Muse

Loving your demons requires calling back the shadow aspects of yourself–shame, guilt, rage, grief and feelings of unworthiness–to become integrated and take residence in your heart.

Self-love, acceptance and total forgiveness allow this integration to take place. 

We try to avoid our demons by pushing them away, using defense mechanisms like denial, compartmentalization, repression or dissociation (separating your body experience from your mind or emotions.)

For many, there comes a time when fending off the unbearable stops working. 

As Carl Jung wrote, "what you resist, persists." Unintegrated painful experience can echo through your life as sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression or other problems.

Making a conscious choice to face your demons takes the courage to explore and feel what you have been avoiding. 

When you invite your demons to show themselves–through therapy, meditation, or other practices–you begin the process of integrating the unbearable into conscious awareness. 

Learning to accept and love everything about yourself is at the heart of your transformational journey.

Here are some suggestions for learning to love your demons:

1. Make a conscious choice to open your eyes, ears, and heart to what lies deep within. Get interested in all aspects of your experience.
2. Work with practices that help you develop steady, loving self-observation. Tell your judgement it's time to retire.
3. Self-acceptance, self-love, and self-care should be at the core of your practice.
4. Compassion and forgiveness allow your heart to fully integrate all of who you are. You may find a specific practice helpful, such as this forgiveness meditation by Jack Kornfield.

Facing and loving the shadow aspects of yourself will be a difficult, but rewarding, journey. You will discover things about yourself you never knew and come to love yourself in ways you never thought possible.

You will eventually find a heartfelt stillness inside that will hold you steady no matter what is going on. 

The ability to be fully, calmly present with what is, frees you from suffering.

When it is time, be willing to let go of what no longer works, and nourish your heart and soul with gentleness, kindness, and compassion. 

Love your demons, transform your life!

Be Well,

Rebecca

"Pickard Brook" photo image by Jennifer Hopkins ( http://jenhopkins.com/about/artwork-2/ ) with a Creative Commons license.

Gratitude is heart energy. When you connect with a feeling of gratitude your chest softens and expands as your heart chakra radiates this energy.

We've all had those moments–listening to music, seeing something beautiful, experiencing an act of kindness–when the feeling of gratitude bursts forth as the heart center surrenders its guard and makes room for the fullness of this beautiful energy.

When you allow the wave of gratitude to swell, it will connect you to the pulse of the universe.

Choosing to be grateful is often hard. It is pretty common–and much easier–to be attached to negativity ("it's easy to be hard"). But, you have a choice: what you think directly affects how you feel (see "Change Your Mind" Muse Post.)

Gratitude is ever-present. And you can consciously choose to cultivate it anywhere, anytime.

Learning to discipline the mind is a rewarding practice. Applying this skill to the cultivation of gratitude will bring you greater peace and ease.

Here is a gratitude practice adapted from the work of Tom Kenyon:

1. Get into a comfortable position and engage your breath. Do a quick body scan and breathe into any places you are holding tension. Relax.
2. Get grounded. The practice will have a much greater effect if you are able to ground the energy of gratitude all the way down into your root chakra. (For a grounding exercise see the Muse post "Getting Grounded, Staying Grounded."
3. Now it's time to conjure up the experience of gratitude. Go through a list of all the things for which you are grateful until you find something that sparks a feeling of gratitude (even if it's just a little). Sometimes this can take some time. Stick to it! (When I'm having trouble feeling grateful, thinking of my dog always does the trick.) When you've connected with something you feel grateful for you are ready for the next step.
4. Bring your attention to your heart organ, and feel this gratitude. Imagine that the pulse of your heart is sending the energy of gratitude throughout your entire body. Allow your body to be bathed in this healing energy and breathe deeply into the experience.

Gratitude practice requires a commitment to making change. These days it is easy to believe there is nothing on earth to be grateful for.

With effort and time you will always find something.

An attitude of gratitude is to be shared. Please pass it along to everyone you know.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Be Well,

Rebecca

"Zinnia" photo image by Jennifer Hopkins ( http://jenhopkins.com/about/artwork-2/ ) with a Creative Commons license.

If you sweated through Jane Fonda's aerobic workouts back in the early 80's, you'll remember her famous expression "no pain, no gain!" The message was this: unless you just about keeled over during the workout, you'd never get anywhere.

Exercise physiology was in its infancy at that time, and it wasn't until years later that science showed us that, in fact, less is usually more when it comes to physically challenging the body.

Jane Fonda's killer workouts are an example of the gusto with which many of us went about self-improvement in those days–if it didn't hurt, it didn't work.

At the same time that sales of Jane Fonda's exercise videos were soaring, survivors of domestic violence and childhood abuse were starting to find a voice. As second-wave feminism brought attention to the issue of violence against women, trauma support groups and special therapies that addressed trauma arose in response.

Like exercise physiology, the field of trauma treatment has come a long way. Initially, therapists believed that regressing the client so that she could remember, relive, and tell her story was the best way to heal the effects of abuse. We now know that regression therapies can cause harm. 

It has become widely recognized that to be effective, treatment must rebuild and fortify a client's strengths and coping skills before her traumatic past is relived and retold in the therapy (if at all). 

There are many different forms of regression therapy. What they have in common is this: the therapist regresses the client by leading her back into her traumatic past. 

So why is regression therapy such a problem?

