A Journey Towards Yourself

A healing journey is not something you decide one day to start. You rather find yourself forced onto it through one life circumstance or another. Something breaks, a relationship, an illusion, a business or, in my case, a bone. Or something stops working. A crisis arrives and, as a result, you find yourself ready to do anything in your power to mend the situation. Only that the situation is not usually mendable as it serves one purpose only: to start your healing journey.

10 years ago, I had no idea what a healing journey was. And yet I was already travelling mine. My first trigger was my cancelled wedding. I thought my world would end. Little did I know how grateful I would eventually come to be for this life crisis.

The usual first response to a life crisis is to try and hold things together, to deal with the immediate actions required to ensure survival – a place to live, an income, a support network. But once the immediate things have been attended to, you’re left with yourself and eventually forced to look inside.

This is when you enter the second stage of a healing journey – you decide to do something about the situation. Something deeper than just fixing the urgent things. You figure out that somehow you have created this outcome – the broken bone, the broken marriage, the bankruptcy, you name it. And you begin to look inside in search for answers.

This is when it gets really confusing: you enter the world of therapies. There are a million and one therapies and alternative therapies out there and here’s my take on the ones that I have tried:

Traditional psychotherapy

Always a good idea and easy to find. Can help you stabilise when you go through a crisis and can teach you to take a hard and honest look at your own self. It increases self-awareness and might help you make better decisions. But it will usually not touch the deeper aspects that need healing within you.

Self-help books and online courses

I’ve been an addict of those. I consumed them by the dozens. Some offer interesting new perspectives, others are useless, some are boring and others entertaining. What you get out of them depends on what you put into them. My best results came when I did the work required to implement the techniques that I learned. My favourite thing in this category is a technique called Radical Forgiveness. I still use it whenever I need to let go of something and it works brilliantly, every time.

Workshops (in person)

These require a little more investment than the previous category. And the fact that you need to invest more makes you likely to get more out of them. I spent four years attending various workshops and weekend retreats organised by the School of Intuition and Healing in London and learned several life-saving techniques. A weekend spent in a haunted house helped me get rid of my fear of the unseen world. The cord cutting workshop was a life saver as I understood how people and especially ex-partners cord to us energetically and continue to suck our life force long after they are no longer part of our life. Learning how to energetically clear my space made a huge difference for me as I am an energy sensitive person.  

Mindfulness and meditation techniques

They can be a life saver if you practice them thoroughly. It’s of no use to ‘know’ about these techniques, to understand them mentally. The benefit comes only when you practice them. Learn a few practices, see what works and what does not work for you. Then build your routine and stick to it. 

Past life regression

Lying on a couch recalling in great details past life events may seem odd. It is, however, highly entertaining. It is also helpful to identify the deeper layer of some relationships and life choices. But eventually you need to realise that what’s in the past is best left in the past and stop giving these old stories your attention and energy. 

Constellations

This term was initially introduced by Bert Hellinger as ‘Family constellation’, a type of psychodrama that sets on stage the invisible dynamics of your family. Professor Ruppert took it several steps further and called it the ‘constellation of the intention’. During this process, people who know nothing about you create a little play based on a statement of intention: ‘I want to… (fill in the gaps)’. Their movements show you the unconscious splits within your psyche and help you integrate the lesser-known parts of yourself. You may get some deep and sometimes surprising revelations about your own psyche and wounds. On the other side, it can become addictive, and I have seen people who are stuck in the same patterns for years. It also does not account for energies that we carry that might not be our own (see below shamanic energy healing).

Astrology

Always a favourite and easily accessible. You can find out a lot from a well-done horoscope (not to be confused with the cheap versions available in magazines). It shows you trends and increases your awareness. But it does little to help you heal any deep wounds.

Reiki

A form of energy healing that provides instantaneous relief. It works by bringing high vibration energy into your body and it helps you cope physically, emotionally, or mentally with whatever you’re dealing with at that moment. My experience with it is that it does little to solve the deep wounds of traumas we carry and that its effects dissipate after a while.

Energy healing

There are various types of this healing modality available and most involve a therapist working with your energy field to remove blockages, cut cords, rebalance your chakras and help with your general energy flow. Some of these energy healing modalities are actually very effective in removing the root cause of an issue. But beware of creating dependency on a certain therapist who can ‘fix’ you.

Rites and Rituals

These are either energy transmissions (rites) -  for instance the Munay Ki rites - or rituals (certain ways of doing things) that we create – for instance we may create a new moon or full moon ritual. They help us connect to sources of energy that are far greater than our own. They also help us balance our energy field and bring up issues that need to leave us. I highly recommend them but with some warnings: the rites need to be given cleanly without the intervention of the therapist’s ego, and the rituals need to be meaningful to the person doing them. Also some rites may trigger a healing crisis!

Shamanic energy therapy

My biggest favourite. It’s deeper than anything else I have tried (except for plant medicine - see below). It addresses the need to rebalance energy in the present but also removes imprints of deep trauma we may carry from the past. It works at the energy level, therefore bypassing the mind and its need to create drama, and it has a true potential to change your life. It can also remove energies that you carry and that are not yours (spirit attachments). Beware of some pitfalls: some therapists try to keep on to clients for much longer than needed and help create a never-ending need of healing. My recommendation is to check that there’s a compatibility between the energy of the therapist and yours. Whenever possible, work with native healers who practice the shamanic healing of their own culture.

Sacred plant medicine

The most powerful healing modality I have ever tried. There are several plants used in sacred plant medicine ceremonies and range from mild to extremely strong (e.g. Cacao, San Pedro, Ayahuasca). Ayahuasca is at the strong end of the spectrum and not to be taken lightly. It will shake your life from the roots in a powerful and unexpected way. It will also force trauma out of you by all means possible (diarrhoea, vomiting and days of shock to mention only a few). Great caution is recommended when you decide to take this step. It’s not a healing modality for everyone and certainly not one to be taken lightly. If you want to go down this route, make sure you chose carefully who you're going to do this with and under what circumstances.

Some of these modalities I tried as a patient and in some of them I have trained as a practitioner. And I can say one thing after my ten years of experience in the arts of healing: all these modalities work. There’s no recipe and no prescribed order. You are unique and your healing journey is unique. Try out different things, different therapists, see what you resonate with and what works for you.

And if you want to know more about these healing modalities and my list of do’s and don’ts in the space of healing, join my free webinar. “The do’s and don’ts of energy healing”. Friday 8 October 2021 at 8 pm UK time. Register for free here!