The Epigenetics of Trauma: Ancestral Lineages of What We Carry

As an intuitive psychologist, I have been guided to focus heavily on the area of ancestral healing and unearthing the lineages of trauma we carry. The burgeoning scientific field of epigenetics explores how environmental factors alter the expression of genes and how such alterations on a molecular level are carried forth across generations. Specifically, the area of epigenetic inheritance has wide-ranging implications for the transgenerational transmission of human experience. From my experience, ancestral, and even past life, trauma is one of the most significant sources of influence on how we navigate our experience and, therefore, how we create our personal reality. Of course, early life and acute instances of trauma are deeply impactful, though consider that these unfoldings have linkages to what has occurred prior and may in some ways be a re-enactment of the past. While we cannot yet fully validate this according to Western forms of scientific inquiry, we can see the profound strides in epigenetic research beginning to mirror what eastern philosophies and self-inquiry has illuminated for centuries. Personally, my work with traumatized clients as well as my own healing journey has validated the ways in which ancestral lineages wire and precondition the nervous system to manifest the traumatized states of brain, mind, and body.

When considering ancestral lineage or epigenetic inheritance in clinical research, researchers are understandably cautious in their interpretations. Studies are not yet able to isolate whether the source material of trauma is transmitted during prenatal and natal stages of development or even prior. Additionally, research acknowledges that it is still too difficult to differentiate the effects of parental behavior from heritable effects of biological transmission. Such is the age old question of nature or nurture. However, the resulting influence from generations of trauma in areas like the human stress response is profoundly clear. Though I acknowledge the limitations of western science in this area, I am intuitively guided to the understanding that trauma can be inherited ancestrally as a part of becoming embodied - in other words, the same genetic material that determines other aspects of your physical experience may determine the beliefs, thought patterns, and associated emotion states regarding how you see yourself, others, and the world. The implications of this understanding are profound and apply to all aspects of health and healing.

Examples of modern research findings include the epigenetic impacts of trauma on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) , the central nervous system (CNS), and the immune system. All of these systems are involved in the experience of emotional threat, resulting in effects on long term emotional and physical reactivity to stress. The commonly understood language of stress, and one’s relationship to it, is the foundational language for trauma and all modern disease. Stress is a psychophysiologic - mind and body - experience that contributes to every aspect of human survival and suffering, and our relationship to it determines how we show up in all situations. From a neurobiological perspective, stress can be understood as an experience of tension or demand on the body, which elicits the body’s survival response to threat and involves the HPA axis, CNS, and immune system, as well as the limbic system or “emotional brain.” The body’s stress response is not inherently bad, but for many people it has become maladaptive to present reality based on trauma conditioning. Specifically, these systems in the body that help you survive have become chronically reactive to perceptions of danger or threat in one’s environment and trigger “first responder” systems, such as releasing cortisol and inflammatory cells, when not necessary. In the modern era of medical science, inflammation is considered a primary source of most chronic illness and disease; however, rather than being a foundational cause, some researchers now agree it is more likely correlated with other pre-existing causes, such as the epigenetics or pre-conditioning of trauma in the body.

The manifestations of a preconditioned or traumatized stress response system include virtually all symptoms across the mental and physical landscape. The influence of these conditions spans from the classic psychiatric diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), to panic disorders, depression and anxiety, gut health, chronic pain, and even life-threatening disease or illness. All may be considered branches of a more deeply rooted trauma tree, or at least profoundly influenced by such conditions. I consider a deeper understanding of the epigenetics of trauma to be the foremost subject of all healing and wellness in the 21st century.

The hormone cortisol plays a vital role in the stress response and is expressed in almost every cell in the body to regulate genes that control development, metabolism, and immune response (Yehuda and Lehrner, p. 14, 2018). Yehuda and Lehrner found that generations of holocaust survivors had children with chronically low cortisol levels, which impacts an individual’s ability to respond to threatening situations as well as to turn off the stress response when it's over. Such examples span far and wide from more notable traumatic circumstances to the average stressors of generations past.The overall impression of this research is that most individuals are born into bodies that are already dysregulated and maladaptive to stress in some fashion. It is worth noting that resilience plays a role in these inherited conditions as well, so it is not all bad, but in a modern age rife with self-blame and individual responsibility, the world of what we carry can provide a vital entry way to deeper understanding and forgiveness for who we are and how we behave. Intuitively, I sense that the source material of what is transmitted is the energy of conditioned beliefs, though this will take longer to reveal itself in Western science.

Though debates on where trauma originates will no doubt continue for decades, I believe the gifts of intuitive wisdom and self-inquiry, in combination with a deeper understanding of genetic expression and alteration in the body’s core systems, will pave the way in healing and, therefore, allow human beings to fit their traumatic experience within a more expansive whole. With a deeper awareness of what we carry, we may be able to understand, dance with, and heal our traumatic experience more easily, allowing it to guide us to the fullest expression of ourselves.

References

Lehrner, A., & Yehuda, R. (2018). Cultural trauma and epigenetic inheritance. Development and Psychopathology, 30(5), 1763–1777.

Lehrner, A., & Yehuda, R. (2018). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 17(3), 243-257.

Pfeiffer, J. R., Mutesa, L., & Uddin, M. (2018). Traumatic stress epigenetics. Current Behavioral Neuroscience Reports, 5(1), 81-93.

Wolynn, M. (2017). It didn't start with you: how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle. New York, New York, Penguin Books.

The Shaman Tree Pt. II

Knowing spirit as a state of being, an energetic frequency you can feel flowing through you, is a state of pure presence. Imagine a loud hum that drowns out everything else, filling up your experience with the awareness of only this sound. In this presence, there is no self, no thing to understand, only the hum of existence to guide you forth. From this formless place, all arises. The big bang, your ancestors, you, your next big idea, and your vision for the world. It may not happen on the timeline you are used to, but with practice you can trust that all is provided in this state of presence. Of course, it is not necessarily practical to expect to live in this state at all times, but you can visit this energetic home and come into alignment with it as much as possible. Remember that much of your personality - your thoughts, your worries, your stories - is a layer of clothing you wear based on your conditioning and it cannot touch or disrupt this essential state. If you are searching for “truth,” search no further than this state of presence. Your truth is not something to understand, it is something to experience, and the more you practice coming home to this frequency the more you become a vessel for experiencing your truth.

Recognize that your beliefs about yourself, others, and the world, including all you believe needs to be fixed or understood, stems from the mind. All witnessing and creation stems from the root of your being, literally the lower part of your body of the bottom of your spine. Not only do you create life itself from this part of you, but all things grow from the root.The more you practice being rooted, the more you become like the tree, deeply connected to your essence and a vessel for your creative power. You can be still in this place, feeling the nervous system settle down, while simultaneously reaching out and expressing your truth in action. From the root, you need not hustle. Hustle stems from the mind - the thinking brain and your conditioned beliefs about who you are supposed to be - and has no place in the truth of your experience. Like leaves on the wind, you may become flexible to the circumstances of your environment, but inside you remain still, deeply connected to your source which moves at a slower pace and rhythm. The rhythm of your root does not get caught up in the anxieties of the mind and the minds of others, it remains grounded and knows its place amongst the dance of all things. Whenever you forget who you are and what your role is in this world, come back to the root. Glance at a tree, they never forget.

‘Shaman’ can be a pretty abstract, ‘woo,’ or grandiose term you might think. But I use the word simply to mean being in deep connection with the root of creation, the energetic source of all things, and the power of transformation. At this root is where darkness can be transmuted into light. Just as a tree uses photosynthesis to transmute carbon dioxide into air, the shaman transmutes the darkness of human experience into light and shares this light with all beings. You may not consider this your mission as I consider it mine, but know that all have the capacity to transmute at the root, if not for others then for yourself. My journey has led me to the practice of being the shaman tree. In meditation, I call upon this energetic source within me and allow it to fill me up, bringing me into the intensity of the present. With complete focus, I am in alignment with this source and I transmute the energy within me and outside of me. I allow this energy to spill out from my being and fill up the room, the home, the neighborhood, and the world of which I am contained in and a part of. I do not conduct this practice with the thinking mind, in fact, the thinking mind gets out of the way to allow this expansion at the root to take hold. I envision a direct light from Spirit cracking me open at the crown of my head, bypassing my mind and connecting through my heart to the source of creation at the root of my being. Specifically, I feel this sexual, grounding, and creative power burgeoning at the root chakra, the area at the bottom of the spine. From this source, you can literally create life, but this source is not only about sexual practice, it is about all expression of bringing formlessness to form.

