Intuitive Psychology Pt III: The Vessel Toolkit

The practice of being a vessel utilizes a source of wisdom beyond the brain, releases energetic blockages in the nervous system, and allows creative inspiration to flow in both healer and sufferer alike. The practice of being a vessel invites you to remain open to the medicine in your mind body experience and to remove the limitations of the personal stories often attached. I am not saying that you must rid yourself completely of the ego or the personality to channel intuitive wisdom. In fact, your personality contributes to the style, tone, and messaging of your medicine, as well as to the different levels of resonance with others. However, with less resistance and more allowance, less problem-solving and more openness, less judgement and more compassion, you can dance with the rhythm of your gifts as they appear in your inner vision. So… how do you do it?!!!

In my opinion, the essential goal of all healing modalities is to identify and release the early life and ancestral lineages of trauma manifesting in present circumstance/ The only difference is the methodology and the symptomatology - the perceived branches of your epigenetic tree. In other words, how is your trauma manifesting in this moment and keeping you out of alignment with your life path? You may experience chronic emotional strife, physical pain, relational struggles, money issues, etc. All are branches of the same tree. I do not mean to be reductive and you may be wondering if I make exceptions for things like car accidents or tragic occurrences. While I do believe in free will, I do not believe in coincidences or meaninglessness. All of life experience is a medicine in various forms depending on which lessons you are yet to learn and which traumas you are still carrying unresolved. You will continue to experience the same level of stuckness in different areas of your life, ongoing, until you are able to release the emotional and belief-based blockages in your way. The choices you make and the resulting circumstances will be a reflection of your current mental, physical, and spiritual state of being. Please do not misunderstand the message, I am not here to explain away all suffering or pretend to have all of the answers. There are horrific traumas that take place daily on this planet, in circumstances unimaginable. I am only here to unfold what I know from my own journey and what is channeled through me. And what I know is, given the opportunity, the mind, body, and spirit can heal beyond your wildest dreams. If you have the privilege of taking steps toward your truth and reconsidering the lens through which you see your inner and outer circumstances, this is for you. The inner dictates the outer.

In mainstream Western clinical circles, the perspective of suffering remains limited to a book of diagnoses and associated treatments. The options available for training and practice remain limited by these characterizations of suffering, which rarely account for the larger spiritual arc or theme in a person’s life. In any given Western training program, whether at the doctoral or masters level, you may select from, at most, three or four theoretical orientations, which limits the true magnitude and scope of holistic practice taking place around the world and in smaller alternative communities. There are exceptions to this statement and the mainstream field is slowly but surely evolving to include more aspects of spiritual healing, such as somatic approaches that allow the body to speak beyond the brain. However, the future of healing lies not just in titled fields of psychology, social work, and other forms of traditional healthcare, but in the spectrum of holistic integration that allows body, mind, and spirit to be a part of every discussion of dis-ease and dis-order. No exceptions. No exclusions. All that takes place within a life can be seen under the arc of a spiritual path. It may be messy, but that does not disqualify the presence of all aspects. Your life choices, environments, and experiences are either in or out of alignment. To identify some happenings in your life as relevant to healing and others as not, or accidental, is to randomly select which things matter and which do not based on your brain’s conditioning and subjectivity. All can be understood as serving a purpose, or having medicinal value, in the ultimate story of your life. When you are told to separate out medical from psychological, physical from emotional, life circumstance from life inheritance, you lose touch with the deeper rhythm and flow that is running throughout and it becomes harder to come into alignment.

All of the tools at my disposal, including what I have experienced from other healers, are based in the practice of present-focused awareness to see clearly that A) you are an energetic being, B) you have the power within you to release the stuckness or blockages in your way, and C) you can come into alignment with your deepest truth. The goal is to know that you are more expansive than the suffering and that the majority of your suffering is not new; it is something you have been carrying based on early life or ancestry. While new life circumstances will continue to emerge, your engagement with them will always involve as aspect of what you are carrying. Whether it appears as physical, emotional, or spiritual (it is always all of the above), your mission is to cultivate the optimal healing environment to identify and release these burdens. I may at times described the optimal healing environment as an energetic frequency or level of consciousness. These phrases may seem abstract to you, but the witnessing experience of the optimal healing state is hard to put into words, it is a literal experience of energy coursing through you. Some may describe it using words like love or gratitude. It is a state of allowing for transformation, release, and joy to emerge.

There are many, many holistic tools, modalities, and practices available to you, and there is no one size fits all pill or modality. Different practices will resonate for different people depending on their level of readiness, but all may give you a glimpse into your loving essence. I will describe some of the most powerful tools I have witnessed and continue to cultivate in myself and others, though there are many, many more. I invite you to be your own experiment. The truth is that once you begin to recognize yourself as an energetic being, all practices become a form of energy work and a way to access intuitive wisdom, therefore, coming into alignment with the blueprint or highest vision for your life. Anything that quiets the conditioned mind and connects you with the source of what you are can be a medicine or a guide if you open to it. Each tool is simply an entryway or glimpse into a realm within you that has been previously shut out. Everything is a form of energy, so a drink of water, a walk in nature, a simple stretching routine, or a musical experience can be an energetic and intuitive medicine with the right intention and awareness. Maybe Spirit has attempted to reach you via numbers or signs or synchronicities you cannot deny but refuse to acknowlege until now. Once you begin to see that all beings are an expression of a divine wisdom, the face of the messenger is less important than the wisdom coming forth. As has been said, anyone or anything can be your teacher. Spirit can communicate through a well-renowned “Shaman,” or a homeless woman on the street. Be careful who you attach divine wisdom to and who you do not. All can be a vessel and all can be a medicine if you are open to receiving it, which invites humility and respect for all beings.

