Why do we worry so much?

Worry is a form of self denial. Humans do it to negate their circumstances and keep themselves feeling small. If they would boldy choose, make a decision, act, life would proceed much more smoothly, but this would enable greater rates of change and change can be scary, confronting and uncomfortable. Worry therefore avoids this future discomfort by creating discomfort now!

It is like a brake on a car. It gets stomped on to slow things down. And just like pushing the accelerator and brake at the same time results in no movement, just wasted fuel and strain on the vehicle, the same occurs to the human body which feels pulled forward to act and worry stops it doing so.

Worry creates strain in the body, it improves nothing and in that sense is useless. Instead speak the truth to yourself. When facing potential conflict or a decision you are scared to make, simply say “I am unsure of what to do here. Instead of being nervous or worrying, I give myself permission to go slow until I have clarity on what to do”. That way you can still feel good and take the time you need. You don’t have to worry and feel bad to slow down taking action.

Likewise if the worry is due to fear of conflict or rejection, you can say to yourself “I am scared of being hurt in this situation. I am going to nurture myself and be kind to myself, knowing I feel vulnerable. I will love and accept myself, and that is what matters most. Whatever else does occur, I will be okay, because I will be loyal to myself and treat myself well. I am strong enough to cope with whatever occurs because I am my own best friend. If I sense danger I will simply leave and I will let someone know where I am going so they can check in with me after to see if I’m okay. I won’t force myself to do things I am not ready for. It is okay to take small steps towards my goals. It is okay to do what I need to do when I can and to wait and rest until I am able”.

Many of you push yourselves too hard. You simply expect too much of yourselves and then wonder why your body is feeling fatigued or less than 100% well. If you toss and turn at night, instead of sleeping, it is your body’s way of telling you – choose peace, choose calm, choose rest. If you toss and turn at night it is a sign that your nervous system is wound up tight, activated in fight or flight or worse in freeze or collapse. You can use Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) to help down-regulate your nervous system, to discharge the stress and tension. When your body is more relaxed and your mind quieter it is easier to sleep.

As your body relaxes through tremoring your nervous system calms and you start to feel safer in your body, less danger signals get sent to the brain, so your defences soften. You don’t need to be hypervigilant worrying about things so much. The body is only hyped up, worrying because part of you feels unsafe.

Honour yourself. Heal the part of you that is worrying, comfort and reassure them, they need your love. For it is just a part of you that is worried or scared. It is not your whole self. Just a part, a younger part that needs to feel safe, protected and looked after. That is your job, to support that younger, inner part of you, so they don’t need to sabotage your efforts to protect you from what they fear will happen. Send them love, thank them for caring about you and bathe them in healing golden light, so they can drop their burdens and cares. Invite them into your heart, hug them and welcome them home, to rest and recover in your heart centre, your sacred room of love. There they can rest and recover feeling safe, loved and at peace. They no longer need to be afraid as you will take care of things, they can relax. You will listen to their concerns and take any appropriate measures as a result.

There are many parts of you that have strong feelings or preferences as to how you act and listening to their concerns, befriending them and then deciding after weighing up their input, will result in much smoother outcomes. They won’t need to shout at you any more or keep you small. The loud inner voices which may have kept you in pain will quieten, as they feel heard, valued, and supported. You can then go about your life without negative interference from within.

In this sense you can see worrying is a form of protection, a part of your inner guidance system that you can learn from. When you do so, the worry drops away and life becomes much more peaceful and enjoyable. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (03 February 2017).
Further free guidance on healing techniques and self love are available on the Life Insights and Healing from child abuse pages of this website.

Why do we stay small?

There are many reasons for choosing to stay small – less risk, more comfort, safety from abuse or attack or ridicule, less effort required, less challenge faced. There are many reasons, but life won’t let you stay small for long. Outside events and inner forces will combine to propel you forward, to jettison you into the next greater version of yourself.

Life is about growth and expansion, it is about stepping beyond your comfort zone and doing what you love. To stay small is to shrivel and decay, to rot, to not grow and that is impossible.

Some stay small because that may have been a time when they received love, when life was simpler, less confusing. For others it was a time when they felt good things happened, when they trusted life and felt taken care of. There are many reasons people would prefer to stay child like or to bask in younger years, as opposed to truly being present and facing their now.

For many people the now is scary, too intimate, too confronting. To be fully present requires facing your feelings, acknowledging how you feel and if you are happy with your life. Much easier to be distracted, too busy, then you don’t have to think about it, feel too deeply into it.

Yes, let’s be busy, busy, busy – then we don’t notice our vitality and joy dropping, we don’t notice the stress building and ill health creeping in. Keep busy, busy, busy, with lots of noise and competing demands, that way you don’t have to face the truth of your life, your inner depths or your heart’s requests. So many people live like this.

Of course it is not ideal, but it is understandable, especially if you don’t feel you have any power to change things for the better. The truth is you always have the power to do so, just most don’t realise it or fear taking that first step into self leadership, self mastery, creating your life how you want it to be.

Resistance to being present in the now occurs when your body feels uptight, anxious and restless. There’s this baseline energy that you can feel when you slow down. For most people that energy isn’t calm and peaceful. It can be a slight unease, a feeling of being unsafe, anxious, uncertain of what to do or what’s needed to feel better. This is your nervous system in low level activation of fight or flight. If the activation is stronger then it can literally feel wrong, dangerous to be still. Your legs may bounce when you’re sitting down. Internally you’re agitated, wanting to move, to run away.

