What is Family Constellations?

Family Constellations is a method for clearing our blocks to love within families. When the blockages are cleared, all members of the family feel stronger, more supported, more connected to who they are, where they come from and they know they belong, that they are okay, good enough and a necessary part of the whole.

Much of the pain that people feel comes from a sense of not belonging, of having been rejected or not accepted in some way. Many people feel not good enough in some way. This comes mostly from their childhood experiences, but it can also come from further back the ancestral line.

Unhealed wounds within the family soul will affect how the current generation feel. It will affect how much of their energy is available now to use as they please and how much of it will be entangled with their past experiences or their ancestors’ past experiences.

Family Constellations helps to clear these entanglements so that more of your energy is available for you now. This helps you to feel stronger, clearer and to be able to focus on achieving your goals, living your life and raising your kids.

By clearing out the wounds, traumas and entanglements within the family soul it stops the transmission to the next generation. It frees them of the burden to complete it on behalf of the ancestors. You are being of great service to all of your family when you do this work to free them all from the chains of past trauma – rejections, exclusions, unspoken of tragedies, losses and early deaths.

Pain does not disappear. If trauma is buried, life does not just go on as before, it is tainted, limited, the life force choked and diminished. Freeing it back up, feeling and completing the trauma, lets the life force flow more fully again.

Family Constellations is a technique for identifying blockages within the family soul and clearing them. It helps individuals to break free of the entanglements that have impacted them and enables them to move forward with greater peace and harmony. It is a powerful process, sacred in nature, with its respect for the bigger movements of life, destiny and evolution.

It is a process worth doing, not just to benefit yourself, but your whole family. They may not consciously notice the effects, but energetically they will and you may notice changes in their behaviour, their thinking, their sense of self. For their energy will be freed up enabling them to move forward in whatever is the best way for them, for their highest good.

Family Constellations enables love to flow throughout the family which benefits all. I recommend it and have experienced powerful shifts myself through its use. No longer do I judge my parents or my family. No longer do I resent their choices or their lack of love shown to me. I have seen their pain, their entanglements and accepted they couldn’t do any better with the burdens they were carrying. They did the best they could with the situation they were in. Each had pain and felt unable to move, to be present, to give to me what I needed. The pain I felt was theirs and others in our family lines – it passed on through them to me. This continues to occur until it is healed. In doing Family Constellations I have resolved much of this, so my children will be less burdened than I was or my parents were. This is the gift of Family Constellations, to free yourself and your loved ones, so all can feel more love, more acceptance, more peace. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne M Smith (26 March 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.

The Imprint – Excerpt from IN UTERO documentary

The science of multigenerational trauma, showing how stress is passed on in utero, imprinting the foetus with the trauma and stress the Mother experiences during pregnancy and that which has not been dealt with from the previous generations.  (2:50 mins)

Here is the link to read the whole Huffington Post article by Kathleen Man Gyllenhaal and Stephen Gyllenhaal titled ‘In sickness and in health, it all begins in the womb‘.

Further videos and articles explaining intergenerational trauma and how to heal it, are provided on the Intergenerational Trauma page of this website.

The negative health impacts of loneliness

Love this TED talk about the negative impacts of loneliness on our health. So many of us feel deeply alone, isolating to protect ourselves to avoid rejection or abuse, scared to let people close and risk feeling more loss if that person leaves. This has been and continues to be one of my deepest challenges. For me it has been easier to hide in work and study than risk more loss. I have learned to love any way and to let people close and for that I am eternally grateful. Much love to all who struggle with loneliness, may you take a risk to connect and find your tribe.

Addiction – animated explanation of the science showing the source of addiction

Science now shows that the cause of addiction is not the addictiveness of the drugs themselves, but the underlying reasons for taking the drugs – the emotional pain, trauma, and disconnection/loneliness that users feel. The drugs are simply an escape mechanism to avoid feeling the pain and to feel connected to something. If as a society we help people to heal the pain, to feel connected to others and enjoy life, then the use of drugs will decrease. Love and connection is the answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg

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.

What is an entanglement?

An entanglement is an enmeshment with another person that affects your ability to be yourself and do as you please. You are so caught up with the other person that your thoughts and feelings are tangled up with theirs. It is hard to know where you end and the other person starts, there is no boundary or separation, the two people are entwined, tangled together into one messy situation.

