The healing journey demystified

This video contains an overview of what is involved in healing and finding peace within. It discusses the different levels of attention needed for deep healing to occur. Traditional counselling, psychology and psychiatry have largely focused on our thinking patterns and emotional reactions, but there is a lot more that needs to be done to heal and calm the body so you can enjoy life.

Jodi-Anne summarises these issues and explains why each level of attention is required, including reprogramming our subconscious beliefs, calming our body and nervous system and doing inner child recovery work to help complete trauma and let it finally be a thing of the past, rather than feeling like it could occur again at any moment.

Jodi-Anne is putting together everything she has learned into an online, self-study course for people to use to help themselves to heal and find peace. She expects the course to be available mid-2021. For now, there are lots of free videos and resources on her ‘Life Insights‘ and ‘Healing from child abuse‘ webpages. She is also available for individual appointments in person or online via zoom or phone.

How bad experiences in childhood lead to adult illlness

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

How to forgive those who hurt you

Forgiveness is a term used falsely by many. It is not important for you to forgive another. What you need to do is stop torturing yourself about what occurred. Whether you forgive or not is irrelevant. The healing comes from letting go of the judgement, the hatred, the grief, the sense of betrayal or wishing it could be different, letting go of the need for revenge or expecting the person to say sorry or make amends. Peace comes from letting go of all that and accepting the person as they are, accepting what occurred and no longer fighting the emotions around it. Feel and release the emotions then move on.

It is only when you repeatedly tell the story of how you were wronged that you stay in pain. Choose to tell a different story, choose to focus on the growth that resulted, the personal insights and awareness that you wouldn’t have gotten without that painful experience. Choose to see the good that has come from it or if you can’t see the good yet, know the opportunity that is before you to heal will lead you to goodness, to purity, to innocence and love. It will lead you back to your heart and God and that is a gift.

Without the suffering, many of us wouldn’t go on our personal development journeys. So the pain is a catalyst pushing us to find the light. So those who inflict the pain are really helping us evolve. So there is no wrong to forgive. In the bigger scheme of things, we could thank the person who hurt us, because their actions led to our growth.

So let go of the idea of forgiveness. You do not have the power to condemn or influence another’s actions in the sense of forgiving them lets them off the hook. There was no hook in the first place.

Each person walks a challenging journey while on Earth to learn and grow from. For some, the challenges start when they are young, for others in their mid or later life. We all struggle. We all grow. We each have the choice about how we respond to the experiences in our life and what we think about them, the stories we invent around them, the conclusions and assumptions we jump to, all determine how much we suffer and how long we stay stuck.

Let go of the story, the drama, feel the emotions about it all and return to peace. It doesn’t matter whether or not the person/perpetrator has changed or not. You and you alone determine how long you are kept in the jail of misery by your thinking and the actions you take.

Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) can help to shift out the dense energies, the energetic blocks stored inside you from all the painful, shocking and traumatic events in your life. It can help you to come out of freeze, shut down, depression and make it a little easier for you to then take action to move forward. It is just the old energy that weighs you down, clogs your system and leads you to feel hopeless, helpless and pessimistic like it won’t get any better. Life is changing every day as you release the old energies and open to the new. TRE is one of many useful tools you can use to help heal your past and move into enjoying life more.

Choose to see the flowers and beauty all around you. Choose to see the blessings in your life and how far you have come. See the love that is there at your core and in the core of all beings. See the love, joy and innocence of children and know that is who you truly are – a peaceful, loving, contented child who is in wonder with life, learning and growing with all you experience.

There is no such thing as good or bad. These are just judgements, labels we use. But in the bigger scheme of things all events help you evolve and grow. So let yourself and others off the hook. Just love them. Just honour them and accept them as they are – as beings of light on an evolutionary journey, waking up to love and kindness for all. Do not see yourself as more advanced than them or more aware. Try not to go into ego judgements. Just be love and kindness. As you give love and kindness to yourself and those around you, you will attract love and kindness back to you. While you are filled with hate and bitterness, you will attract more of that, people who feel that way or events that reinforce those feelings inside you.