You are conditioned to use the thinking mind to solve problems, to fix, to achieve, and to act. However, true action comes from the root, and once you align with this, you can with conviction. Society fawns over the power of the brain but seems to miss the power of the root and its role in bringing formlessness to form. Many of us hold trauma at the root and, therefore, stay safely trapped within the thinking brain and its analytical, doubting ways, far away from our sexual and creative powers. We allow the brain to develop all of its protections against opening our heart and clearing out the root. We become talking heads, consumed by the brain’s survival mechanisms, its anxious thinking, and what it can “know.” I do not mean to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. Thought, or the crown chakra, is an important energetic tool and many, including myself, use thoughts to access visions and ideas that color and create our world. However, much of thought is naturally conditioned by our trauma and our fear and needs some deep cleaning. I was unable to transmute my darkness into light with thought alone, in fact it often led me further astray, and so my journey led me to find transformation at the root instead. I now write from the root, play from the root, dance from the root, and live from the root as much as I can. I access and direct the power of the thinking brain when I need to, but only if it is in alignment with the rest of me. The second I notice my thinking being led by anxiety, tension, or the pressure to perform, I do my best to come back to the root. It is never, and has never been, in my best interest to act out of this anxious thinking. Even in endeavors that seem logically brain-oriented like leading a workshop or guiding others, I channel wisdom and guidance from the root. I am rarely “thinking” in the traditional sense. I may seem aloof or irritating to some based on this different rhythm, but I am simply practicing beating to a different drum that has brought me more joy than ever before. When you practice this way of being, you quickly notice other people’s minds attempting to pull you back into the thinking process because that is the rhythm of communication you are used to. Of course, I do my best to be flexible and not be too off-putting to my loved ones in conversation… But these days, I notice I rarely I have “answers” to others’ questions in the traditional sense. “Why did you make that decision?” … “What is your plan for the future?” … “How are you doing today?” … I do my best to accommodate these questions while knowing my answers are rarely a true reflection of my state of being at the root. The words that flow and filter through my mind are often of a different, more scattered rhythm. The words may come out jumbled, disconnected, or tangential. My brain’s wiring was always a bit amiss in this way, overcome with so many thoughts and feelings. When I find myself getting pulled back into this thinking rhythm, I practice coming back to the root. 

At the root is your light, your beacon that shines like wonder through the eye of a child. The more you practice, the more this beacon of light intensifies within you and begins to shine. Like a lighttower, there is nothing to be done but shine bright and allow yourself and others to bathe in your awesome glow. Ideally, this root of light connects to your heart and opens up to the world, though trauma often distorts this connection. The connection between my head, heart, and root was badly ruptured for most of my life. I did not understand the connection between love and sex for example, let alone love and creation. I grew up feeling very uncreative and could only produce things with intense effort in thinking and intellectual ideas. The practice of healing trauma, as I see it, is a practice of clearing access to the root. In doing so, you also clear access to the rightful use of your brain by clearing the cognitive fog and lowering the protective mechanisms of hyper vigilance, impulsivity, and defensiveness. The real access to your truth comes not from seeking outside yourself but from this direct line to the root of your being where all manifestation emerges. By healing trauma, you learn to dance with the intensity of uncertainty and not “knowing” in the mind. The intensity, which feels a lot like fear at first, becomes the fuel that amplifies your presence and your energetic power. Rather than spending time in the mind deliberating, you act! Not with impulsivity, reactivity, or carelessness, but with grounded alignment. As your trauma clears, your life path begins to take shape more clearly and intentionally. I have found that the path that emerges tends to involve a natural form of service to yourself and others, just as the tree naturally supports its community through its presence and photosynthetic process. Furthermore, I find the path emerges not through striving and immense sacrifice but through passion and joy. You no longer “work” from the mind; you play from the root.

When a group gathers to collectively align with this energetic source and to know the Spirit within, there is a shamanic power and intensity that builds. Like the power of a forest filled with the energetic source of trees communicating and connecting at the roots, human beings connect at the roots of their being and manifest a collective glow more powerful than any individual. This, in my humble opinion, is how we heal ourselves and the world. By recognizing the connection at the root, beyond our individual personalities, egos, and traumas, we co-create an energetic home that calls us back to where we all originate and where we will all one day return. We create heaven on earth from within these collective healing spaces. I believe this is the true power of my workshops and of all sacred spaces. We do not gather simply to learn new information, but to become a collective of shaman trees, converting darkness to light, breathing new air into the environment, and calling new life into being. Our bodies become vessels for this transmutation and from fertile soil we manifest a brave new vision for the world.

The Shaman Tree Pt. 1

One goal of healing is to recognize your place in the world, to know that you are a part of all things and play a vital role in all creation. You may have grown up with a deep sense of unworthiness, insecurity, and lack reinforced by environmental conditions and circumstances that showcased your aloneness and separateness from others and the world. The aloneness is a manifestation of the ego, the game of comparison, and the striving to “win” in competition with others. From this perpective, you see others as completely seperate beings living completely separate lives and only your personal reality is what matters to you. Therefore, if you are not included by friends, called on by teachers, fawned over by romantic interests, or showered with love and appreciation by family you feel your reality is suffering. You feel left out, empty, or without purpose. However, the true nature of reality is that you are a part of all things. You are a manifestation of the very nature you perceive as separate. You ARE nature. There is a universal intelligence which flows through all things and the human species is one branch, one evolution of this intelligence. You are a branch of a larger tree, finding its way to expansion. You cannot possibility be apart, alone, or separate from this ever-growing tree of life.

When separateness arises, recognize that this is your mind’s conditioning, manifested by a belief system that says you must compete for resources to survive and to thrive. This is false. Your worthiness, your success, your productivity, and your love are not based on how much you do or accomplish externally. You simply are worthy and you can express this worth through recognition of your innate connection to others. The tree does not comtemplate its purpose, its service, or its role in the larger ecosystem. It simply stands tall, grows toward the light, and supports its community. It is naturally in alignment and, therefore, is naturally of highest service to itself and others. When your path is cleared to the Spirit within you, you are naturally in alignment and grow toward the betterment of all beings. The lineage and ancestry of your trauma, or your brain’s conditioning, is what creates blockages and limits you from seeing your light and your contribution. Trauma is your invitation to grow through these blockages, to learn from your shadows, and to recognize your true service. Trauma invites you to expand into your highest self. Prior to answering this call, you may feel small and see the world as a big, threatening place. You may feel lesser than others and wonder how you could ever make an impact in such an otherworldly place. Once you begin opening up to your trauma, your conditioning, and the beliefs that have shaped your personal reality until now, a clearer vision begins to take shape and you see your role, your strengths, and your calling more clearly. If you do not answer the call, Spirit will continue knocking and it may become more drastic and more uncomfortable until you decide to answer. However, many may decide not to answer and to live out a live of trauma-based constraints and limitations. The choice is yours. Without judgment or blame, we all choose a path based on our level of readiness.

The call to your highest self is a call to recognize that you are inherently worthy and play an integral role in the wide-weaving web of Spirit, or the universal intelligence unfolding. As more individuals come into alignment with Spirit and become the vessel for their spiritual contract, communication between one another simply represents Spirit communicating with itself, all branches of the same tree or trees of the same interconnected forest. Similar to the way trees naturally send resources to one another, you may find yourself naturally supporting others in a way that supports you as well. You begin to see all of life as an unfolding of this expanding source of creation. When you practice settling into that interconnected source, you relinquish the need to jump ahead or skip the ebbs and flows of the journey, and you recognize the value in all the trials and tribulations along the way. The messiness of your path and the time it takes you is not wasted or lesser than others, but is in greatest service to all. Your service becomes less about what you must “get” or "achieve” to be productive, and becomes more about how you allow it to flow through you with ease. The recognition of this connection to all is not the same as the virtue of empathy or the notion of taking on the burden of others’ suffering. Taking on others’ suffering only contributes to more suffering. Empathy is a powerful tool to recognize your connectedness, but the path toward healing is about growing toward the light and supporting your fellow beings by transmuting darkness into light. Just as trees and other plants use photosynthesis to transmute carbon dioxide into air, you serve as a powerful energetic source of transmutation. There is no competition, all have a part to play, and with a higher level of consciousness such as humans have, you have the capacity to recognize with increased awareness the collective unfolding and to align with it. Trauma is presented as your blockage to this alignment, but with courage you will see it as your invitation to grow.

Dancing With Uncertainty

“My certainty is wild, weaving, for you, I am a child, believing…” - Certainty, Big Thief

Your brain craves certainty. Certainty assures the brain of survival and placates your nervous system’s most primal wiring. You search far and wide to know the truth of your existence, to know why you are here, and to solve the everlasting mystery of it all. But your brain was not designed for this job. To access the deepest knowing of existence requires you to expand at the root of your being, to dance in communion with experience, and to live outside the controls of the survival brain. You are invited to embrace the mystery rather than to solve it, and to water the fertile soil of creation energy within you.

When uncertainty arises, it arises first in the body as an energy. You may not even recognize this if your mind is so conditioned to immediately label this sensation as “anxiety” and repel it with a variety of thought- and behavior-based strategies. But if you recognize and bear with the energetic intensity of this sensation for what it is, you will notice something else happening. With your brain’s reactivity on hold, the energy can actually awaken your being at the root. The intensity of uncertainty can activate your sacred, sexual, creative power and ignite you into full presence of being. It is only when the mind interprets the sensation as dangerous or threatening that your body reacts in kind.

People who speak of thrilling experiences, either by choice or not, speak of the intense presence it gives them. The great free climbers who risk their lives to scale a mountain face without the safety of a harness speak of this presence. Nothing else can be held in mind. From this place, their being is ignited into stillness and to thoughtless action. There is nothing to contemplate, nothing to figure out. All is provided in focus on the next step. You have a choice to resist the intensity of uncertainty or to allow it to call you into the present and to show you the true power of mindfulness.