These activations occur at the subconscious level. We’re not even aware of them and we’re certainly not consciously choosing them. They result from the built up tension, stress and trauma in your body that sends signals to your brain telling it you are in danger, even if you’re actually safe right now.

The body isn’t at ease, hence many of us distract ourselves from being still, present in the now, which would lead us to feel that unease. Rather than distracting yourself from it by escaping or keeping busy, there is another choice. You can use embodiment practices like Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to shake out the tension, stress and trauma, then your body will calm down and it will be easier to be present, to enjoy your now as your body will know it is safe to do so.

When we just keep busy we don’t heal the underlying issues. With TRE you can slowly shake out the unease bit by bit, gently and easily in your own time and space. Once learned you can use TRE whenever you like as part of your self-care routine. It is well worth learning so you can relax more, worry less and enjoy your now.

You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to decline that invitation and take time to rest. You are allowed to work less and live more simply. You are allowed to do what you want, not what is expected. You are allowed to honour yourself and do what you want. It is not selfish, not wrong. As long as you aren’t harming another, it is okay to choose self, to honour self. Our society would be a lot healthier if people did.

Because when you honour yourself and drop into your heart, what your heart wants is peace, harmony, stillness, connection, and love. The heart beats fast for love, for pleasure, for joy. It doesn’t have a selfish bone in its body, it is all about love and kindness for all. And when more people are resting in this state, there will be a lot less violence in the world. There will be a lot more sharing, compassion and understanding, a lot more assisting each other, accepting we are all the same race, the same species. We all suffer and go through loss and pain. We all grow and heal and need support. We all want to be loved and accepted for who we are. We all want to be seen and accepted, heard and valued, cared for and loved. That is our deepest need.

Many hide because they fear it won’t happen – they won’t be loved or accepted, they will be ridiculed or hurt in a myriad of ways. But to hide keeps you stuck, small and hurting. To come out into the light of day enables change, enables freedom, enables peace.

If you take the risk you will be guided forth to love and happiness. There will be obstacles to overcome along the way, but you will get there. You will find your tribe and your home, deep within your heart, connected to the mysteries of life and all that occurs here on Earth.

May we all stand up and shout “Here I am“. May we all be seen and valued. May those around us yell back “We see you and you are magnificent. Welcome home!” May we all find peace as quick as possible. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (24 January 2017).
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 do you know what you really want?

Life presents you with many opportunities to have what is your heart’s deepest joy – love, connection, inner peace, but you cannot feel these things fully until you clear out the blocks to them.

Throughout life all beings suffer in some way. All have layers of disappointment, hurt, betrayal, emotional pain locked inside them. This forms a wall or barrier to not let people truly close again, just in case they may hurt you in some way. Depending on how much pain depends on how strong the defensive wall.

For some people the wall is small and you can just hop over it. They easily form attachments and can enjoy life connected to others, showing who they really are and feeling relatively safe to do so.

For others the wall is massive, you cannot get anywhere near them without shutters going up, dragons flying over the moat and alligators snapping their jaws warning you to stay away. This extreme reaction shows the person has deep emotional pain stored inside. They are scared to connect, scared to be hurt again, and scared to love. They desperately want love and connection, to feel safe and accepted, but have deemed it too risky. They have turned away from love, from the essence of life feeling it is too risky. They say “No to life”. No to receiving whatever closeness is on offer to them, no to feeling peace, joy, happiness, abundantly fulfilled. They stay locked in pain, in isolation, sad and alone, because it feels too risky to let people in, to feel vulnerable and feel and release the emotional pain inside.

Such a person’s heart is weighed down with grief and what it truly wants is to be free from this, so that it can beat strongly with passion, with zest for life, leading the person forward to embrace the activities that person loves to do and will gain most fulfilment and personal growth from. The heart beat is the signal home, listening to the heart and its messages is the journey. Unloading the emotional pain, the baggage, the unneeded passegers or defense that talk to you in your head – these are the pit stops along the way, and the further you go, the better you feel, the more space you have, as you let go of that which weighs you down and isn’t needed.

Many people resist the jouney, they don’t know how to feel safe and access the emotional pain that needs to be released. They try to push it away, pretend it isn’t there instead. This just clogs your arteries, blocks the fuel lines and leads to your engine not working properly. You are still on the journey, you are just making it harder, creating suffering through your resistance. Eventually the pressure will become so strong that the radiator will blow, forcing yout to stop and pay attention, to do the maintenance needed, so that you and your vehicle (your body) can function effectively again and travel where you need to go.

Life is a journey of healing, of expansion and what the heart really wants is to be heard, to sing joyously as it goes on meeting people deeply with love and joy for life, celebrating all that is and the opportunity to evolve that is given to us by being here on Earth.