Do the healing work so you feel peaceful and happy within, then your outer world will become that also. It is all up to you. So choose peace and happiness. Choose to focus on the light-hearted things and let the old stories go. They don’t serve you. Each time you relive a past event, you reignite those feelings, that vibration within you. That is why you feel stuck and like it never changes. Because you have hit pause and replay on that video in your life, that memory, that story. You are just stuck in an endless loop of replay, so you never see the later scenes in the movie, where it all turns out okay. You don’t see what is still to come, because you’re focused on that scene only. Let it go, let the scene disappear as you progress forward in your life open to the new possibilities, trusting in life to lead you forward and help you heal. Feel what needs to be felt and move on.

You can reprogram the subconscious beliefs that keep you stuck, thereby making it easier to move forward. Change ‘It never works out for me‘ to ‘Life is always working out for me.’ Change ‘I can’t trust others, they always hurt me‘ to ‘I attract in loving and kind people I can rely on’. Change ‘I hate my parents and my life‘ to ‘I am grateful for my life which is filled with loving and supportive people’. Change your mindset and your life will change. Feel the peace and ease which comes with these belief changes.

Make such changes through a conscious focus on stopping and replacing negative thoughts, through affirmations and repetitive thinking of the positive thought/belief OR make the change more deeply in your subconscious mind using Psych-K, Lifeline Technique, Hypnosis or other methods of reprogramming subconscious beliefs.

There is much you can do to help move towards peace and happiness. It does not have to be hard or a struggle and you don’t have to force yourself to forgive those who you see as having hurt you. False forgiveness is condescending. It is almost like spitting on the other person as you say I forgive you. In essence, you are saying “I judge you, I despise you, I hate what you did, but I forgive you because I am a better person than you. I forgive you and walk away because you are not worth my time or energy“. That isn’t forgiveness. It isn’t loving or kind. It is just emotional pain that hasn’t been healed. It is like having a nail in your foot, you are stuck, you can’t move, it hurts, yet you are saying to the nail ‘I’m going to ignore you and move forward’. You can’t, you’re nailed to the ground! You have to feel the pain, acknowledge it, release it, so the nail dissolves, then you are free to move forward. But you can’t skip the emotional healing and pain. You have to feel it, move through it, to get to the other side.

Life will guide you there. The right people and events will come to help you through it all. You just have to relax and allow. The less you fight against what is, the less you will struggle. Accept and flow with life. Be honest and kind with yourself. At least if you admit you still feel cross with the other person, you are knowing the truth of the situation for you at this time. It may change in future as you heal and it may take a long time, that’s okay. Be as honest with yourself as you can be, then you can stay connected with your heart and its power to heal you, as opposed to being stuck in your head, which can drown you in negative thinking.

Life will lead you forth in perfect timing for your growth and evolution. That is all you need to know and trust in. It will happen regardless of what you do or how much you resist. Life leads you to where you need to go and what you need to feel, to return back to a state of wholeness and love. That is the goal of life and the journey we are all on. We all make choices we later regret and wouldn’t choose to do again. No need to hold ourselves or others accountable for it. No need to shame or blame or degrade someone for their choices. Choose kindness instead, for we have all made poor choices at times and no one likes to feel ashamed or embarrassed about their past. No one wants to beg for forgiveness. They shouldn’t have to. They are learning and growing, evolving just like the rest of us. We can choose to do so peacefully or painfully. The choice is yours to make. Choose wisely. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (24 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.

More Psych-K videos

Why Psych-K works (4:24 mins video)

How Bruce Lipton & Rob Williams met (6:02 mins video)

High-speed mindset change (7:31 mins video)

Important information about Psych-K balances (7:37 mins video)

What does the term Psych-K stand for? (8:48 mins video)

[youtube=http://youtu.be/28Tbwe_aeK4.]

The psychology of change – explaining Psych-K (73:00 mins video)

The evolution of consciousness (28:35 mins video)

Subconscious beliefs: pleasure is not okay.

Today I woke up feeling great peace and joy in my body. I felt like celebrating. I didn’t know what I was celebrating. As the day wore on I felt pleasure, joy at being alive and at feeling so good. After a while I noticed that I felt a little agitated. I couldn’t sit any longer and just BE or read or do pleasurable activities. Part of me was wanting to push, to achieve, to do. Part of me was upset about me feeling pleasure.