This comonly occurs when a child tries to take care of a parent. The child sensing the parent’s pain or inability to cope with their life, steps up and takes responsibility for helping reduce the burden on the parent. This is a reversal of the orders of love – parents are meant to give and children receive.

Happy kidsChildren are meant to grow focussed on life, play, having fun and age appropriate issues. It is not normal for a child to be thinking about adult problems and trying to solve them. But children will do this out of loyalty, out of love and out of a desire to stay safe and keep their home. No matter how dysfunctional or painful a child prefers to stay with its parent, rather than be taken away into the unknown, even if that unknown is a more loving home with other family members or foster parents.

Our loyalty to our biological parents is huge and stays with us our whole life. If we violate that bond, if we judge or reject our parents we feel a loss, an emptiness, a sadness deep inside, as the flow of love from the family line has been blocked. We are refusing to accept our parents and our life as it is. In essence we are saying ‘NO to life’ and we suffer as a result. The life force flowing to us is diminished as we are saying NO to our parents, NO to their love, NO to receiving any energy or support from them. We are saying “NO, you are not good enough, I wanted more, someone different to you”. This is fighting against life, fighting against what is. These are your parents for better or worse, they are your parents. They gave you life and if that is all they gave you it is a true gift. At the very least accept that, be grateful for that.

As we heal we can come to see our parents as not just ‘parents’, but as people with their own issues, challenges and emotional hurts. If we are trying to fix them, change them, influence them, we are still entangled. We are still caught up unhealthily over involved in their energy and trying to control life. This is like standing in front of a dam that is cracking and trying to order the water to stay there, not to move. It won’t work. As the dam cracks the water is going to gush forth, because that is what water does, gravity does.

Your parents have their own lives to lead and it is not our place to judge them or be overly involved in their business, to be entangled like this stops us from living our lives fully. It is best to accept your parents as they are, to say ‘YES to life’, YES to receiving whatever goodness you can get from them and to accept that as all they can give you, to say “That is enough. What you can’t give me I will get from elswhere. Thank you Mum, thank you Dad, you are enough”. When we can say this and mean it we are freed from the entanglement. The love strength and support from the family line can flow to us, helping us, supporting us to live more fully. We are accepting our place in life and letting ourselves receive the goodness from our family line.

Reaching that place of acceptance can be a long journey. It takes time to grieve what could have been, what you felt should have been and to accept what was and is. That is the journey of life. It is true and authentic emotional release work required until you do feel peaceful inside and accepting of your family.

You could choose to stay in judgement and anger over what has happened or hasn’t happened in your life, but this just punishes you and limits you and your ability to live life joyously. Best to untangle the web, to break free and accept what is and make the most out of it. This is one form of entanglement that can have a massive impact on a person’s life.

Another kind of entanglement occurs when a child takes on a burden for the ancestors present or ancient. It can be a sibling not wanting to live fully because they see their brother or sister afflicted with an illness or who died and they feel guilty for living or being able to do what the other could not. In essence they wish to join the lost sibling. This will result in poor health for themself or some other dysfunction in their lives, as in essence they are saying NO to life, NO to goodness, abundance, health and vitality. They are saying I don’t deserve this or I have no right to this. It is self sacrifice out of loyalty, out of love and entanglement with the fate of the other.

Instead of dying for the other choose to stay a while longer, choose to live fully for them, to do what they could not do, to achieve whatever you desire and to join them when it is your proper time. Whether it was a sibling who died young, your parent or your own child, you do not have to follow them into the grave. You can live and hold them in your heart, feel them in your heart. They are there, their energy is available to you. Your ancestors long dead watch you, pray for you and send you love. They want you to succeed and to advance the family line. It is okay to feel your sadness and to move through it back to peace and happiness.

Another type of entanglement which sounds a little more bizarre, occurs with past relatives whom you may not have even met. It is possible that a young woman having difficulties with infertility is actually entangled with a great Aunt who never married. The energetic connection is such that the present soul put up their hand to relate, to repeat the pattern that occurred in the family line. The same occurs with members of the family who suffered tragedies such as loss of a loved one, death, murder, suicide, etc. A present family member who is connected to the past ancestor may also have suicidal thoughts or mental health problems, they may have financial difficulties or other challenges in life.