Once the heart is free from the weight of emotional pain, the connection to self and Source also deepens, enabling it to share great wisdom and messages with you, to guide you forth to your destined purpose here on Earth. This will be something you love doing, something that makes your heart sing and is of benefit to others, something you do and time passes quickly without you realising it because you are so deeply immersed in it and enjoying it. These are clues of your purpose, your true joys, your real heart’s desire. It will be different for all of us, but the first step to accessing it is the clearing out of the old baggage, the accumulated emotional pain, so you can step forward joyously in life.

apple loveLife will help you do this, it will guide you forth – to the right book, course, movie or song to trigger you so you feel and hopefully release the emotional pain. The right people, situations and events will happen to force you to face what is stored inside, to stop and listen to your heart and its messages. The more you choose to do this consciously – through stillness, meditation and dialogue with your heart, the less life needs to bring painful situations to make you listen.

When you consciously choose to tune into your body and invite it to share with you what needs to be felt and released it will. The body holds all of our tension, stress and trauma locked into the cells and muscles. It is this build up of unexpressed emotions, of not honouring how we feel or not speaking our truth when we wanted to that leads to the tightening up of our necks, backs, shoulders – the parts of us that lock up and ache with tension and stress.

One way to release this is using Trauma and Tension Release Exercises (TRE). It is a way of accessing the body’s own natural mechanism for releasing stress, tension and trauma. It is a tremoring process – the body shakes out that which it no longer needs. The shaking uses up the adrenaline and cortisol that get built up in the body when we are triggered into fight, flight or freeze and don’t run or fight.

When we swallow how we feel because it isn’t appropriate to tell your boss how you really feel or to tell your In-Laws that you don’t want them to visit again, that tension, that triggered charge gets shoved down into the body. TRE helps to release it. It lets your nervous system unwind, to use up the stress chemicals and relax back down to its calm state.

TRE can be learned in an individual appointment online or an appointment in person. Once learned you can use it regularly for the rest of your life to release tension, stress and trauma, so it doesn’t build up in your body and you can live in a more relaxed and joyous way. It’s well worth learning it as a self-care technique that you can use to support yourself.

It is up to you to choose to face what is within, so you can be free of it and enjoy life more fully, loving and connected to self, others and Source. It is worth the effort and Jodi-Anne and others can show you how. There are many guides along the way who have parts of the map that they can share with you to make the journey easier. Noone has all the puzzle pieces. We are all learning and growing together. Each has its own way, unique to them, others can only point the way. It is up to you to heed the messages from deep within that will guide you to freedon and Heaven on Earth. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (20 November 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 love your wounded child back to love and innocence.

inner-childYour inner child is your barometer for your alignment with Source and your destiny. She or he tells you what feels good and what doesn’t. She lets you know if there are actions you need to take and being a child she will throw a tantrum if you don’t do them.

Being a child she wants what she wants NOW, and will get angry or sulk when it doesn’t happen. If you ignore her, refuse to listen to her, she will slam a door in your face and go into her room and hide. There she will be forlorn, mope and go into depression. When this occurs your vitality drops, your joy and ability to enjoy life plummets, you feel burdened, over responsible, plodding through life doing what must be done, as each day passes in this way your heart flame dims, your vibration lowers and a coldness and darkness sets in. Life seems less exciting, less vibrant and less meaningful. In the extreme it can feel numb and like a robot going through the motions.

Your inner child while silenced, is still watching and when the opportunity arises she will let you know know how pissed off she is. She will tell you in words if you listen and connect in with your heart. If you don’t, she will take over your body, come to the fore with rage or sadness or fear. You will get triggered by life events and react from a child like space. The mature adult will disappear and you will responded from the wounded child – tantrums, sulking, hurtful words, immature behaviours, because that is the age the child is and it is her energy that has come to the fore.

She can be a drama queen and pout or order that someone’s head be chopped off, metaphorically, for some minor infraction, such as not saying hello and noticing her pretty new dress or not appreciating the unicorn hidden in the garden. “How dare you not notice or care, how dare you ignore something so important to me!” The inner child will stomp and kick and throw stones. She will punish you and others for not doing what she needs most, which is to be loved, to be noticed, to be cared for, played with and held.

The inner child, like all children, just wants to be loved and listened to. She wants the chance to play and do things that make her happy. She will skip through life singing if you let her. She can help you enjoy life so much, but only when you connect with her and come from a heart centred space, operating from love in all you do.

She is your guide back to your heart, back to your innocence. She lets you know what is meaningful to you, what you shouldn’t ignore, what can help you to feel whole and stress to melt away. It may be simple things like patting your cat, admiring your garden, walking in nature, playing with children, painting, cooking speacial food, whatever it is that you truly find as fun, calming and satisfying. Activities that make your heart sing and that when finished, you look up and are suprised at how much time has passed by. These are your passions, your joys and the inner child reminds us that these are what is truly important in life. She doesn’t care about work, chores, deadlines. She hates boredom and apathy. She embraces life, lives it to the full and bubbles over with enthusiasm.

If you are not feeling such joy and vitality, there is a strong likelihood that your connection with your inner child is not strong enough. If she is unhappy, you will be unhappy. Make the effort to connect. Close your eyes and ask inwardly to connect with her or him. Ask and wait patiently. See if you can sense him or her. You may see a door way or a couch that they are hiding behind. You may see a cave or a dungeon that they have been trapped in due to your total neglect of them and your true passion for life.