When I felt into that agitation and breathed through the resistance I heard a quiet thought that said to me that feeling pleasure was not okay. A scene from my childhood filtered up to consciousness and I felt shame and dirty. I witnessed a time when I was about 5 years old and a the son of friends of my Mother’s would visit and play doctor with me. We would sneak into the spare bed, take off our underwear and touch each other. It was quite innocent, but he told me that I couldn’t tell my Father about it as my Dad would be very angry with me. This was the seed of the subconscious beliefs that ‘pleasure is not okay’.

As I witnessed this scene and felt into the associated memories and emotions I cried. I cried tears of sorrow and anguish over what we had done and the impact it has had on my life. It led to me not allowing myself to feel lasting pleasure. It led me to feel that pleasure was a dirty, shameful thing that should be hidden. It taught me that feeling pleasure will lead to punishment. That it is naughty and something I will get told off for. These formed deep, core beliefs that have affected me ever since.

Thankfully I have learned how to reprogram subconscious beliefs so now when ever such an unhelpful belief pops up I can replace it with a belief that I would prefer using the Psych-K process.

Today as I sat and listened within I heard a number of related issues to be reprogrammed and the list below is the new beliefs that I programmed into my subconscious.

  • smiley-heart-love-Feeling pleasure, peace is okay
  • I am allowed to feel pleasure
  • I deserve to feel pleasure
  • It is safe for me to feel pleasure
  • Positive things come from my feeling pleasure
  • I am accepted when I feel pleasure
  • I accept pleasure into my life
  • I AM PLEASURE

These beliefs now form my core operating programs in relation to pleasure so I should start to notice some subtle and or significant shifts in my behaviour and what I attract / allow into my life. YAY!!!!!!

Written by Dr. Jodi-Anne M Smith, 25/07/13

The evolution of consciousness

This is a great video focused on all the topics I love! Rob Williams who created it describes it as ‘The world is in crisis and transformation. Now, our civilization has the opportunity to evolve it’s thinking. We are beginning to realize that the old ways of competition and “survival of the fittest” are not sustainable, for individuals, businesses, or the planet. Nature may be our most qualified life coach, with millions of years of experience in creating sustainability. It’s time to look to Her wisdom for some answers. It’s time to do something different! The evolution occurs when we try smarter- not harder!’

The video explores what we can learn from ancient wisdom from indigenous cultures, from nature and from neuroscience. It shows how we can change and create a more sustainable world for us all. One of the things I love out of the video is its acknowledgment of the principles of nature including interconnectedness. Rob shares some of the many cultural greetings that acknowledge this interconnectedness including:

  • India – “Namaste” – the divinity within me recognises and honours the divinity within you
  • Mayan – “In’ Lakesh” – I am another you
  • Africa – “Eh-ti-zain” – How is your soul perceiving the world
  • Lakota / Native American – “Mitakuye Oaysin” – All are related
  • Polynesia – “Aloha” – I recognise the presence of divine breath in you
  • German – “Gruss Gott” – Greetings God

He shares findings from neuroscience, physics and biology to show that scientific minds also believe in these principles of nature. For instance, Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics 1933, is quoted as saying “The total number of minds in the Universe is one.” While Albert Einstein is quoted as saying “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security”

Rob explains how our subconscious beliefs affect what we think, feel and do. He shows how much of current society is based around beliefs of separateness, survival of the fittest, greed is good, etc and how these have led to the state of the world we see. He explains a scientifically proven process for changing subconscious beliefs called Psych-K and encourages people to change their subconscious beliefs to align with the principles of nature – such as cooperation, collaboration, harmony, balance, and interconnectedness. This would dramatically change the way that we operate in the world.

Psych-K is just one of many techniques now available that enable change of subconscious beliefs. I am trained in Psych-K and use it on myself on a pretty much daily basis to change any negative, self defeating or just unhelpful beliefs that I discover. It has been one of the most significant tools I’ve used in my healing journey.