it can be healed.

Article - bad experiences in childhood lead to adult illness

Why is joy so fleeting?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Self help techniques

Joy is an emotion that occurs when you are totally at peace and living in in the Now. You are not thinking about the future or the past or what you need to do later in the day. Joy is the sheer pleasure of being present and attentive to the moment at hand, and whatever is arising. Few of you can stay present for very long. You skip all over the place with your thinking and therefore joy is lost. It takes focus, immersement, surrender and acceptance for joy to be present. It is not a doing or an efforting, it is an ease, a relaxation into what is.

The questioning mind keeps you away from joy. The judging mind sends it away further. All these mind activities keep you stuck in the head and away from your heart, which is where joy is felt. So you can’t have lasting joy unless you can rest in your heart. When you can do so, you see beauty and joy everywhere. You see it in nature, in the sunshine, in dogs playing, children laughing. You see it in life and its busyness and you see it in the faces of those who are eating cake or icecream or who are on an endorphin high after exercise. Joy is everywhere when you are in the receptive state to see it, feel it and receive its vibration.

That means your heart needs to be peaceful and for many of us that isn’t the case very often. Many people have hearts full of emotioal pain, yet to be released, full of fear and mistrust, confusion and pain, doubt and loss. There are lots of emotions and painful thoughts or beliefs leading to and perpetuating these low vibration emotions and energies. People’s bodies are filled with these issues creating emotional density or baggage. The heart is weighed down and joy which is very light is not felt.

It can be felt temporarily when you do something that stills you, that takes you to your heart and to enough inner silence that you can hear the heart’s message. This might occur during meditation, a walk in nature, holding a baby or a beloved pet. Whatever it is that takes you inside yourself and quietens your mind, then you can feel joy.

Joy can last and become your predominant experience, once you have cleaned out the emotional density and ceased reacting to the events that occur around you. If someone cuts you off in traffic, you don’t have to get agitated or angry. You can stay calm and peaceful. It’s a choice. A habit to break and a decision to choose differently. Even if someone is in your face saying unkind things, you don’t have to react with fear or with anger back. You can just stay centred, send love to your heart and your inner child, and choose peace. You can send the person love and acknowledge their power, for that is what they are truly seeking, to be seen, heard, acknowledged and accepted. They are hurting inside and lashing out. Don’t deepen their wound by reacting badly/painfully, send them love and help them heal. If you can do this, you can maintain your state of balance, peace and joy, no matter what you encounter.

It is possible, you just have to learn to do so, to be able to step back and witness what occurs and choose your reaction. So monitoring your thoughts, being quiet enough to hear them, is an important skill to learn in order to have peace and joy all the time.

If your body automatically reacts with exaggerated fear responses to situations this is a signal that you have trauma inside that needs to be released. Your body is reacting as if you are in evere danger when you are not actually in danger.

A door may bang, a raised voice might occur, a car backfires and your body goes into freeze, into hypervigilance and defensive reactions. This is a sign that you need to comfort your body, connect inside and release that stress, tension and trauma, so that your body can relax, become more peaceful and able to relate to others, to life in more joyous and open ways. While your body feels there is threat, danger, it won’t relax fully and this makes it hard to have sustained joy as your mind is preoccupied expecting danger and scanning for it.

The scanning for danger distracts you from the moment, the stillness, the joy of being present to what is. It keeps you activated, primed ready to respond to whatever does occur. It can be exhausting even though nothing bad is actually happening.

You can use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) and other embodiment activities to help you to clear out the stress, tension and trauma in your body, so it is easier for you to be in the now, to relax and to enjoy life. TRE activates the body’s natural, inbuilt mechanism for releasing stress, tension and trauma. It helps to calm your nervous system, to come out of freeze, fight and flight, back into calm social engagement, where you feel safe, can relax and play with others and enjoy life.

It is well worth learning TRE to help you be calm, playful and joyful as you move through life. It does take some time for your body to reach this state. You have to clear out the old stuck energies so the new lighter energy can enter. Thankfully with TRE you can do it at home, whenever you want, as part of your self-care process. Once you have learned how to self-regulate your TRE you can do it on your own, for free, for the rest of your life. Your body will thank you for it!

Even if you temporarily lose your cool and need to balance back up, you can do so quickly if you don’t berate yourself for it. You can simply notice that you reacted, learn from it, heal whatever button or event it triggered from your past and vow to react differently in future. Love yourself and the situation for the healing it enabled. Thank it and let it go. No need to hold on to it. No need to beat yourself up for slipping or not being perfect.

You are human and you are evolving and growing each day. Each day moves you towards having greater peace and joy in your life. The recipe is clear, less doing more being, less judging more accepting, less resistance more allowance, more fun and creativity, more stillness and going within, more practice and friendships – more sharing and growth. All of this adds up to a life full of joy and happiness, being of service in whatever way feels right to you. Blessed BE. Amen. May joy be in your hearts now and always. So be it.

By Jodi-Anne (4 June 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.

Common reasons for restriction to our lifeforce

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Family Constellations, Healing from child abuse

In this video Mark Wolynn explains four common themes or reasons why we may experience a restriction in our lifeforce and difficulty in our life. He explains these themes from a systemic family constellations perspective. The themes are: 1) we have rejected a parent, 2) we have unconsciously absorbed an emotion or experience of our parent and are playing that out in our life, 3) we have had a break in the early bond with our Mother, and 4) we have identified with a relative who isn’t spoken about and has been judged and rejected. These unconscious patternings affect the way we see the world and what we attract into our life experience. Through systemic family constellations you can unhook from these patterns and regain your lifeforce, thereby improving your experience of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZZbDzeEGZ0

How to let what needs to happen, happen

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Conscious Evolution, Self help techniques

Often you humans second guess yourself, your instincts tell you what needs to occur, but you don’t listen. You question, you doubt, you rationalise and think it through and usually you choose not to do what your gut tells you, you should do.