Sometimes it is as if the current family member is atoning for the sins of the previous ancestor – they struggle to make up for the wrong doing of the other. In different situations it is as if the family member present today chooses the same fate out of love for the other, wanting to empathise with them. Either way it is not helpful to the present person and it hinders their ability to live their life fully.

When the entanglement is identified and healed the person is free to live how they like. They can consciously honour the past family member and their fate, but choose to be free of the entanglement now, with love and respect, bowing to the ancestor and leaving it with them. This is core Family Constellations work and it is beautful to watch these resolutions occur and people being freed from the knots that have bound them and limited their ability to enjoy their lives. With the knots untied they can walk forward easily to do what they wish, without hindrance. May we all walk freely and enjoy our lives. Blessed BE. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (18 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.

What is the family soul?

reflective-treeThe family soul is the collective energy that surrounds a lineage of people from the same family. It contains all the memories and experiences of everyone in the family.

When there is trauma or exclusion a wound occurs to the family soul, a distortion of the energy, so instead of love flowing through the family line, pain now flows from the ancestors to the current and future generations. This also occurs when the orders of love are reversed, for instance if a parent is absent and a child does not receive the nurturing and connection it needs. The absence may be due to war, abandonment, physically if a child is given up for adoption or if a parent themselves is sick, unavailable emotionally or physically. When a parent is ill or emotionally unavailable, often the child will try to ‘give’ to the parent to help them cope or feel better. The child takes on responsibilities that are not theirs to carry – it may be helping out a lot around the house or caring for the other children or even caring for the parent. The orders of love are reversed in this instance as the flow of energy is child to parent, instead of it being the parent giving and the child receiving.

It also occurs when someone is excluded from the family, because everyone does belong to the family system, no matter what they have done. Excluding someone is like throwing a block, a big boulder into the flow of the family soul, the river of lifeforce energy flowing to all people. The block diminishes the amount of energy available to all people. Worse it creates a tear in the fabric of the family soul that will only be healed when that excluded person is bought back into your heart. If this does not occur, someone in future generations will subconsciously choose to relate to the excluded person and will end up feeling like they are not accepted or don’t belong, they will repeat the fate of the excluded individual as the family system attempts to heal the wound.

It is just like our personal journeys where life presents us with a repeating situation until we learn the lesson. This is the same thing, but at the family level. Discovering this enables those who are suffering to resolve it by welcoming the excluded person back into their heart, energetically welcoming them back to the family system and restoring them to their rightful place. This allows the lifeforce energy to then flow freely again to all members. This occurs at the soul level, energetic level, it does not have to be physically and often it is an ancestor long dead who was excluded and in need of reconnection to their rightful place in the family.

If there has been trauma in the family system, be it war, violence in the home, tragedy from loss of children, divorce, early death of parents, etc then this trauma can also pass through the family system to the current and future generations. It is as if the unresolved pain seeps through the blood of all involved instead of love, strength and support. This too can be healed so that those affected are freed from their over reactions to situations, the inappropriate feelings or thoughts they may have that don’t seem to be appropriate or consistent with their life experiences. For instance persistent suicidal thoughts or depression or anxiety could actually be resulting from entanglements with past family members, you are feeling their feelings, they are not actually your thoughts. These cease once the wound in the family soul is healed by acknowledging the tragedy, the loss and giving it it’s rightful place, allowing all to feel and move through the situation, instead of being stuck and controlled by it.

The family soul is a container of energy around all members of the same lineage, when all is well in a family you can feel the flow of love, flowing from the ancestors to yourself and the other current family members. This energy strengthens you, supports you and encourages you to live your life as you wish to do so, for you are the leading edge of consciousness, the person now evolving while here on Earth and expanding the consciousness within the family. The ancestors want you to succeed and do well, they want you to thrive and advance the family line. This is life as it was meant to be. This support is available once you heal any blockages to its flow. It is worth doing and quite easy when you know how.

There are many methods that can help. Family constellations is one of these, where the field supplies the information about what is missing and blocked and needs to be resolved within the family system. The challenge then is to feel what needs to be felt, forgive all involved and welcome them back into your heart. It is a similar task to our personal issues, just with some larger influences. It is a part of our evolution, our connectedness and oneness with the fabric of life. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (15 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 do we inherit family trauma?

Trauma that cannot be processed by one family member, because it is overwhelming, they do not have the skills or knowledge of how to process it, or do not have the will to feel it and release it, will be passed on genetically to the next generation. It also of course affects the rest of the current generation due to the unavailability of the traumatised person who will be isolated within themselves, possibly numb emotionally and distant in their ineracting with others, be they their children or siblings.