Some of my tools include breathwork, meditation & visualization, movement, intuitive guidance (Self-guided or with professionals), channeling, body-based modalities, plant medicines, medicine cards or tarot, and the list goes on. Each tool or modality is simply a glimpse or window into the divine or spiritual knowing. No given modality will be the answer for you, all are simply an invitation to witness an untapped capacity within yourself to heal. Though you can benefit from the wisdom and guidance of all of these modalities and tools, you will always remain an active part of the process because all intuitive wisdom and energy medicine must be filtered through your unique mind, body, and spirit - your readiness to heal. If you remain closed off and committed to lower emotional frequencies, such as in shame, doubt, or anger, you will continue to attract experiences that confirm these emotion states and associated beliefs. If you approach a healer in order to “prove” something or “catch” them, you will find what you are looking for! Certainly, there are those who do not uphold the practice with integrity or who are in it for the wrong reasons or who are not fully healed enough in themselves, but this goes for all professions. The delivery system is not as important as the readiness of the receiver and the experience of the deliverer. Different deliveries resonate with different people.

I am a very visceral person so body-based modalities are what first began to truly open my channel to intuition and to release energy from my body. Truly, we are all visceral beings but many of us live cut off in our thinking and would benefit from connecting with the lower chakras, including the heart. There are too many kinds of energetic and intuitive modalities to narrow down a list, but some that have personally impacted my life include healers who go by the names ‘Medium,’ ‘Shaman,’ ‘Intuitive,’ ‘Clairvoyant,’ as well as energetic practices that work directly on the body and move or release energetic blockages in the nervous system. Some of these practices include Reiki, Network Chiropractic or Spinal Network Analysis, Shamanic release, sound healing, and colonics. Others include EFT Tapping, Craniosacral work, and EMDR. EMDR or Eye-Movement Desensitization Reprocessing is actually a mainstream psychological practice that I experienced as an energetic channel. As I said, all practices can be energetic with awareness of yourself as an energetic being and the acknowledgement of all experience as having an energetic component. The issue with most Western frameworks is not the modality itself but the limited perspective of the trained healer who may not be open to or acknowledge the energetic components of all healing work.

The identification of ‘intuitive guidance’ is a broad category that I have written about at length and will continue to because it is a core component to be the vessel for healing and to glimpse the ever-present connection to your spiritual life. As I have said, not all may be meant to use this guidance to the extent that I do, but all are inherently intuitive beings. It is my view that this is an inherent aspect of the spiritual-being-human experience, similar to all having a brain, heart, and gut. On one level, intuition is the practice of learning to “check-in” with a deeper wisdom beyond the brain to guide your life. It is infused into many modalities, such as muscle testing, ancestral trauma readings, and energy clearings, as well as many Western practices where healers are likely unaware that they are pulling from such a source. One example of this is in the area of “depth psychology” where highly experienced therapists train and study for years in both theory and practice, but while “in the room” with a patient, they still the mind, tap into the intuitive wisdom of the body, and feed off the interplay of energy in the moment. Even with decades of experience, when entering a healing space, experienced clinicians allow themselves to be the vessel for the wisdom meant to come through. This wisdom is not something that can be taught, but it must be witnessed and harnessed in the self. Generally speaking, intuitive guidance refers to different way of knowing. With practice, you can develop your own intuitive muscle to trust as a source of information that may bring a level of clarity never before experienced in realms restricted to logic, reason, conditioned belief, or emotion.

We are entering a new age in our capacity to learn from the trials and tribulations of our lives with focused clarity and understanding. This is not to say that everyone is in a place of readiness to rapidly heal and transform their lives, but it is to say that the human technology is available for us to do so. Specifically, the tools are available to clear away belief and emotion blockages, cultivate higher states of energetic frequency, and rewire the nervous system to support your connection with a deeper truth, purpose, and knowing. These practices allow you to discover the Why of your life path and to go toward it with courage. Your trauma can then turn from a misfortune into the source of your mission. Intuitive psychology is a combination of modern neuroscience, trauma research, energy medicine, and intuitive wisdom. It is a healing practice founded on the idea that your path has a blueprint all its own and there are many forms of guidance to re-align with it. Your life is not simply a series of random misfortunes, as much as it may seem to be so. Yes, there is inherited trauma, karmic hardship that carries forth across lifetimes, and free will that so often puts the capacity for human darkness on display and in the spotlight. But there is also a divine puzzle at play and it provides lessons for your ultimate growth and expansion if you look for it.