Of course, you need not free-climb a mountain to come face to face with the power of uncertainty. Some like to artificially awaken the sense of thrill by watching scary movies. However, engaging in this medium is only another form of control to play out your fantasies of death and destruction in the mind, trusting the stories are not real. The mind is naturally wired to think it’s way out of distress, and watching this play out on a screen is no different. You may think of uncertainty as an overwhelming experience that causes you to withdraw, isolate, and seize up. This is not inherent in the experience itself but a result your brain’s strategy for control and survival. The more trauma you carry, the narrower your brain’s tolerance for uncertainty and the quicker it may signal danger or threat.

One way to begin healing and releasing these traumatized parts is to expose yourself, in tolerable doses of course, to the uncertainty of the moment and to allow the scar tissue of your conditioning to be slowly broken open. Through this practice of exposure, you upgrade your nervous system and allow a different source of power to emerge, one not fueled by control but by freedom. From the confines of your brain’s controls, you literally cannot imagine a more expansive future for your life, it is not in your wiring to do so. Whether it is a fear of spiders, a faulty relationship, or a question of your purpose here, you cannot yet envision a greater possibility for your life from within the traumatized condition. It is only from a place of exposure and freedom that you can begin to see, smell, taste, and touch a grander vision take shape. Only once you are outside the fishbowl do you realize what you have been swimming in. From a new vantage point, you are invited to dance in the rhythm of a greater universal unfolding and connection to the source of all things, knowing for certain that you have a vital part to play in it all.

To truly dance with uncertainty is to go beyond thought and beyond the story. You are invited to forget your character arc for a moment and look beyond the current circumstances, tolerating the sensation of not knowing all that is meant for you. This way, you begin to detangle yourself from the mind’s controls and perceived plot points in order to allow a greater storyline to emerge. With practice, you will grow more comfortable without a clear road map of what comes next in the story of your life. You will find yourself able to take action more easily, without hesitation or delay, and without the need to “think through” every step of the way. This does not mean you should act carelessly or impulsively. Quite the opposite. The energy of uncertainty is an invitation to know your “true North” from a compass that belongs to the higher realms of existence and exists deep within you when you align with its natural rhythm. You notice this rhythm when you walk in nature, it is slower and more graceful. The rhythm of the mind is jagged, anxious, perpetually seeking and clawing for safety or achievement. From this deeper, more natural rhythm, you do not act out of cowardice, greed, or lack, but from a connection and service to all things.

In this place of present-focus and connection, uncertainty is more tolerable because you are not bearing it alone but with the support of all life. You are a part of all things and this rhythm of existence flows through you just as it does the trees and the rivers. You recognize a deeper stillness, the kind of stillness only found in the mountains or other sacred environments, and you become more like the tree - a vessel for all creation. You become more of the human be-ing and less of the human do-ing. Learning to tolerate such degrees of uncertainty as they arise offers an expansion of awareness, of possibilities, and of the many paths available to you to flow through life with trust in its grand unfolding. You need not seek out uncertainty, it is all around you if you simply settle in to the moment with curiosity and openness to what will come next. Paradoxically, learning to tolerate the intensity of uncertainty transmutes the idea of fear into the power of conviction. At the root of your being lives the knowing that all is well, all will be provided, and all is ultimately for your highest growth and understanding, even if you cannot see it clearly just yet.

Water & Fire: The Dance of Creation

When you learn to flow like water, you learn to dance in the fire of creation without getting burned. All creation stems first from water - the source of birth, renewal, and cleansing. As you emerge from the formlessness of water, you may then use the passion of fire to create form. However, attempting to create with only fire lead only to destruction, burn out, and suffering. Think of all the past artists whose lives ended tragically, remembered for how brightly they burned and how quickly they faded away. Most of my life I was led by the fire burning inside me, anger, irritation, and dismay. I let the fire isolate me, push people away, and punish me for lack of discipline or perfection. Rather than motivate me, the fire paralyzed me. I could not move forward in my life with so much tension, judgment, and self-blame. But the fire was all I knew and so I used it to create, to learn, and to navigate in life as best I could. I would let my anxious mind drive the way in all decisions and actions, even just getting out of bed in the morning. I did not spend much time creating as a child because I did not know how to let go of the fire. Even when I “played” as a young child, I did so compulsively and obsessively, not allowing myself to finish until I had completed all of my fictional, and emotional, battles. I was rigid in my habits and seized by my mind’s various attempts to control the uncertainty in my life. Not until I could surrender to the flow of life, both within me and without me, was I able to dance like water.

I needed to learn how to ride the intensity of my emotions like waves rather than letting them command me and consume me like fire. When I can surrender to the complexity within me, I can surrender to the complexity without me - the struggles of my fellow people and the world itself with both its light and its darkness. I practiced surrendering to the mystery of myself and, therefore, to the mystery of others and to all things. I began to trust my own heart even when my head was confused in thought. I am still learning, growing, and practicing each day, of course, as can you. If you practice trusting a more thought-less existence, you can be led by your sacred heart and intuitive connection to Great Spirit. This is no easy task for someone victim to over-thinking. The mind will continue to pull you down into pits of analysis paralysis, attempting to get the right answer for how to proceed – in creation and in life. Striving for the “right” answer is attempting to bring fire to a water dance. The flame will be quickly extinguished leaving you no tools to ride the waves.

The passion of fire is of immense value on the path of healing and of co-creation, but it must come from the depths of your being, from love not dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction arises from the ego’s attempts to control and often produces effortful, grinding, and punishing action. Many who create success from this place value “work ethic” above all else and see anything worth doing as requiring great sacrifice. Certainly, many people have produced successful lives from effort, forging their tools from stone and carving their way forward. I am not here to say that those who endure great hardship to bring their vision to form do so the wrong way, only to say that we are entering a new age, an age of rebirth, of possibilities, of water. There is no longer only one way to bring your highest vision and intention to form. Of course, life is a dance and is not always meant to be easy, but that does not mean that all great creation must stem from great sacrifice. Specifically, it does not mean you must sacrifice your truth or your joy. It does not mean you must suffer or be a “tortured soul.” This is an old and outdated paradigm. If you go toward alignment with your highest self, your creation will stem from great love. Painful and challenging experiences may arise in the process, but they do not define the “work,” they are only a means to accessing your love When you need your fire to keep you burning into the night, to act courageously and to make difficult decisions, it will be there for you, carrying you through to the next state of flow. You do not need to carry a lit torch at all times, trust you will know the way through light and darkness.

In the world of spiritual healing, many seekers hold the notion that you must grind the ego down into oblivion, ridding all trace of this form of “self.” But this idea, in and of itself, is an ego-based endeavor, an attempt to override and overpower the hard drive to take full control of the mind body system. In this new age, creation is not about control but about surrender to the mysterious present, a practice of letting go and releasing attachment to whatever vision you thought needed to come true. In order for dreams to remain sacred, they must remain fluid like water. When you attempt to craft your dreams meticulously, every piece in its “right” place, they lose the essence of a dream and become a hardwired necessity, often leading to despair, disappointment, and destruction if you do not live up to its precisely projected measurements. Whether that dream is material success or inner peace, you must be willing to set the intention and let the “how” take its own course, like the flight of a paper airplane reaching its destination in accordance with the conditions of the wind. In this new age of water, you are not building a house to exact measurements, but allowing the most expansive vision of your life to unfold in co-creation with Spirit. Remember you are not doing this alone! Whenever you set out to bring something into form, you enter into an agreement - a contract - with Spirit, and you enlist help, guidance, and support beyond what your eyes can see. When you set intention, trust that the universe receives it and allow Spirit to bring you the resources for your journey. Like a group project, trust your partner in creation and be sure not to take on all the burden. In this case, your partner is the source of all creation and holds endless possibilities within its grasp. With trust in your co-creator, you allow yourself to be guided by instincts and intuition to chart a path never before seen or envisioned, even by you. Like any great creation, it will be messy, but in the messiness is where you learn how to dance with both water and fire, mastering both energies within you.

 There are many ways to unfold your vision and you cannot be sure which is meant for you at this time. You may be meant to begin with a routine only later to be called to drop everything and enter into uncertainty. All you must do is tune in to your mind body experience to discover which path, which next step, is meant for you. You do not have to know where you are going, you only have to know what comes next, and that comes from taking time to listen to yourself and use whichever tools work for you to hear Spirit calling - journaling, meditation, nature, etc. I do not write to you as someone who has it all figured out. In fact, it is clear I was not meant to know, only to take the journey. I, too, am still learning how to live in flow. As I took steps to leave everything I knew behind and journey West, I did not have a true destination, or “home,” in mind, only an idea of what was meant for me. As I travelled, I experienced many twists, turns, and deceptions. I experienced great fear and great bliss. I discovered that there is a “home” within me even when there is not one without me.

I continue on this path presently, learning to live a day at a time, and to settle into this dance, to slowly wear down the old version of me needing to have it all mapped out, which was only ever an illusion. As I go deeper into the spirit of adventure, letting go of what, when, and how I need to be at all times, I begin to notice the ease with which life can flow while I am busy living. My traveling takes my focus much more outside my self, needing to navigate the constant change of new environments and new experiences, broken up by long drives with attention on the road. An old version of myself may have lamented the lack of time to focus on creation, my writing and my service to others. But I AM creating. I am creating in flow with my experience. The more I experience, the more I have to write and the more it flows with ease when I finally sit down or pause in the middle of a hike to do it. I am sure that soon I may find myself in a more settled place for a period of time to unfold my writing with more diligence, but for now I am guided to continue adventuring onward, upward, and outward. The adventure born in me at this time is not merely a glimpse or a window into another life, but a rebirth into a new version of myself. I was not meant to be locked away in a room with only painstaking thought as I once believed, but to be awe-struck like the child in me thirsting for a new adventure daily and hungry for more. I am retraining my brain to embrace the mystery rather than to recoil and wait for the dust to settle. There is no settling. I continue to dance and go deeper into the forest than ever before. This is my guidance. To go forth. And as I go forth, my creation will follow.