At first they may not want to connect, not trusting you to care for them or to stay around. They may feel hurt, abandoned and vulnerable. Send love, see loving energy flow towards them and let them know you are there, you are willing to connect and you are sorry you haven’t done so before or regularly. They may come out from their hiding place and take a peek at you or a step towards you, they may come running for a hug, as this is what they truly want. They may start talking a million miles a minute teling you everything they have been waiting to say. It is up to you to earn their trust, to win their heart over, so they feel safe enough to come out of hiding and open up to enjoying life again.

As you build your relationship, you will notice your energy level rises, your joy rises and your sense of peace and satisfaction with life. Instead of looking out and seeing dullness everywhere, you may start to notice the flowers, the colours, the blue sky. You may start to slow down and just BE, taking time to rest and even time to play. This is important, we all need balance between doing and being, so our bodies don’t get exhausted and depleted.

You can build your connection with your inner child by connecting in regularly, it only takes a few minutes to close your eyes, connect with him or her, send love, ask how they are feeling and what they would like you to do. They may want a hug or icecream or to play in the park. You can literally do these things in real life or you can visualise them, giving the inner child an icecream as you walk side by side down the path at a beautiful park. The inner child just wants your time and attention, same as a living child, for that is what the inner child is, a child living within you that holds your pure essence, your Source connection and innocence. Once you help him/her to heal their wounds and to feel loved and peaceful again, then that becomes your experience of life, the energy you get to live from.

When you are facing challenges or have big decisions to make, you can comfort your inner child and let them know it is okay, you the adult will handle this and they can go play. You can ask them how they feel or what their view is on the situation, but make it clear that this is adult business, not child business and they can go play. If they feel threatened by what is occurring in your life, reassure them that they are safe. When you are in a confronting situation, tune into where your inner child is and how they are feeling. You may discover that they feel exposed and scared. In your third eye see them moving behind you for protection or into your heart where they can be held and supported. This is what they need, for you to be the good parent looking after them, meeting their needs, so they feel safe to relax and enjoy life. When they do, you do. It is well worth the effort to build a loving, strong, playful relationship with your inner child, so you can return to a state of peace and happiness within. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (15 October 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 let go of disappointment and expect the best?

When a person has suffered many disappointments in life, they learn to switch off from life, from expecting good things or even believing it is possible for their life to work out okay. This is a self defense mechanism aimed to limit the pain received and protect from further disappointments.

But switching off from life, hope, faith is a disasterous thing to do, it is a giving up of life force energy, of joy, of hope, of happiness. It will inevitably lead to judgement, ridicule, low self-esteem, depression and feelings of unworthiness.

If the major traumas occurred when a young child, 0-7 years old, it is highly likely that a pattern of learned helplessness was embedded in the child’s unconscious and as an adult plays out constantly in all aspects of life, leaving the person feeling a victim, feeling unable to change anything and accepting life is always going to be this way.

With such pessimism life becomes drudgery, one boring or scary or threatening and dangerous day after another. It is easy to see why people may self medicate through addictions to avoid the emotional pain and sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

It is a cruel way to exist, it is a numbing out of life, a walking dead scenario, feeling as if there is no point in staying alive or trying to change anything, because it feels like it never works or changes, it never gets better.

This is a very painful place to be in internally, to feel this hurt and broken that you don’t know how to go on, how to survive, how to live. You give up trying and just survive one day at a time. Life is monotonous, bland, boring and suffocating. Sadly this is a common state of being for many people. Gladly, you don’t have to stay stuck in it.

You only feel so helpless because it is younger parts of you that got hurt and disappointed, whose pain is so high, that it is over ruling everything else. If you heal these wounds and help free your inner child or younger selves then that pain will not be your primary emotion or experience of life.

You the adult has every opportunity to make different choices, to have fun, to be positive and enjoy life. It is just hard to do when your vitality, your life force is stuck in the past, playing out a repetitive loop of negativity.

So how do you free yourself of the wounds? There are many ways that help. At this stage it is just important to know you can break free, that you can heal and that life can become better. To let a glimmer of hope exist.

Just because people in your past hurt you or disappointed you, doesn’t mean it has to reoccur over and over. If you heal the wounds you can flourish. You will no longer attract in that treatment as you will no longer be a vibrational match to it. Once you have released the pain, your body can relax, come out of fight or flight and shut down zombie mode. Life force energy can flow freely through your veins again, revitalising you to live life fully, embracing possibility and taking action to live your dreams, your greatest potential while here on Earth.

To achieve this the wounds must be healed, the emotional pain must be released / transmuted and your heart opened back up to allow love in, to trust and take action, to risk changing / trying something new and letting people close.

When people are closed down out of disappointment, it is like they have bolted the door, put up a security fence, have guard dogs snarling, attempting to keep out anything good from occurring, so that they will not be disappointed or hurt further.

People with good intentions attempt to come close and they are faced with snarling dogs, electric fences and machine guns aimed at them, as if they are the enemy, when all they want to do is love you. It takes a strong and determined person to persevere in this situation and say “Let me in, it is okay, you can trust me”.

Many just walk away, they see the wounding in the other, the closed door, so they turn away. Hence the hurt person ends up alone, isolated, desperate for attention, for love, but not allowing it. No wonder they feel so hopeless.

There is a war going on inside, keeping the goodness away. When someone does come close they can over react with anger, feeling like “How dare they expect me to let them in, how dare they expect me to take a risk”. You push the person away so hard.