Trauma stays within the body and freezes part of the person’s energy, it is literally stuck, frozen in time within them, locked into when the trauma occurred. It stays in the body until it is processed and if it is not processed then it remains locked in place, creating internal tension and dis-ease.

No individual wants this to occur or be passed on to their existing children or grand children. It is not an intentional thing, it is an automatic thing. If Dad has died in the war then Mum is going to be mourning, she is not going to be able to be present fully for the children or meet their emotional needs. The children will sense Mum’s pain and feel their own loss and mourning, so they will try to get Mum to feel better, so they can get the attention they need. If it doesn’t work they eventually give up trying and switch off, shut down emotionally, feeling empty, unloved, unsatisfied with life.

The pattern then repeats when they marry and try to get the attention they missed out on from their husband or wife. No matter how loving the partner is, they cannot make up for the emotional pain or love deficit from their partner’s childhood, so it will feel unloving or not enough. They may try hard to give enough, to do extra, be extra affectionate and giving, they may try to fill that hole in their partner. Eventually they realise no matter what they do it is not enough, it doesn’t work and they are exhausted from trying, so they switch off, shut down, isolate and become emotionally numb as well, so the pattern continues. No malice, no cruelty, just life when there is trauma within one or both partners in a relationship.

So how do you resolve it? By becoming aware of the trauma within, by creating a safe enough space that you can feel it, acknowledge it and let it dissolve. By seeing your defense mechanism and games you have used to protect yourself from it.

  • Have you kept yourself so busy that you can’t feel?
  • Have you been saving the world, feeling righteous putting all your energy into others or a cause, but neglecting yourself, avoiding yourself and your inner world?
  • Have you been pleasing others, doing for others, hoping that they will love and accept you and you will feel that you are okay, lovable and worthwhile?
  • Have you been isolating yourself from others, keeping a low profile, so as not to be seen or to avoid any possible further trauma? By being preoccupied with avoiding it, you stay stuck in it and will have difficulty exeriencing any joy in life.

There are many defensive mechanisms that people use to try and keep safe or to avoid their feelings. Looking good so to avoid rejection, fearing you won’t be accepted as you are, so you try to be, look, do everything perfectly. This is exhausting. It is no wonder people end up depressed or ill, their life force is being frittered away with fear and their over reactions to it.

To clear the trauma and stop passing it onto our kids we need to become emotionally aware and savvy in processing how we feel. Learn to go within and sit inside yourself, breathe, let the emotion surface and breathe through it, let it be released, felt into completion. It can’t be avoided. It has to be acknowledged and felt. Thank the defense mechanism for keeping you safe, but choose to be present for yourself and your inner child now.

happiness inside jobIt is this inner child part of you that needs your reassurance, your love, your acceptance. It needs you to become the good parent to yourself, to know that you will look after him/her and protect her, you wil be the Adult guardian she felt was absent in earlier years. As she feels safer and you feel and release the pain, you will find you are not triggered by life any more, you can live more in the now and be there for those you love. Your children, if you have any, will notice this shift, they will feel your presence and they will absorb your love, your attention, and you can meet their emotional needs, fill up their inner cup with love so it is overflowing, then they can acept themselves and enjoy their lives.

If their cup does  not get filled and they feel empty, forlorn, they will at a soul level choose to take some of your pain, some of your trauma so you feel better and then you might be able to love them more. They abandon themselves to care for you. This is a reversal of the orders of love and is damaging for all involved. Parents are meant to give and children receive. However, it is often reversed in many families when the parents are hurt, injured or unavailable, whether that be due to illness, addiction or absence.

Children try to make the parent happier, they may try to be neater or tidier, they may help out with the housework or try to cheer the parent up with jokes, they may try to steal the attention through getting into trouble to distract you from your pain or they may even sacrifice their own health, choosing to get ill so you will focus on them and not feel your own pain. Children are so loving, but this is not healthy behaviour.

In doing this chldren miss out on being kids, they grow up way too fast and this stunts their natural growth and emotional development. It locks trauma, pain and loss within them and so the cycle repeats. When they have their own children they will sense the parent’s pain and do the same thing, hence it passes through the generations. No malice, not deliberate, done out of love, of wanting to help and of not knowing how to heal the underlying issue of emotional pain and trauma.