In order to be a vessel for creation, you must practice living the way. Not just thinking it, not just planning it, but living it. Contrary to the advice of most parents and grade-school teachers, leap before you think! This is the flow of water. Water does not question its destination or if it has all the tools it needs for when it arrives. Water simply flows with full confidence and conviction toward the path of least resistance. As you flow toward your destination your fire will ignite and burn brighter than ever before, and you will know instinctively where to channel this energy. As you dance on the wind, your spark of passion will be forever fanned within you, never at risk of extinguishing nor consuming you. You do not need to churn tirelessly at the wheel of creation. Creation is a byproduct of your witnessing experience, which flows as you address what is right in front of you. The most aligned and organic way to bring formlessness to form is to simply take the next step. Rest, relax, adventure. Go where you are called. Do not sacrifice the flow of your journey just to jump a few steps ahead by burning, and extinguishing, the midnight oil. Creation is carved not from effort, but from the very dance of experience itself.

Bring Formlessness to Form

Your essence - the truth of who you are - is formless. All things, all matter, is manifested from this space. All form emerges from formlessness, the source of all creation. Regardless of your spiritual, religious, or philosophical perspective, you come from a source which all things emerge and are, therefore, a part of the emerging creation of all things. The field of quantum mechanics, though debated as to its applicability at higher levels of consciousness, acknowledges this shared energetic space - the space of formlessness from which all matter arises. You may acknowledge this on a conceptual level, but I invite you to see this fundamental truth as a daily reality. Humans throughout history have attempted to put this truth into words, whether it be through the Buddhist dissolution of ego, seeing outside Plato’s “cave,” the psychological depictions of “self,” or the many other philosophies, religions, literature, and art that express the formless in the only way it can, through the creative expression of form. However, formlessness can only be witnessed directly and once it is brought to form it loses an essential quality. The representations of the formless in all human endeavors function as a collective gift and are the best tools we have to create and expand, but they must be understand only as guides pointing to direct witnessing.

 In the world of modern healing and science, formlessness and form remain abstract philosophical ideas rather than evidence-based tools because they are unable to be proven scientifically true outside of direct witnessing. But If you can practice experiencing, and remembering, the formlessness of things, you can watch the limitations in your life begin to break down. By this I mean the conditioned beliefs you hold around finding right romantic partner, job, home, etc. are all likely based in the world of form. There is nothing wrong with perceiving your life from the world of form, after all, this is how you were conditioned, but if you practice remembering that you are formless, as is the world around you, these barriers begin to crumble. From the formless place, you can create all that is meant to come into being. Your life can be a painting co-created with Spirit because as you break down the barriers within you, Spirit breaks down the barriers outside of you. Not only can you visit this place, but you can practice living there each day.The practice of manifestation seems conflated by the outdated notion of the “American dream.” The dream that you can build anything you want is often held and told by many coming to America to fulfill all of their desires. While a dream is a sacred thing to have, attachment to that single dream dilutes the process of coming into alignment with what is meant for you and allowing Spirit to support this vision, however it may unfold. Those who follow the “American dream” often end up manifesting what they thought they wanted only to realize that what they called into being was an illusion - a temporary pleasure, an unsustainable luxury. Just like those who win the lottery and often end up just as desirous and unfulfilled as they were previously, if you manifest your life purely from a place of ego, you will always be chasing some unattainable dream no matter what you accomplish in the material world. 

The true vision meant to come through you is not based in ego, but in spiritual guidance and intuitive knowing. True vision is not based in control but in surrender to the greater spiritual forces at play supporting your highest path. Money is only a means, never an end. As you take steps to live in a state of formlessness with deep knowing of this essential truth, you naturally begin to create from a source within beyond boundaries of lack and of lust. Ego gets in the way of true manifestation because it is still based in the world of form and what you can “get” from it, but form is an illusion in itself. All form eventually falls away into that from which it came, just read any history book to confirm this. So to build from the essence of who you are, you must first recognize the illusion you were born into. Yes, you live in a human body and participate in the game of earthly form, paying taxes, entering relationships, and sitting in traffic, but the world of form will never be the truth, only a mirage, a playground to channel Spirit through. Chasing what your conditioned brain perceives as valuable will only reward you within the bounds of what that brain could conjure up. Beyond this limited practice of brain-based creation is the possibility to call a brave new vision into being, to call into form something formless, something never before seen, like the pyramids minus the slave labor or alien technology depending on your perspective. You are here to be of highest service if you wish to answer the call, and in order to discover that mission you must first be willing to dissolve the boundaries of form pervading your view and tap into a deeper source of creation. 

If my words feel critical of material wealth and pleasure, please know I enjoy these things as much as anyone else and aim to receive them in alignment with my path. However,  if that is all you aim for then that is all you will get. Nothing more. To aim for and receive only material wealth is true emptiness. Only when your wealth is paired with purpose does it become a vessel for expansion. Imagine a Ferrari that just sits in the driveway, its potential forever untapped. Wealth that sits in the bank waiting to be passed on to generational recipients can serve a similar fate, untapped in its potential service. Money can be created just as easily as it can be spent. Once you see the ease with which formlessness can be brought to form, there can be less fear around the need to hoard such monetary energy. I am not saying that you should not save or pass on your wealth, but I am inviting you to reflect on your intention to do so, what relationship you are cultivating with money, and what higher vision you may be sacrificing for your life, your loved ones, and the world. Feel free to dream the nice car or the perfect house into being, but once you have that, dream bigger. Do not settle. Dream a dream with no boundaries or limitations by the world of form. If you feel stuck, like your mind cannot dream bigger than the material items it has grown attached to, that is an invitation for you to sit at the edge of possibility until a larger dream takes shape. 

I am called to write, among other things, to bring my witnessing experience - my experience of the formless - to the written word, which then becomes a vessel in and of itself. My written word takes the form of a book or a blog or some other container to be delivered to you and interpreted by you. The mind can only interpret formlessness through a vessel of form, which is why you absorb most information through media. However, the original source of such information happens through a witnessing experience. Therefore, to translate my experience of the formless, I must first bring it to form in my writing or workshops or other forms of service. This is my life’s work. What is yours? You, too, have the capacity to tap into the formless and bring it to form. What is the powerful creation that only you can be a vessel for? 

When you tap into the formless, you remember you are never alone nor could you be. The more you tap into formlessness, the more you remember you are a creation in yourself, that you were once brought to form out of the very same formlessness that all creation stems from. On the surface, it appears you were brought to form by your parents, but they are just forms themselves. You, and they, were brought to form by the source of all creation, of which we are all children. As children, we are conditioned to see our family as the only lineage we inherit, but a larger vision brings forth the truth that we are vessels for the expansion of all and can create and contribute in as many ways as their are unique souls. So go forth. Sit with this written form if it resonates with you and allow it to penetrate beneath the mind, to open up a space within you that has access to the beyond. Allow yourself, with practice, to become the vessel for your highest intention and service to the world. Dance in the emptiness. Linger in the foolishness of things. Discover what you are truly called to do in this life. Be of service in only the way that you can and bring formlessness to the world of form. 

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.

Intuitive Psychology Pt II: Be the Vessel

The biggest limitation in traditional therapies has always been the humanness of healers - their own traumas, egos, and limiting beliefs. Western models of care evolved to correct this by developing standardized theories that would ideally put this humanness aside in favor of objective and deliverable therapeutic medicines. The issue with this approach is that by attempting to standardize care in this fashion, we have denied the spiritual insight and vision that each person holds in their unique connection to the source energy of all things. There is much value in standardized practices and evidence-based research, but if relied upon too heavily, it obstructs the window into a unique inner wisdom that is able to guide a person to their own highest destiny, rather than simply the destiny of those that have come before them. There must be space for the intuitive wisdom of human beings that connects them to the spiritual realm of existence - a source of creation energy beyond the cortical structures and neuropathways of the brain. I believe all human beings are a vessel for a unique purpose, path, and contribution to humanity, and that the traumas we endure in this life time, and those we have carried in ancestrally, are there to serve us as medicine to expand into our highest vision and service to the world. No standardized methodology or attempts at simply managing or casting aside our “issues” can uncover that alone.

The trauma we carry must be acknowledged as medicine and as an invitation to grow, otherwise it remains a stuckness and a disservice to ourselves and others. Healers can only take sufferers as far as they are willing to go themselves and only truly if they are willing to be a vessel for the spiritual wisdom meant to come through. There is a source of wisdom beyond the brain in both healer and sufferer that I believe is inherent in the human experience and can be listened to if we clear the blockages in our way. The intuitive wisdom I speak of cannot only be learned from books but must come from a deeper practice of listening to our own truth unfolding within the self. Learning from others who have walked the path is immensely valuable, but all are required to journey on the inner path and all are invited to recognize their own vessel-nature. The practice of being a vessel is a practice of tapping into wisdom beyond not only the limitations of evidence-based study but also the limitations of our own stories and unconscious or conscious suffering. I am not saying that one’s personality cannot contribute to the style, tone, and messaging of medicine. In fact, it is our unique personalities that contribute to different levels of resonance for others. However, there is a form of medicine available to us that connects to the source material within us beyond the cheap and often unhelpful ways we define ourselves in society. Beyond the labels, diagnoses, unconscious belief systems, and emotional traumas, there lies a deeper truth to who and what we are. Once discovered, some may call it a connection to Spirit or God, some may call it creativity or simply energy. Regardless of what we name it, we can recognize that it is inherent in all of us because we are all children of the same essence. I call the process of connecting to this source: intuition, and in order to cultivate intuition, we must become the vessel for it to flow.