Depending on how deep the wound will depend on how automatic this rejection process is. It can be so strong that rage is triggered and a feeling that you could set the person on fire because they have threatened you and your safety by daring to enter into your closed kingdom, and it literally feels like a threat to your existence. So sad when really the other is saying “Hello, do you want a friend? Do you want to play?”.

toddler-sulkingIt is like two young children meeting in a playground and the first person has planted their feet, crossed their arms, stomped on the spot and said “NO”, shouted “NO, you will not play with me, go away, leave me alone”. They are totally closed off in their tantrum about how they feel and what has occurred to them in life. Then they sulk, pout, kick and scream about how unfair it all is. Most of us can see this behaviour in toddlers, young children quite easily, but we fail to see that as wounded adults we are doing the same thing.

Life can’t change dramatically for the better unless you uncross your arms, suck in your bottom lip, and you open up to connection, to playing, to having fun. While you are shouting NO nothing much can change. So you have to be willing to lower the defenses, to open up to another way of being and to feeling and releasing the emotional pain underneath the wounds, then it dissolves, then you walk free of it and you can see the blue sky and sunshine and let it in, you can see the beauty in life and let yourself be replenished by it and experience good things and have your life work out more enjoyably.

It is clear that it is up to you to take action to heal the wounds. Noone else can do it for you. Even those brave souls who wear suits of armour and non-flammable overalls who come close wanting to help you move forward. Their efforts can only help if you let them in. If you keep shouting NO energetically or actually saying it through your words and actions, then their efforts can’t help.

It is up to you to take the risk to let life be different. You can do it and it is worth it, so worth it, to walk free from misery and enjoy life, to be pleasantly surprised by the mystery of life and finally see the goodness in all things. You can achieve this, simply by healing the past so it doesn’t cloud your future. It can be done and I and many others can help you do it, if you let us, if you open up and say “YES to life, YES I am willing to move forward and to risk being happy. YES I can do this, I will do this, I choose this”.

Then life will lead you forth to the right people, places, books, courses and whatever else you need that best suits you to help you heal and break free from the pain. It will be different for each person based on their current state of awareness, willingness, and ability to feel and release their pain. Some will need to do self-study at first, before they would be willing to risk seeing a therapist and trusting someone to help them move forward. Some may prefer talk therapy as they don’t yet feel safe enough to go into their bodies and feel what is there. Some may prefer to start with body work modalities to help the body relax and let go, preferring this as they are too scared to voice their concerns or speak the truth that they have tried to hide from their whole lives.

Inside your body are all the trapped emotions and memories from the traumas you’ve experienced. It results in muscular tension and holding patterns that are so common in our society. It results in tight, sore shoulders, necks and backs. It is literally like the body has clenched, locked down, armoured up in order to protect itself.
A large part of healing is releasing this tension, melting the armour and the hypervigilance that comes from being in fight, flight, freeze so much.

This has to be done slowly, gently. You can’t take the top off the volcano and have all the pressure escape at once. It’s too volatile, too dangerous, too overwhelming. You need to let out the pressure and steam slowly, gently, so you don’t explode emotionally, but also so your body can integrate the shifts and changes.

There are many ways to reduce the internal stress and pressure, soy ou can cope more easily with whatever life brings you. When you’re already stressed up to your eyeballs internally it makes it so hard to cope. It’s like you’re exhausted with nothing else to give or any capacity to take on more – whether that be a challenge at work, a family member wanting your support or asking you to do something.

When you’re already at your limit, when your plate is full, any additional stressors can result in strong, undesirable reactions. You might react in anger or rage, or just be irritable and cold pushing people away or ignoring their needs. Not because you don’t care. You do care. You just don’t have any more capacity to cope with another stressor.

Thankfully you can use a range of methods to diffuse your internal bomb. Most people turn to addictions to try and numb it, escape it, avoid it, distract from it. They get busy or drink or shop or play video games or any other distraction that stops them from feeling what is occurring inside.

Clearly, this is not a healthy or long term solution. Your nervous system still has all the charge in it, all the pent up energy and emotion, so addictions just form a temporary fix that is bound to fail as the internal pressure continues to grow and the person eventually implodes or explodes.

A much healthier way to reduce the pressure, to let out the steam is spending time in nature, going for walks or swims at the beach. Anything that helps you to slow down, to have greater relaxation and ease in your body.

I have found Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) particularly useful, as it lets out that tension from the body bit by bit, calming your nervous system and giving you more capacity to cope with day to day life. As you release the pressure, it is like you’re taking some of the burdens and pressures from your plate, so there’s room, capacity, to handle life events with a bit more grace and ease. You don’t get shoved into overwhelm as quickly.

TRE is a set of simple exercises designed to help the body access its innate stress, tension and trauma release mechanism. This is an inbuilt tremoring process that uses up the stagnant energy, melts the armour and helps you shift out of fight, flight, freeze into relaxation and ease within. When this occurs it is easier to interact with others as you feel safer in your body, less threatened and defensive. It’s a powerful process for calming the body back down to it’s natural peaceful, playful state.

Excitingly TRE can be learned quickly and once learned you can use it for free for the rest of your life. You can do the exercises and tremoring releases in your own home, whenever you want.
If you want to go deeper, learn more or have some support as you go along, you can see a TRE practitioner like me, but you don’t have to do that regularly. You can just do it when you want to or if you need some extra support.