Your intuition is your body’s messaging telling you what is most in line with your highest good. Whether it be a message from the heart advising the path that will lead to most joy, or a fearful warning advising a path to avoid. If you listen the truth is there for you to hear. It is only when the mind is too busy or the body too fearful or exhausted that you can’t hear the messages which are subtle and vibrational.

deep-breath1Calm your body, breathe deeply and ask for a sign, sit in stilness and meditate or sit in nature and feel your nervous system calm and self regulate, then you can hear a message, sense how you really feel or play out the options and see how your body feels in each imagined scene. Your body will tell you which path suits you best. It is often said and always true, the answers are within, you just have to quieten the mind and listen.

Often it is tempting to keep busy doing, doing, doing, then you don’t have to face the facts that you are not satisfied with some element of your life. You don’t have to admit to yourself that something isn’t working, but that gnawing, nagging, empty feeling will build until you do listen and you do pay attention.

You may know the truth, but refuse to act. It is too scary to leave that job or partner or to take the risk to follow your heart and passion. Life does not have guaranteed outcomes, other than death and growth. All changes lead to growth. The road may not be smooth and straight. It may be narrow and bumpy, and you may almost fall off a cliff, but the beauty you will see, he expansion that will result is worth the risk.

If something is meant to happen, it will. You may try to control it, prevent it, stop it from happening, but it will happen at precisely the time it was meant to occur. All your actions will do is cause you pain and suffering. You could instead choose to flow peacefully with what life shows you is going to happen. Let jobs, people, homes, situations come and go, without grasping or holding on – just trust and flow. It is not easy or natural to most of us, it needs to be learned, to surrender to the divine and the mysteries of life.

What needs to happen will, so don’t worry about making the right decision so much. You can’t get it wrong. What needs to occur will, so take the pressure off and out of the decision making and choose more peacefully. Choose what will bring you joy. Trust the Universe to look after you and provide what is needed for your highest good.

door chakraIf you attempt to walk through a particular door and it is closed, it doesn’t mean it was a wrong choice, it just may not be time yet. Instead of pushing, surrender and wait. Wait for the signs and synchronicities to signify the time is right. Life will lead you where you need to go. Yes prepare, yes be ready, but wait / pause / breathe until the doors open and its easy for you to stroll through. No need to struggle, push, force. That is the old way, the way of competition, exhaustion, of winners and losers. The new way is the way of the heart, the way of love, compassion and service, the way of joy, the way of benefitting the whole, not just yourself.

You succeed most when you are passionately aligned with your heart’s purpose and guidance, which will lead you forth with ease and grace. Breathe through any fear and allow what needs to happen, to happen. Let it occur, like rocks being washed along a flowing river, just glide, just rise and fall with the tide. No need to fight for air or to be in one particular place. Trust life to guide you forth with ease and grace. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (01 May 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 forgive yourself?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Self help techniques

We have all made poor choices at one time or another. We have all done things we later regretted or with hindsight wished we hadn’t done. Given our time over we would choose differently. We all make mistakes = miss takes. To err is human, to repeat the same error over and over again is foolish. We must learn from what we experience or what we experience will not change.

Life presents us with a series of opportunities to choose again, to choose from love, to take more positive action than we were able to take at first. This is life – a cycle of improvements, of decisions born from hate, lust, envy, greed, etc that eventually get made from love, with consideration and compassion for all involved. As we learn we evolve higher in our consciousness and our vibration raises.

self-love-healthyDo not punish yourself over your earlier choices. At an earlier time of life you did not have the knowledge and awareness you do now. Let yourself off the hook. See yourself with kindness and compassion, and lighten up! Let go, don’t be so serious. It is alright to have stuffed up, we all do at times. We all make poor choices some times. We just need to learn from them and choose differently.

You don’t need to suffer, make amends or go without. You don’t need to make yourself ill or keep yourself poor or sacrifice your joy. You deserve to be happy, no matter what you have done before. Choose peace with your past and enjoy your now. You are allowed to, really you are.

Know that we all make mistakes, sometimes big, sometimes small. It is part of being human. Say you’re sorry if you want to and get on with your life. Your loved ones will forgive you for hurting them in time, especially if they can see your growth, your genuine regret and sorrow over what you have done. It is okay to move forward and prosper. It is okay. No matter what you have done, you can choose peace and choose future actions from a space of love, to do so is divine. To do so is freedom and liberation.

Trust in life to help you move forward and achieve your dreams. If it is meant to be, it will. Know nothing happens by accident, it is all preplanned, destined from before you were born. The things you class as your deepest regrets were meant to happen, they lead to your greatest growth. That is their purpose, that is the reason for their existence. So allow what is, accept what has been and choose peace in the now. It is up to you.

Would you hold a small child responsible for their actions? No, because you know they don’t know better. They are not mature enough to know the consequences of their actions. We are the same. We may be adults, but we are immature beings unaware of the bigger picture and slowly waking up to our purpose in our life. When we know better we can do better, but not before. So forgive yourself for past actions and love who you are now, love yourself and others. Be kind in all you do, then you can be proud of your now and your future. Blessed BE. Amen.

Spring-FlowersIt is truly okay to move forward and forget the past. You don’t have to cling to it. Let it drop away and start anew. Just like rain washes away the residue on roads and lawns, let your tears wash away your regrets and sadness. Let the sun rise and joy fill your eyes. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to bloom and show your beauty to the world. Let your garden blossom and honour all the plants within it. For it is the variety that makes it interesting. Let yourself blossom and celebrate life. For you truly can. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (20 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?

by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, posted in Healing from child abuse, Relationships, Uncategorized

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.