The process of becoming a vessel is not some alien endeavor, it is a natural state of alignment within us once we see beyond the conditioned brain and limiting beliefs pervading our view. Rather than becoming, it is more like remembering that we are, and always were, a vessel for a deeper truth that transcends the “mind.” Whether you consider yourself intuitive or not, you may have had uncanny experiences of dreams, visions, voices, or ways of knowing things that could not be explained away by a strictly evidence-based understanding or western psychology. You may have written this off as “de ja vu” or fantasy or going “crazy” at the time, or you may have received diagnoses or medications to manage the identified “disorder,” but I encourage you to see the value - the wisdom - in what has come through you. Your experience is not random nor are you crazy or disordered. Certainly, some have extremely disruptive mental processes that contribute to damaging behavior and who benefit from management and care, but that does not mean that they too have no wisdom to offer. In my opinion, all “disorder” represents a combination of your nervous system wiring, your conditioned beliefs, and your emotion energy blocking access to or fragmenting the various sources of information you are being guided by. Not all information is helpful and it is hard to know what to trust when your inner experience is in disarray, but that does not mean it has no meaning. A new landscape of integrative medicine is emerging in which healers are guided by different sources of knowing within the self. In Western psychiatry and psychology, practitioners have been conditioned to ignore this path and rely on models or theories evolved from a diagnostic framework and identified categories of thinking. At one point in time, the diagnostic categories and theories of treatment served a role in helping make sense of various symptomatology over time, but it was never the end all-be all. Intuitive guidance comes from an experiential kind of “training” and practice based on one’s own unique witnessing journey and the various modalities that have guided them to connect with a natural intelligence and wisdom within the self.

As a healer or a sufferer, textbooks will only take you so far. You must seek to learn from your own suffering and come to understand that there is a message coming through, guiding you into alignment with the life path meant for you. To water the fertile soil of intuition within you, you may seek guidance from a lineage of healers who recognize this wisdom. Those who call themselves shamans, clairvoyants, mediums, intuitives, energy healers, and so on choose to embrace a different way of knowing. Though these practices are certainly susceptible to coercion, trauma, subjectivity, and falsehood due to their lack of standardization, it does not negate the truth of their wisdom when delivered properly. The weaknesses of this medicine are no different than the trauma and subjectivity of those in the clinical world who attempt to disavow and scrub every medicine clean with research. Both require training and experience, and both require a seat at the table. And with integration and synergy of these perspectives, the sky’s the limit. Once you begin to seek guidance in the intuitive realm for your own suffering, not just from one healer or modality but several, you begin to collect bits and pieces along the way that build your connection to a deeper knowing and guidance within you. If you choose not to acknowledge the spiritual lessons emerging from your own story, otherwise known as your trauma or conditioning, you may become dependent on standardized systems of authority outside your self for answers. This is not to say that a new paradigm of healing must eschew all systems of authority, but it is to say that truly guided healing is unique to the healer’s own journey and must flow through them rather than rely only on manualized forms of care or understanding. We all must dance between the wisdom within and the wisdom without, and never can the integration of such wisdom be standardized. Personally, I dance between intuitive wisdom and the wisdom of my clinical training because that is what guided my own healing path. Therefore, I am a vessel for this integrative paradigm. I practice unfolding this paradigm without attempting to take credit or “get” anything as a result, but simply to allow it to flow through me knowing it is my service to the world and my journey to be a bridge for others to do the same.

When we choose to see our trauma and life experience as a valuable medicine, we open a doorway to the unique strengths and gifts we were meant to offer to the world. Anyone that ever created a new framework for healing allowed that framework to emerge from their own witnessing experience and creativity. One example is the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Marsha Linehan, who struggled openly with her own traumatized personality and birthed a new form of medicine for those with similar struggles. Linehan allowed herself to be a vessel for this medicine and delivered it with profound wisdom and compassion. However, once this modality became standardized as a system of training, the vessel-nature of this medicine became diluted. Each person is required to experience their own journey, as Marsha did, in order to acknowledge the brand of medicine they were meant to bring to the world. There is no “free lunch” so to speak in learning the wisdom meant to serve yourself and others. When you try to adopt someone else’s medicine, it loses potency and authenticity, and you lose connection with your own intuitive guidance. This is not to say that no one should allow others to learn the medicine they have to give, but it must be done with respect for the intuitive guidance and witnessing journey of the individual. No healer is the same nor meant to be a vessel for the exact same medicine. Likewise, no sufferer is the same nor meant to receive the exact same medicine. When healers spend all of their training on getting things “right” in accordance with certain standardized principles of care, they lose out on tapping into their own creative wisdom and gifts. They lose out on listening directly to the spiritual guidance of their own unfolding experience.

I have been referring to Western forms of healing as “traditional,” but intuitive guidance is as traditional as it gets, having been used for centuries before certain forms of research became the gold standard for evidence-based care. All original thought emerged first from a creative source within the person influenced by their own lineage of trauma, experience, and intuition. To reduce original ideas to a combination of one’s training and critical thinking would be to ignore the collective wisdom within all humanity. You may not like the word “spiritual” or “spirit,” but you may still acknowledge that originality does not simply emerge from the brain’s conditioning. In fact, the majority of the brain’s conditioning is based on evolutionary programming of fear and survival. There is a universal force that has led to the expansion of all living things and it did not start nor will it end with the human brain. Creativity is not simply make-believe or fantasy; all things that exist have been created, including life itself. With all of scientific evidence at your disposal, you cannot prove how the universe came into being, but it did! Similarly, you cannot prove how original therapies come into being before they are brought under the microscope. Just as the universe expands, our vision for healing humanity expands with it, not only from “evidence-based” studies but also from the original source of guidance within us all. Herein lies the delicate balance and harmony of intuitive psychology. Not all may identify as intuitive or necessarily be meant to use this wisdom to heal others, but all are intuitive beings. It is innate in the human experience and in life itself, look no further than the trees that grow naturally toward the light. We are here to grow and expand, and if we get our big computer brains out of the way once in a while, we might just allow it to happen.

In the next unfolding of this paradigm, I will explore the specific tools and practices that allow you to practice being the vessel for your intuitive wisdom and your natural state of energetic flow. The tools contribute first and foremost to bringing safety to the nervous system, releasing trauma, and transforming your fear-based conditioning. The toolkit for becoming a vessel is a toolkit for healing trauma, rewiring your brain, and aligning with the highest vision and flow for your life’s expansion.

Intuitive Psychology: A New Paradigm of Medicine

What does it mean to integrate the wisdom of psychology with the wisdom of intuition? There is much to be gleaned from modern Western psychology, including the foundational research and understanding of attachment theory, early life relational dynamics, trauma, and the function of the nervous system in seeking safety v. danger and threat. However, like any field, there is also much stuckness that has accrued over the years of traditional psychological teaching and practice that adhere to outdated systems of diagnosis, treatment, and caregiving relationships. The advancement of trauma research in the modern age will be, in my opinion, an integration of the wisdom of the body, the science of energy medicine, and the spiritual implications of one’s suffering. The practice of intuition is not simply a skill or tool, though it may be cultivated as such, but it is an entry way into a path of understanding the deeper holistic meaning of symptoms and dis-ease, as well as their connection to your life’s design.

As modern trauma research continues to integrate elements of mind and body, a new paradigm has emerged around ways of understanding, identifying, and releasing trauma. For those who are unfamiliar, I describe trauma specifically as the limiting beliefs about yourself, others, and the world that are shaped based on early life or ancestral experiences, as well as the associated emotion-based memories that remain trapped within the body until acknowledged and released. The beliefs make up your unconscious mind, which wires your nervous system to respond and interpret your environment through this lens. The associated emotion states are energetic material produced and stored in the nervous system thereby creating an emotional “home” for the body and mind to resonate in. By continuously operating at such traumatized emotional states, like shame, blame, and fear, your mind and body produce a personal reality rife with conflicts and drama that align with these limiting emotions and beliefs - the story of your life as you know it. Though your belief system and emotion energy are not the only sources of information that dictate your health and life path, they are the most powerful sources within you feeding your mind, body, and spirit on a daily basis. By sending continuous signals to the nervous system (imagine feeding your brain McDonald’s every minute of the day!), the source energy of your trauma may produce symptoms in all aspects of your experience, including physical, emotional, behavioral, and relational. Only until you are ready to acknowledge the source material of the story you have been living in will you be able to amend it and transcend it.