TRE gives you back your freedom to engage in your healing journey and to heal at a rate your body is comfortable with, listening to and honouring your body. It is well worth learning TRE to empower yourself and move forward with your life. You don’t need to stay stuck, defensive or hidden. You can be free.

pathThere are many roads home, to healing, to your heart and wholeness. It doesn’t matter which road you take, what matters is your willingness to take a step forward into the unknown, into life being different. If you are willing, the Universe will meet you and guide you forth.

May you learn to run joyously along your path, knowing you are taken care of, and see the beauty of life and love all around you. For it is there just waiting for you to open your arms and embrace it. Life really is good once you heal your pain and can see more clearly. May you obtain inner peace as quickly and as easily as you can. With love, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (08 October 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 live life as if love is all that existed?

yellow roseLife is actually full of love, but few people see or feel this. For most people life is full of struggle and fear, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Life is full of love, it is everywhere, because it is our primal nature, it is what energy is made from.

Babies are so loving because they are still in that primal state and their vibration brings out love in us too. Being so primal all their emotions are very pure, so when they are upset we know about it and that too can pull out a matching emotion or vibration in us. Babies are in touch with their essence, their core self and as such are very magnetic energetically.

As each of us heals our hurts, our disappointments with life, our conditioning and past wrong doings, as we heal and forgive ourselves and others we too return to our core essence which is love. We feel love all around us and for all beings.

It feels so good to feel love as a predominant feeling that in time we choose it in most circumstances. We choose not to judge others and accept what is. We choose to let go and not take things personally when someone treats us less than ideally. We choose to send love and pray for others who are hurting, but don’t allow ourselves to get caught in the drama or to be a victim rescuing others. We learn to stand strong in our personal power, yet still be soft, gentle and available for all – when we choose to. We also take time to honour our self and meet our own needs. When we live in this way, with balance between self and others, between work and play, between service and self indulgence, we have inner peace and satisfaction with life, as we know we matter, our actions serve the world, and benefit all including ourselves.

Many of you put yourself last, doing everything for others, self sacrificing then wonder why you feel depleted, less than joyful or happy with life. You need to honour you. You need to fill your own cup – to meet your own needs, so you are happy and fulfilled and energised, then you can give to others freely, easily and joyfully. Doing so fills you up further rather than depletes you.

Many of you give as you don’t feel you deserve to receive or it may feel unsafe to receive. For some it is scary to receive and trust another’s presence in your life. For some independence has become so strong in them that they always have to be the BIG one and make the other the SMALL one, they act as if they are better than somehow, when really they are scared to receive and coping the only way they worked out how.

You don’t need to please others all the time to be accepted. It truly is okay to please yourself. You are allowed to treat yourself well. You are allowed to be happy, truly you are. You are allowed to do what you want. So many of you were told NO constantly as children, that you say it to yourself before you even assess whether or not you can have or do what you want. We tell you, you can have it or do it. As long as what you are doing is not hurting others have it, do it, become it.

You have a right to be happy and do what you want. You have a right to enjoy your life and live it with passion, feeling alive and vital and excited about your days. You are allowed to live life to the full. No need to accept a life of mediocrity, of survival, of just getting by. Life is here for you to make the most of it, to evolve and grow, to live and learn, to serve and love, to enjoy freedom and have fun. You truly are allowed to be in love with yourself and your life.

Most of you hate yourselves or at least doubt yourselves and your ability to earn a decent income doing what you love. You hold back out of fear, fear of embarrassment, failure, loss of self esteem, self worth, etc. This is all flawed thinking. Success is trying. Success is learning what works and doesn’t work and trying again. Success is moving forward and evolving and being of service to self and others. Success is breaking the mould and living passionately.

You can do it. You will do it and when you do you will be bathed in love and know that is all there really is in life that matters – it is matter, the material the Universe is made of – let yourself embody love, become love for self, others and life. It is who you truly are, drop into your heart and live from there. Let the mind rest and work with the heart. You can be guided forward from within if you just listen for that quiet inner voice that knows what is best for you to do, what is in line with your highest good and purpose here on Earth. Life can be full of love when you drop the veils that have been hiding the truth all along. You are love, you are loved and you are perfectly okay just as you are. Live life with passion and enjoy it. It is what you came here to do. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (01 September 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.

Why are families so disconnected?

Some are and some are close, still maintaining a heart to heart connection between family members. In today’s world people are very busy, achieving, being better than others, obtaining things / material objects. These advances in gadgets, in stuff, are valued more highly than taking the time to BE, to connect with friends and family in real life. It is quicker, easier, more hassle free to just connect on social media and keep your physical distance, to have space for self, to rest and recover after working hard all day or facing your own emotional turmoil.

We are here on the planet to go through our awakening and this requires events to hapen to get us to stop and rethink our choices. It requires events that totally alter what we see as important and valuable in life, that is why the tragedies occur, the near death accidents or illnesses, the loss of relationships, family members or careers, the bankruptcy and crime. It all occurs to get us to stop and feel.

While we are busy living normal life we are often on autopilot, we go about our days the same way, over and over. It is comfortable, relatively easy, we don’t have to expend too much energy. Our comfort zone is stretched if we are asked to do much more and we may resist by shutting out that person and their demands or whatever it is that is asking us to stretch. It is easy to get lazy, to just rest and watch TV, to cuddle your pets or children or partner and to switch off from what is occurring to everyone else and the larger world. This is not callous, not personal, it is just human nature, to care for those you hold dearest and to draw a boundary around them and your way of being and to keep that safe, happy and easy.