Thankfully in today’s world we do have the knowledge of how to heal trauma, how to bring love back into the family system and to correct any reversals of flow, so that the younger generations can receive the love and support they need and deserve from the ancestors behind them.

Family Constellations and other methods can help individuals to heal their family systems, enabling hope and love to exist for all family members. There is much more that can be said about this in future blogs, for now this is enough, to understand that trauma passes through families until love is restored.

Each family member can find peace and happiness when the blocks to love are removed. It can be done, support is available and you can learn the skills to feel your emotions and release that which is locked away inside you. It is possible, it is worth doing and your children thank you, because then they don’t need to do it for you, the burden they carry for you is transformed, freeing them to enjoy their lives more. Such love, such loyalty, such strength and commitment to each other, that is what families are about and it is beautiful. Blessed BE, Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (10 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.

How to let life be fun?

Life can be fun if you let go of the seriousness, the shoulds and have tos. You can still achieve your tasks, but in a more relaxed way. Take the time to smell the roses, to notice the leaves moving on the trees, to be present to the sun on your skin and the feel of the wind in your hair. Be in the present moment and allow what is to be felt, enjoyed and valued.

Too few of you value or even notice the simple pleasures in life. You are rushing from one man-made construction to the next, one scheduled event to the next. You push yourselves way too hard and are then depleted energy wise, with no reserves left to go play and have fun. So you collapse in front of the TV or numb out on your electronic devices, passing time in a way that while acceptable to you is really a dull version of what is possible if you met with people face to face.

Meeting face to face, in person, allows true connection and touch, a warm hug, a laugh and genuine smile, a gladness for your existence and theirs. It enables your hearts to connect and open and for love to flow. You may just go for a walk or sit and talk, it doesn’t have to be an expensive or fancy activity. Just being together can be fun and it is this connection that most of you crave.

deserve good lifeMany people are very lonely. They sit alone at home and feel sad, unloved, bored and uninspired. They could do anything with their time, but they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing and then feel even more blue. Make the most of your days. Reach out to others and connect. Call a friend, see if someone is available for coffee. Your to do list can wait. You are allowed to have some time off. You deserve it, you are worthy of it, and you can have it. You just have to choose.

Go the museum, the zoo, the theatre, there are a thousand things you can do, just choose. Make a list of things you would like to try and do them one by one. It can be easy and fun. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can choose to enjoy life and have fun each and every day. It is up to you.

The baggage and habits that hold you back, that keep you stuck in the same old space, won’t disappear over night, but it will get easier each step you take. Take those steps, take that leap of faith and trust life to bring you all you need to survive, to serve, to thrive, for life can be fun, you just have to let it be so. Alter your thinking and actions and have fun. It is so good to do.

When you have fun your heart smiles, chemical endorphins are released in your body and your body feels better, healthier, happier. Fun is good medicine. Have some today and every day!!! Take the pressure off of yourself and live a simpler life, where you value yourself and others, where you connect more deeply, where you love each other and are there for each other.

Enjoy life more and thrive. Let the good life in. It is always good, it is just our thinking that makes it seem otherwise. Challenges come and challenges go. These help us evolve and awaken to love, to life lived as a vessel of love, being of service to all. It takes time to heal and release your past hurts, your conditioning, but it is worth the effort. It truly is. Having fun can be easy when your body and mind is at peace, relaxed and present in the moment.

When your body is tense, stressed, or traumatised it is harder to be in the present moment. Part of your energy is tied up in the past, in worry or anxiety, in fear and frustration. You can release this underlying tension and discomfort quite easily using Tension and Trauma Release Exercises (TRE). TRE is your body’s natural mechanism for shaking out tension, stress and trauma. When your body and nervous system relax back out of fight, flight, freeze into relaxation it is much easier to enjoy life and have fun as your body is open to it. It feels safe to relax and play, to interact with others and to enjoy life.

Take action to resolve your past hurts and conditioning, so you can have that inner freedom and peace, that natural joy. You will reach that space in time, for that is what the process of life is, a cleansing of the heart to enable evolution, raising of consciousness, and becoming the embodiment of love – to vibrate at that frequency consistently and manifest Heaven on Earth. It can be done. It will be done. You will see and soon. So be it. Amen.

By Jodi-Anne (15 August 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.