One area of study I believe will develop as an advanced opportunity for understanding and healing trauma is the field of epigenetics. A general definition of epigenetics is the study of how environmental experiences alter the way your genetic material is expressed in the body. The field of epigenetics is expansive and has many implications in all areas of life. In the area of emotional or physical trauma, both inherited and experienced, the field will continue to uncover the way the body responds to an inherited lineage of genetic information based on traumatic experiences and circumstances of the past. Another name for this lineage is “intergenerational trauma.” From this perspective, all human bodies carry trauma from the lineage of their ancestors in combination with their own early life experiences. The advancement of this field will increase the potential to understand in what ways your nervous system is limited and conditioned based on experiences of the past. The ability to identify, alter, and release these lineages, blockages, and informational messaging will pave the way for a modern mode of healing to rewire the brain and be a welcome advancement in the field of trauma healing . Impactful areas of interest include rewiring the brain’s neuropathways for pain, healing the gut microbiome, improving immune functioning, creating a new emotional “home,” and fundamentally altering the unconscious mind or belief system to align with your life’s vision.

Once society comes to understand the power of this framework for healing, the question naturally becomes, “Well… how do we do it?” Modern medicine will certainly develop evidence-based technologies that are scientifically identifiable, quantifiable, and measurable within the framework that all gold standard research is studied and, ultimately, considered as reputable. In addition to these valuable contributions, I believe the combination of intuitive and energy-based practices that allow for rapid identification and release of these blockages in concert with lifestyle changes and modern therapeutic tools will be the most potent and integrative way to transform your life. The power of intuitive and energy-based practices is in their ability to tap into the subconscious mind, or belief center, which dictates upwards of 95% of your functioning and reality. By harnessing the power of your belief center, you are able to instruct the body to release what it has been carrying and set the stage for a new reality - a new vision - for your life to take root at the cellular level. Intuitive and energy-based practices also utilize different sources of knowing and guidance to learn the energy of the body and to align with your spiritual path, or the life you are meant to live. With deeper access to the unconscious mind, you begin to heal all areas of stuckness that were resistant to traditional forms of talk therapy and relationship. The notion of the unconscious is not new or novel; it has been talked about for the past century in Freudian Psychoanalysis and other modes of study. However, never has it been clear how it is shaped by ancestral and early life experiences, or how to access and mobilize it without years of indirect “processing” and relational struggle. Over the past few decades, modern psychological practice has advanced to include more somatic and body-based practices that allow the body to speak, no longer relying purely on modalities like hypnosis, dream interpretation, relational validation, or cognitive and behavioral strategies. However, intuitive and energetic medicines offer additional healing power in the identification of where precisely individuals are stuck. By limiting the guesswork and reliance on the thinking brain in traditional therapies, you limit the ego, or humanness, of the healer who is attempting to guide the process.

In part II of this blog, I will expand upon the limitations of a healer’s and sufferer’s reliance on the thinking brain to heal trauma and unfold a new paradigm for you to become the vessel for your own spiritual path and channel the medicine meant to come through the wisdom of the body and the spiritual realm. This path applies to all who may be stuck in their healing path and looking to expand beyond their brain’s fear-based conditioning and outdated theories of problem solving. I am called to bridge the spiritual path with evidence-based medicines in an accessible and integrative way that does not resist nor diminish the current state of healing but humbly contributes to and amplifies it. Intuitive psychology is the new paradigm of healing in the 21st century and I invite all to learn, practice, and dance their way forward as a vessel for life’s unfolding.

Life Without Punishment

Life is a strong wind that carries you along if you let it. You may dance through the air like a kite free to go where it is guided, or you may make valiant efforts to control each movement as if tightly grasping the string. The tighter you hold, the more you may punish yourself or others when your kite does not dance in the particular way you anticipated. It is possible to live a life without punishment. I am not speaking of the consequences you receive for your actions or the circumstances of life unfolding around you. I am speaking of the true form of punishment, which comes only from the self. Self-punishment is the most lethal form and you carry it no matter your age, circumstance, or level of success for as long as you choose. The quality and degree of your punishment is based on your belief system or conditioning, as well as your tolerance for life’s messiness. Living in a perpetual state of self-punishment means living disconnected from your truth because the truth of who you are will never punish you nor will it set such rigid parameters for how the journey is meant to unfold. You are a child of Spirit and, therefore, always forgiven, always invited to expand. When you practice living the way of truth, of compassion for self and others, you see that no moment, no matter how threatening, is inherently punishment-worthy. The evidence for this is in the simple fact that you have control over your willingness and tolerance for punishment. When you make a choice to live without punishment, very suddenly there is no punishment. From this awakening stems the quite obvious realization that punishment is a choice not a given, and if punishment is a choice in one situation, it is a choice in all situations.

Again, I am not speaking to physical consequences but to emotional blame. There will always be consequences for your actions as that is the natural ebb and flow of life, but your actions are not the only effect on your life. The intention and level of openness you carry in your heart contributes greatly to the landscape you see in front of you. So if you screw up on a test or fail at launching a business or get in a fight with your partner or miss an assignment at work… this is wind, and it carries you forth if you let it. You are always carried forth into the next moment whether you like it or not, and you have the choice of being carried gracefully or in resistance. Resistance equals punishment because as you resist what happens, your body resists the natural flow of energy and it contracts, tightens, and manifests disease. Release the tight fist of grasping at life’s circumstances and you will begin to cultivate a much different and more pleasurable way of moving through the world. Even your troubling emotion energy, your symptoms, or your dis-ease can be experienced without resistance, without punishment, despite how ugly and distressing they may appear. In the frequency of punishment, all appears stuck and the windows locked. Your brain may convince you punishment is the natural productive response to messiness, but in fact it is a barrier.

I invite you to practice going through a single day with a commitment to not punishing yourself. This may prove challenging if punishment is a normal part of your daily life, but you will see very quickly how addicted your brain has become to this response. No punishment of self or others does not mean no action. You may still take all the necessary actions in response to life’s circumstances, but you may practice doing so without punishment, without blame. Even if tricky emotions like grief, loss, fear, sadness, or rage appear, practice riding those waves and reminding yourself of your commitment for the time being. Remember that there is a medicine in all emotion states that arise, something to be learned from and released. In fact, the brain often goes to punishment in order to stop or cutoff the flow of emotions it deems intolerable, but if you practice saying, “No, thank you,” to the punishment reaction, you will allow emotions to flow through you much more easily. If you commit to this practice even for one day, you will be amazed at how the world within and without you changes. When you no longer tolerate punishment, you create space for actions and reactions to flow freely without the need for such illusory control, and you allow others to be in this flow with you. Naturally, you begin to feel your sense of worth stabilize because it is no longer dependent on things going a certain way. You simply are worthy. Furthermore, your actions and the actions of others become more guided toward support, collaboration, opportunity, and excitement because you are no longer wasting precious time and space looking for someone to punish. Suffering without punishment simply becomes pain, and pain is uncomfortable but it is temporary. Like a kite dancing in the wind, you are always in motion, always in rhythm, always in love.

Living the Way

When you dance, others dance with you. By surrendering to life as an experiment, you resist nothing and flow through states of discomfort with grace. Surrendering comes in the form of intuition and choosing the highest intention for your expansion. From this place, you naturally share your gifts and others expand with you if they are ready to do so. I no longer consent to my brain’s fears of how I will help others, if I have something to give, or what others’ might think of my choices. I simply show up as I am and allow what is meant to come through to come through, from an experiential place, a witnessing place, and a place of surrender. The source of wisdom flows not from textbooks or teachers or healers, but from a witnessing experience within you. Other sources of information may guide you on your path as you align with them, but when you live the way you were meant to - from your intuitive knowing - you speak without hiding and wisdom flows from you. My journey has led me to knowledge and training and degrees that provide value and credibility on one level, but the true gift I offer - my life’s work - comes from the practice of healing and surrender in myself. All things flow from the experience of being with yourself, as courageously as you can, in each moment. As you tune into the radiant source of truth within you, which never falters and is always available, remember you have what you need in every moment.

Certainly, some things in life require preparation, rehearsal, and practice, but I invite you to see that the practice of what you have to give can also be the practice of your daily life. Whatever it is you hope or believe you have to give, remember that this gift or capacity or skill flows most freely when you embody it in state of natural flow, passion, and inspiration. When you can discover the natural state of surrender within you, you begin to live the way you speak and speak the way you live. There is no pretense and, therefore, no anxieties of what may be uncovered from hiding. The only anxiety from living the way stems from what others may think of your truth, but that is none of your business. If the gift you have to offer is markedly different from who you are as a person, consider whether this is really your gift or if you have simply willed yourself to practice this particular art or skill by force. Many work in conditions and circumstances not of their choosing and I send them my love and blessings, this is not an indictment of traumatic personal or professional situations that require such sacrifice. It is an invitation for those who do have a choice but may not yet realize it, and for those who may see with increased awareness that the struggle and strife around their chosen “work” or “profession” can be an extension of their living purpose. Work and play need not be mutually exclusive, you can learn to play in the way you serve others and serve others in the way you play.

By charting a path with clarify and conviction, and opening up to the joy of being in your truth, your work will not require such effort but will fall off the bone like a tender roast. As you choose to step out from the shadows of your compartmentalized life, remove the barriers between “professional” and “personal” as much as your conditions allow, and move into the light without hiding, you will discover that a rising tide lifts all boats in the context of your life. As you move in alignment in all circumstances, you will see the impact of all encounters with family, friends, and strangers alike. The seemingly disparate parts of who you are will begin to coalesce and you will walk through the world with a unified sense of who you are in each moment. Abundance flows because you are continuously in service of yourself and others and are naturally rewarded for living in such a state. The hours you spend trying to be, look, or speak a certain way can be replaced by the practice of living in alignment with your truth and surrendering to the highest authority within you.