Anyone wanting to come into your space may find it hard, if your boundaries are very strong. You simply don’t let them in, there is no time available for catching up or getting to know each other. No time for interaction. This is not necessarily a personal rejection, it is just that the person or people inside the circle are contented with their lives as they are and do not see the need to let anyone else in.

This may change in time, they may become more open and available, a career change, a new child, a special event, starting a hobby, or a loss of some kind may lead them to open the door a little wider. Their circumstances may change and they may need more people to help them, if someone was ill, if there was a new child or if their was unexpected loss in some way, whether that be a death of a loved one, loss of a job, crime and loss of posessions or finances. These losses occur to get people to open up, to step out of their comfort zone and to expand their consciousness. These life changing events kick-start the next phase of your evolutionary growth. They are meant to occur and they serve us. They shake us up and get us moving again.

hurting againIf you are upset that people will not let you in, that the door is closed, their boundaries too high, then look within yourself, look within and see why you are upset. You as an adult don’t need these people, you just want them. You can survive on your own. Any pain you are feeling is a trigger to heal that pain inside.

Many of us in childhood did not get our own needs met. We were left with an emotional deficit and we are hungry, starving for love and acceptance. We try to get it from many places and one of those is our families. We assume that they are our blood and we should be close, together, supporting each other. We should be happy, friendly and caring of each other. But this is just your thinking, your judgement.

You chose to incarnate into your specific family for a reason. If you chose a family that is disconnected, you did so for a reason. Perhaps you wanted to learn independence, self reliance and contentment outside of the family realm. If your family was all loving and kind and life was easy, you would not evolve at the rate you do when life is challenging. The challenges occur to help you go within and heal, to reconnect with your own divine nature and that of Source.

heart wateringAs you heal yourself you find that you don’t need love from others, you realise you are love, that is your true nature, and the nature of the Universe. We are surrounded by love and support all the time, but we don’t see it until we heal all the pain and trauma through which we view the world and those in it. We judge based on what is inside us. Each person, each family is doing exactly what they need for the evolution of its members. In time as they all heal and become one within themselves, love will flow freely throughout that family system. Until then there will be blockages, their will be conflict or separation.

You can’t force people to change, to heal, to let you in. What you can do is choose to love them anyway and to focus on healing your wounds and reconnecting to peace and love in your heart, so energetically love flows from you to everyone, instead of pain and judgement, shaming or blaming of those involved.

Try to be compassionate, try to accept that each is doing what they need to for their evolution and each is awakening at their own speed, evolution cannot occur over night, it takes time, lots of time and different people have different abilities to do so. We need to learn the skills to change our thinking patterns, our subconscious beliefs, our conditioning and emotional density. We need to learn how to take responsibility for our own lives and make the best out of what we have. We need to learn the power of gratitude and positive regard, seeing the best in things, as opposed to the worst.

Life truly can be Heaven on Earth if we do the work to heal ourselves. When we do so we make it easier for others to do the same. Energetically our freedom radiates out into the family system affecting others, making it easier for them to do the same. This is how we can help and make a difference  – by loving everyone as they are and accepting their choices and journey. We can focus on our own healing and evolution and know that when everyone’s hearts open back up love will flow freely between us all and families will be more harmonious. This will all take time and we can’t force it.

Don’t torture yourself by judging your family. Heal yourself instead, enjoy your life as much as you can and the doors will open in time, allowing greater connection to those you love. First you do the work internally, energetically and then it manifests in the outer world. Choose peace and love – that is what the world needs and what you are craving. You have to give it to you. You have to heal your blocks to receiving and to letting people close.

When you are healed and energetically open people will come, some of your blood family and some your Soul family, those who resonate with you, love you and want to be with you. These are your true tribe or family. The ones you birthed into were just the catalysts for your evolution and growth. Know in your heart you are okay, you are loved and you are held dear by all who know you, it may not seem like it, but the love is there, just waiting for you to heal enough so you can feel it. May that day come soon. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (27 July 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 let life be easy?

amazing-nature-sunrise-hd-wallpaperLife can be easy, very easy, if you don’t fight against what is. Wars happen, corruption exists. This doesn’t mean you ignore it or allow it to continue, it just means you don’t fight against it. You do what you can peacefully to make a difference, to serve the whole, then you let go and surrender.

All is happening as it is for a reason, it is part of the evolutionary process occurring here on Earth. It will take time for violence and hatred to stop. Fighting against it will prolong it. Choosing love and peace, alignment to Source, accepting what is, living peacably wtih love and kindness to all helps reduce it. It is more peace that is needed on the planet. More open hearted, loving people willing to serve  for the benefit of all. Each of you can make that choice and positively impact all those around you.

You don’t have to save the planet or stop a mass murder. All you need to do is love. Open your heart and love, your positive vibration will then travel out making it easier for others to do the same. When you heal your own wounds, you help to heal the wounds of many in the collective who have experienced the same thing as you. That is enough. That is all you need to do.

In healing yourself you become a catalyst for others. Just drop out of your head, into your heart and LOVE.  That is all the world needs, more loving vibrations, then the fighting will stop, the pain will be resolved and peace will reign.