A healer–whether a doctor, a massage therapist, or an energy healer–is in a position of power. When a therapist or healer intentionally regresses a client, they are asserting their power and will over the client.  This assertion of power can feel like a reenactment of the initial abuse.  

Often the client will respond with worsening symptoms like dissociation, relapse (for addicts), an increase in depression, and suicidal ideation.

Therapeutic regression can be insidious because it is often carried out in a very loving and nurturing context. Examples include offering a client a stuffed animal to help bring him back in time, or holding a client in a maternal embrace.

Think about it: if the goal of therapy is to become a healthy, functioning adult, why would purposefully regressing a client be a good thing?

In my opinion there is nothing wrong with hugging a client, but it should be done skillfully and not in the service of regression.

Often, when there is a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse, "good touching" and "bad touching" were conflated. Therefore, it's a good idea to talk about the implications of physical contact and affection in the context of a therapeutic relationship. 

Most clients assume their therapist/healer knows best–making it unlikely they will express discomfort with affection. Instead, the client may tell herself she needs to "get over" her fear of being touched, and dissociate in order to cope with the discomfort.

If dissociation is happening, the focus of treatment should be on building the skills to stay grounded and present in the body. 

The therapy relationship should be collaborative and focus on empowering the client to feel in charge of her body and to pay deep attention to comfort and safety levels during sessions. This applies to talk therapy, body work, and energy healing.

Here are some suggestions for staying empowered in your treatment (whether or not you have a trauma history):

1. Make sure you actually like your healer and feel comfortable with her. I have heard countless stories from clients who stayed too long in therapies that didn't feel right. Listen to your inner voice and trust your intuition.
2. If anything happens in the course of treatment that doesn't feel right to you, bring it up. Advocating for yourself in this way–in and of itself–is healing and empowering and enriches your therapy.
3. "Things will get worse before they get better" is generally true. However, if you find yourself regressing in your functioning and staying in this place for long periods of time, something isn't right. 
4. If you resume–or start–behaviors that are self-destructive in the course of your therapy (i.e. substance abuse, self-mutilation, unsafe sex), this is a red flag. Your healing needs to focus on self-care until you are safe and and stabilized. 

Exploring traumatic events in the context of a collaborative therapeutic relationship (including talk therapy, body work and energy healing) can be a powerful healing experience. 

Listen to yourself and validate how you feel as your healing progresses. 

Take it slowly and gently!

Be Well,

Rebecca

If you develop the skills to work constructively with anger it can be transformational. If you pay attention, anger will reveal where you hurt–and where you need to heal. 

When you repress anger, you often "act out" in a passive-aggressive way. Repressing anger robs you of your life force. It requires an exhaustive amount of energy to keep anger under wraps. 

The other extreme–constant venting and/or expressing your anger is unproductive, and does not lead to resolution or integration of the underlying issues.

Managing anger with care is about finding a middle ground between the polarities of repression and venting.

It is also important to learn how to express and release anger in a way that does no harm. Hitting, punching, and yelling may help to move anger in the body, but this can hurt. For example, if you lose your voice doing anger work, you are hurting your vocal cords.

Anger often masks hurt, fear and grief.

Anger is like the scab on a wound. If all you do is rip the scab off, it might be satisfying but it doesn't help heal the wound. Unless anger work is accompanied by clearing and integration, it is just scab-picking.

Being skillful with expressing and releasing anger requires insight and the ability to notice when you are angry. Integrative anger work requires proper grounding, embodiment (staying fully present in your body), and insight into the nature of the wound that is activated.

The marker of integrated healing is the feeling of softening in your heart center as well as a greater sense of caring and compassion for yourself.

If you pay attention, your anger can help you understand and heal your psychic wounds. If you release it with care, you will integrate this insight into your consciousness. 

Here are some suggestions for handling anger:

1. Because anger is a very physical energy, pay attention to your body. Breath moves energy. Breathe into the places you are feeling angry, and really receive your breath. 
2. Get grounded. Proper grounding enables you to both release anger and receive healing energy. For more information on grounding see Getting Grounded, Staying Grounded (May 13th post).
3. Once you are grounded, breathing, and tuning into your body, allow yourself to feel. Notice what you feel, along with any corresponding thoughts, and write all of this down. Don't censor yourself, and write as if no one will ever read your words. It is helpful to keep an anger journal–one you use just for processing and healing anger.
4. If you can't sit still with your anger, tune in to what your body needs to do. Whatever you choose–walking, running, jumping rope, hitting a tennis ball–do it mindfully, and with care. Make sure you are breathing. And don't hurt yourself. When you are done moving, get grounded, pay attention to what you are thinking and feeling, and write down everything that comes to mind.  
5. If you have a kind and loving person to share your feelings with, healing and integration will happen more easily. If you don't, you may want to consider finding a "listener" you trust.
6. Do this practice until your anger subsides. For some people, this may need to be an ongoing practice. Don't judge your progress, just do the practice. You are building a caring and compassionate relationship with yourself, and that's what matters.

As you develop the skills to gently and courageously walk through the fire of your anger you will release blocked energies that keep you from being grounded, centered and in your power.

The practice of using care, compassion, and kindness towards yourself is your healing journey–and this practice will fuel your transformation.

The Muse is going on vacation until September.

Until then–

Be Well!

Rebecca

"Fall Maple Leaves" image by Jennifer Hopkins ( http://jenhopkins.com/about/artwork-2/ ) with a Creative Commons license.