A Brave New Vision

Unlike Aldous Huxley’s dystopian future, your vision for the world comes from a source of loving creation within you. There are two kinds of people in the world, those who see the world as it is and those who see the world as it could be. Just kidding, everyone is both kinds of people, it is only a matter of who you choose to be in each moment. If you have been living in a world dictated by those around you, I invite you to begin living in a world of your own creation. I am not suggesting to live purely in fantasy, there are certainly real, material actions and consequences that take place in your environment. However, to truly produce the life meant for you and to be of service in alignment with your soul’s design, you are invited to work from the inside out. How do you look inward? By creating space in your life for stillness, for inner listening, for visualization, and for many other tools and practices I write about. The world can seem so demanding from the outside in - from the perspective of your family, your employers, your friends, the media, etc. - always acting upon you with their own desires without offering any space to breath. The world will offer opportunities for breath if you are in a place of readiness to practice breathing. In other words, invitations to check-in arise all of the time, you likely just do not perceive them as such or own your power to say “yes” to them.

You may look at certain periods of your life, like losing a job, ending a relationship, or experiencing a perceived sickness, as misfortune, but really they are the universe providing opportunities for inner vision. Any time you have the blessing of time and space to be alone, you are invited to align with the universe within you waiting to unfold. Any time you are granted stillness or solitude, you have the opportunity to breathe life into a world not yet known by those around you. Contrary to popular ideas about what it means to serve the world, you are of greatest service when you take time to envision the life meant for you. Others will not necessarily understand or agree with the inner vision for your life, in fact, it may trigger them and they may be attempt to stuff your vision back into the mysterious place it arose from. But if you stay true to yourself, others will learn to see how powerful you have become by taking your own path, and in time it will become well-worn, only waiting for another young soul to disregard it in favor of their own.

If you are running around guided by the expectations of your thinking brain, extending yourself beyond your limits and collapsing in fatigue every night, you are likely not serving yourself nor are you serving the world in the most expansive way. I am not here to dismiss those who choose such a lifestyle, in fact, I support it if it is an intentional choice that works for you. I am only here to say that if something is missing and you are not quite sure how you ended up sacrificing your inner vision for an outer one, there is another way. I invite you to practice cultivating a brave new vision for yourself and the world. My own vision began to unfold after years of not fitting into the visions of others, feeling misunderstood, and ultimately getting sick. Even when I found myself in the healing world of clinical psychology, there was always a puzzle piece that did square up with the rest. It took several “opportunities,” or Spirit interventions through the sickness of my body, before I was willing to venture beyond the only boxes I perceived as options for my life. The brain values safety more than true purpose and potential, so it takes a different muscle to create it.

I invite you to reflect on what in your life you have currently accepted as your highest vision when if fact it is a brain-derived, “Matrix”-version of a vision conditioned by safety, acceptance, and approval. It does not have to be a monumental area of your life and could simply be a particular food you are eating or media site you are viewing, though what you will likely find as you pull the thread is a deeper source of attachment, identity, and conditioning to a particular way of life in the form of this seemingly small habit. Through the lens of one habit, you may discover a core narrative or belief about the way you assumed life must be lived. Once you recognize this belief, you may recognize that you never even really intentionally decided to live this way, but simply fell into it. You do not simply fall into your highest vision for life, you create it. Therefore, if you have not spent some time reflecting on the most expansive possibility for your life’s vision, it is more than likely you are not yet fully living it. Again, there is no judgment or blame intended by my words. If you are content, I honor you and wish you continued contentment in all your days. Only if you are experiencing stuckness or a desire for more do I extend the offer to merely wonder about the bravest vision your life could hold. From that vision, imagine the ripple your life, your thoughts, your dreams, and your actions can have. It matters. You matter. So walk bravely into a new vision if you are called by my words to do so and know that you are not alone. I am with you. I support your vision and your highest intention for this life. Nothing is more important. Nothing is more sacred. You are guided by the highest authority - the source of all things that lives within.

The Path to Conviction Pt. II: Taking in New Information

The dance toward conviction is not a straight line. Rather, it is an ebb and flow that moves to the rhythm of new information you gather, integrate, and discard along the way. Information comes from a variety of sources, including but not limited to your inner experience, your environment, other people, medical authorities, spiritual healers, and media of all kinds. At the top of the information totem pole is your own witnessing experience. After all, nothing is as convincing as witnessing something for yourself. However, there is more to your experience than meets the eye. Contrary to the popular phrase, “you have to see it to believe it,” your belief system is ultimately what rules the day and it will do all kinds of backflips to rationalize or contort even your own witnessing experience if it contrasts with the new information. For example, if you experience acute back pain following a conflict at work or home and then notice it vanish after resolving the professional or personal issue, it would seem pretty clear that these two instances were related. Yet, if you are a stubborn pursuer of only things biomedical, your belief system may literally prevent your brain from connecting the dots. Therefore, it is more accurate to say that your witnessing experience acts in concert with your openness or readiness to heal, in other words, your openness or readiness to BELIEVE you can heal. From this framework, you do not actually have to see it to believe it. Just as your beliefs can prevent you from acknowledging the truth of your unfolding experience, they can also channel your energy in the direction of healing BEFORE you can see it. With practice, your belief system can be the fuel for your healing journey even when the immediate circumstances of your experience look dim. The power of your mind is the ability to see beyond your circumstances, beyond your limitations, and envision what is possible. You can have the highest source of foolproof information delivered to you on a platter, but if your belief system is not yet open or ready to see the possibilities for your life, it will block your brain’s access to such information. You may be able to understand certain information on an intellectual level, but if your core beliefs remain limited regarding your own potential for healing, they will prevent your nervous system from integrating this information on a deeper, body-based level, which actually allows the energetic blockages to release. Your belief system is the foundation from which all new information is integrated to support your highest vision, and when channeled in this direction, your brain will become wired to seek out the information necessary for this journey. When your belief system comes into alignment with your highest self, you will find that the perfect people, books, podcasts, modalities, and experiences to support your healing and expansion will begin to appear as if orchestrated by a guiding force.

You may be convinced that when a certain piece of information shows up in your life to guide you further down your path of conviction and healing, it is mere coincidence. I assure you, it is not. Certain information shows up in your life once your belief system and, therefore, your brain, is ready to receive it. For all the time you were stewing in your limiting belief and emotion energy, your soul, in connection with your spirit team, was hard at work attempting to deliver the right information for you to heal and expand. When you reach a place of readiness in your beliefs, the information will find its way to you and may be communicated via any source. You may have walked by the same store for years without giving it a second thought, until one day you decide to go in and are guided to a book, a person, or a healing modality that takes you to the next level. Maybe a friend has told you about a kind of therapy or energy practice for years that you have scoffed at, until one day, out of readiness or sheer desperation, a space opens inside you to really hear this friend and pursue their guidance. Before you are able to consciously discern the value of a piece of information, your nervous system, wired by your belief center and years of ancestral lineage, has already decided for you whether or not to allow this information into your frame of reference. Just as your nervous system scans for danger or threat at a preconscious level, it also scans for information that fits within your filtered world view. The path to conviction involves expanding this awareness to allow the right information in that has been previously discarded or ignored.

Once you find yourself at a place of readiness to allow new information in, the next question becomes how you can trust which information is in your highest good to pursue or to let go of? Whether you are conscious of it or not, you have always used a process of discernment. The difference is that before a certain level of awareness, your process of discernment is guided by your limiting beliefs and learned filtration system, which takes place largely unconsciously. For example, your discernment may be based strictly on which information fits within the strict narrative of your parents’ belief systems, of a particular religious ideology, or of double-blind, placebo-controlled studies, which you may otherwise never have questioned as the gold standard or guiding authority for your life. However, with openness to a more expansive flow of information, you may let go of such a narrow type of discernment. Instead, you may be willing to explore a process more unique to your own body, mind, and spirit.

The most powerful form of discernment is the process of intuition.

I have written at length about this topic and will say again that cultivating a deep connection to your own intuitive knowing is the best way of discerning which information is in your highest and best. There are various ways to begin opening the channel to your intuition, but it all starts with getting quiet and listening to your mind body experience beyond the constant chatter of your brain’s thinking. Modalities like network chiropractic, reiki, yoga, guided breathwork, sessions with intuitive healers, or energy-based meditation and visualization are all examples of practices that can facilitate openness in the nervous system to allow such energetic information to flow more freely and connect you to a deeper knowing. Over time, you can grow more connected to and trusting of your intuitive knowing than of your brain’s reactivity.

When making a decision about whether to integrate a particular piece of information into your path of conviction, notice how your body naturally responds. Does it constrict in fear? Does it push away with frustration? Does it tingle with excitement and hope? Does it prepare for disappointment? All of these emotion energies are important information that give you clues about what attached meanings your belief system and nervous system have to a particular piece of information. Emotions bring useful energy but you must not let them be the sole decider of your fate. Fear or anger can be useful, but only if you are able to sit with them and understand their origins. Emotions do not accurately assess the threat in front of you, they respond to the triggered beliefs within you. If you are still carrying limited beliefs about a particular situation, your body may constrict while your soul tells you to expand. With practice, you will be able to discern the difference between information that is meant for you even when it elicits fear. No decision made out of fear is ever in your highest and best. Constructive feedback can be an example of information that triggers negative emotions in you, but is a medicine for your growth. Feelings of excitement and hope can be an important compass as well and you can become familiar with this frequency to guide your decisions, but again, you must practice discerning whether these feeling stem from a place of insecurity and lack or from a true source of love for the highest vision of your life. The allure of money and stability can be an example of dangling fruit that seems to align with your mission, but may instead only be an attempt at comfort when your soul is meant for more.