So stop thinking you have to do so much, effort so hard, try to rescue or save anyone. Just flow and BE. Let life guide you where you need to be and bring you who you need to interact with for your and their highest good. It will all come to you, just stay alert to your intuition, your inner guidance and the synchronicities around you.

Trust the process of life to lead you forth, to your greatest unfolding here on Earth, to embody your higher self and shine your light and be of service. That is what life is about, to be authentically you, shining your light for all to see, inspiring them to do the same, to let go of all pretenses and pretending, to let go of hiding and staying small to be safe, to let go of defense mechanisms and armour, to feel and be safe in the arms of the Divine and your fellow man, to love and accept yourself fully as the wonderful child of God that you are, to treat yourself with kindness and tenderness as you grow, as you slip and fall and rise again, as you process each wave of energy, emotion and past density, to come back into your state of innocence and love, birthing your authentic self here on the planet, flowing with ease and grace, wherever life takes you.

That is how you let life be easy, by flowing with it, accepting what comes, what goes and trusting in life to lead you forth. No rigid agenda – surrender and flexibility, allowing what is and what will be to birth in divine timing and divine will. All is as it should be, now and forever more. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (24 July 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 enjoy life?

You can enjoy life more fully once you stop fighting against it. Many of you are so caught up in judgement and drama. You don’t see the bigger picture or trust the evolution occurring. You try to control it, predict it, struggle against it. Yet it will take you exactly where you need to go.

Surrender and allow, don’t fight against it. Feeling the pain that you are avoiding at all costs is what liberates you. Feeling and releasing the pain sets you free to enjoy life more, to be unrestricted, to flow gently and joyously along your path.

feel inner emotionsYou humans judge pain so much, you avoid it, you fear it, you think it is wrong. And in all that focus you keep it active and alive. Even when you are trying to ignore it, pretend it isn’t there or magic it away, all of this is putting energy into its existence. Whereas if you just surrender and feel it, it can dissolve, it can leave.

Yes, you will feel vulnerable and raw going to the core wound, the core pain in your heart. It will feel challenging to allow that, but if you drop into it, through it, you will find peace on the other side. Your body can then relax, no longer needing to be locked in armour, in fight or flight or senseless defense mechanisms.

Your body does what it needs to in order to protect you and keep you safe. If you couldn’t fight back or flee from danger then your body will move into freeze, into numbing you from the pain so it doesn’t feel so bad.

Inside you are all these frozen parcels of energy from all the times that you didn’t speak up, stand up for what you wanted or defended your honour when people were being unkind or inappropriate. Whether it was a bully at school, a sibling, a teacher or parent who treated you poorly, all these hurts, resentments and disappointments get locked inside you and weigh you down.

Thankfully you can use Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) to help yourself. You can shake out all these old frozen dense energies. You can release the buried stresss, tension and trauma, so that you can feel more fully the goodness inside you. You can regain access to your innocent self, your childlike playful nature who trusts in life and enjoys connecting with others. That purity is still there inside you. It’s just buried under layers of density that have accumulated throughout your life, weighing you down and making it harder for you to enjoy life.

By releasing the stress, tension and trauma your body can finally relax and BE. You can be more present as more of your energy is available now, instead of locked into all those protective mechanisms. And when you can be in the now without all those distractions, you will feel joy, simply because you feel more whole, you feel the war is over inside and you can do what ever you want.

The controller and guard are gone, or at least sidelined, they no longer control the show. You are free to breathe more deeply, to rest, to just BE, to enjoy nature and life more fully. You feel joyous because you are finally being you and not pretending to be okay, you actually are okay and you know it.

You know that life is on your side and the Universe is helping you evolve and live more fully, more freely, so you can be your true self, your destined self and make a positive contribution to this world. You are finally being who you truly are. You let love in and you surrender to the majesty of life on Earth, knowing whatever comes it will be glorious. Your greater freedom within enables greater freedom outside, in life, in what you do.

Your life circumstances will improve as your inner life comes to life, is empowered, freed and born anew. You are literally being reborn with a clean slate, without your childhood conditioning or your past life influences. Instead of the old baggage which you have felt and transformed, now your gifts can awaken. Your joyous abilities, your light filled gifts can awaken and arise enabling you to serve more fully and be yourself in all you do.

You obtain freedom from 9am-5pm standard life, you see a much richer picture of life and live it. You will attract what you need to step up and be you more fully serving the whole in your own unique way and this will feel so good, so joyous because you will know inside that it is who you truly are and what you came here to do. Blessed BE, Amen.

You really can enjoy life fully and you will. So be it. Amen. Blessings to your hearts and the awakened being within you, who waits patiently until you are ready to embrace it. You have all you need. It is already within you. It is growing and blooming at the perfect rate for your journey, just as nature’s plants grow and flower, so do you, your soul, you are part of nature and it all happens perfectly.

jacaIt is all programmed into the seed. You will grow into who you truly are, it is inevitable. You can’t become anything else, just as an acorn seed can not grow into a Jacaranda tree. It must grow into an acorn tree. It will become that, it is nature’s will and it wins out over everything else. So relax, trust, breathe through the feelings that arise and settle into your true nature, that which lies beneath the surface, at your core, deep within your heart. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (4 July 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?

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.