Lastly, the path toward conviction includes humility. Humility and conviction may seem at odds with one another, but, like all things, they dance in concert. Humility is the capacity for honesty with yourself, your limiting beliefs, and your areas of perceived stuckness. You may be thriving in certain areas with full conviction, yet it is vital to remember that your path is always one of expansion and growth, and such medicine may be presented to you at any time. You may be called to lean into conviction for a period of time before noticing another area of your life open up for new information and awareness. When one door opens, another door… opens! And there will always be more rooms in the house to explore. As you move toward conviction in the truth of who you are, you dance flexibly with all that shows up to guide you, trigger you, love you, and transform you along the way.

What is the Mind Body Experience?

I write about, speak about, and guide people through the mind body experience. So what is it? I will break it down into into its primary component parts as I see them. Are these aspects of your experiences all that is happening within you at any given moment? No. Are they the most important sources of energy for your healing path? I believe so.

THE BELIEF CENTER (MIND): The beliefs you hold about yourself, others, and the world are what shape your personal reality. Your nervous system (brain and spinal cord) receives messaging from the beliefs you carry and interprets your moment-by-moment experience through this lens. For example, if you hold a belief that says, “You are not good enough,” your nervous system will filter all interactions and information take into your body through the lens of this belief. Your brain will literally perceive the world through this filtered information and attract experiences that align with the energetic frequency of this belief. I consider the word “mind” to represent the container of your beliefs, both in and outside of your awareness. With practice, you can create space for the mind to reveal the beliefs it is carrying so you may choose to release and transform the ones that no longer serve you. Beliefs are an energetic source held within you at a cellular level, in other words, a true source of intelligent matter, and represent the most powerful source of energy manifesting your experience. Just like gas for your car, you must choose the right kind that supports your environment and alignment for optimal performance. The kind of energetic source fueling your experience will dictate what is produced. The beliefs you hold are not just produced out of thin air, just as fuel for your car is not magically created. Beliefs are shaped by life experiences as well as your ancestry. You do not come into this world as a blank slate, but instead you arrive in this body carrying the limiting and unresolved beliefs of those who came before you. If your beliefs are the fuel for your experience, your life experiences and your ancestry are the fueling stations. Based on these experiences, beliefs are stored as energetic information and remain in your body until you set the intention to release them. The beliefs you carry are the greatest fuel source for your mind body experience.

EMOTIONS: The emotions you carry, which are produced by various organs throughout your body, are intimately linked to your beliefs. With every belief comes the production of an associated emotion state. Whether the beliefs were carried in ancestrally or formed by experiences in this lifetime, the body will produce an emotion aligned with that frequency and it will remain energetically stuck until you are ready to release that emotion with intention. I invite you to see that emotions are real energetic matter - energy in motion - meant to call you to action; however, if the nervous system has become wired by certain negative beliefs states, it will continue to elicit the associated negative emotions in all situations where the beliefs are triggered. The brain will continue to receive signals of threat or pain from the body and out of survival will establish fear-based patterns of escape to cope with these deeply held emotions. The brain’s reaction to deeply held emotions is a primary reason for compulsive or addictive behavior. As long as the beliefs and emotions remain held within the body, the brain’s neuropathways will become wired over time to produce certain impulses, sensations, behaviors etc. The nervous system is wired for survival and rather than create space for emotion energy to flow naturally, the brain will signal a myriad of symptoms to escape the perceived threat until you are able to expand your awareness and make decisions from a deeper and more vulnerable place within you.

You likely know what emotions feel like, but similar to beliefs, you cannot point to them or see them on an MRI scan. Emotions carry a powerful energetic frequency and, matched with your beliefs, create a filter through which you see a given moment or experience. Emotions can be positive or negative, higher or lower frequency. Based on the messages received around certain emotions in early life environments, the brain becomes conditioned to respond to different emotions in a certain way. Emotions like shame, guilt, anger, fear, or despair are examples of toxic emotions your brain may become familiar with and respond to with self-punishing, blaming, or avoidant thoughts and behavior.

For example, if you grew up in a household that validated anger but not sadness, your brain may perceive the anger as safe to emerge while signaling threat in response to sadness. In order to release the emotion energies you are carrying, you must be willing to practice going toward the more hidden emotions that remain trapped in your body outside of your brain’s mechanisms for survival and control. You were likely taught as a child to “control” your emotions, but the goal is not control. The goal is to recognize and understand them and to allow them to move through you. You do not need to control them nor do you need to be controlled by them; they can simply be honored for the powerful sources of energy that they are and released. When a life experience elicits an emotion, the body may produce a new emotion, but an old emotional part of you will also show up for you to honor, to be with, and move through or release. Emotions are like children in the car with you, they each have a voice and may need to speak at different times. When they do, you are invited to listen and to honor what they have to say because they represent core beliefs you have been carrying. However, you do not let your children take the wheel, you let them say their piece and keep your attention on the road. To extend the metaphor, at times you will need to pull off the road and stop driving to fully attend to an emotional voice. This is the delicate dance of the Mind Body Experience to be with and move through emotion energy as it flows through you with ease.

THOUGHTS: Thoughts are produced by the brain and are a product of your belief center or “mind.” If the beliefs are your fuel, then the thoughts are your engine or motor. In addition to being a product of the beliefs you carry, your thoughts will also match the frequency of the associated emotion state that is elicited by a particular belief. If fear emotion is being elicited by a limiting belief, the brain will produce fearful thoughts. However, with awareness you have the choice to listen to these thoughts, to quiet them, or to focus on a different source of energy or voice within you, one which align with and supports your highest truth. Often times, your engine may be running while your car is stopped. In fact, you may metaphorically leave the engine running for days, months, and years without even realizing it. Though you may have learned to be a “thoughtful” person in school, at home, and in society, it is important to learn to quiet or turn off the motor completely as often as you can, while also practicing to replace your current fuel with beliefs that actually serve your highest intention for life. Therefore, when thoughts do arise they will be of the highest quality to serve yourself and others. Think of your current car as having an outdated, gas-guzzling engine that consumes poor quality fuel and produces poor performance as a result. Continuing to live in this way is like using a gas motor in a Tesla and ignoring the incredible technological potential at your disposal.

Learning when to rely on the engine and when to use more advanced and aligned technology - A.K.A. your intuitive source of knowing - is vital. At times, you may feel a particularly powerful, inspiring, or creative thought emerge, in which case, listen to it! Take it in and let it call you to action or nourish you and move you toward your truth. Just be sure to check-in or assess the thoughts that emerge and determine in they are for your highest good. Your true self will never be punishing, shaming, blaming, or judgmental. So this should be quite an easy test to determine which thoughts are meant for you and which are not. Most thoughts are the result of outdated programming in the brain relying on outdated beliefs and associated emotion states. If there is a message that you are needing to hear for your highest good, it will come from a deeper, more resonant place within you or from an aligned external experience, person, or symbol. The messages meant for you are channeled by a source of knowing beyond thought, a source connected to your spirit team and the energy of all things. You have likely disowned this advanced technology in place of a gas-guzzling engine you have been conditioned to rely upon for so long. You may practice saying, “No, thank you” to the harmful thoughts cycling through your head, and, in effect, begin rewiring your brain to only respond to the energy-rich fuel of your choice. Practice recognizing the automatic or reactive thoughts so you can discern when your car is reverting to autopilot and dictating how fast or slow, stressed or relaxed, you get to be. With increased awareness, you will be able to stay more aligned and focused on the road meant for you, rather than taking every emotional detour along the way. Your mind body experience is unfolding exactly as it should and if the thoughts tell you differently, they are based in emotion energy that is no longer serving you and it is time for an upgrade.

PHYSICAL SENSATIONS: Your physical sensations are a form of communication from your nervous system regarding information from your perceived environment. The process of healing pain is acknowledging that, outside of obvious physical injury or life-threatening harm, physical sensations rarely represent the truth of your experience because they are manifestations of your nervous system’s wiring and inner threat detection system. Even in the case of a life-threatening situation, your nervous system will be signaling sensations based on your belief system, not the objective experience. Your physical body is the vessel that receives and carries forth all of your nervous system’s communication, therefore, the body never intends to harm or betray you, but only to deliver the messages it receives. Unlike the body of a car, your body repairs itself after injury. A dent in your car will last until you get it fixed, but a broken bone or cut in your body will heal. If you incur organ or nerve damage, then yes, you too will need assistance. However, all lingering pain sensation deemed “chronic,” especially anything derived from the musculoskeletal system, is an experience representing the learned pattern of communication from your system’s wiring, which may be outdated and require an upgrade. The upgrade includes recognizing the outdated belief and emotion energy in the body continuously signaling the brain and creating space for their release. The beliefs and emotions are energetic blockages in your nervous system like faulty parts in your vehicle. The physical sensations that result from these blockages are like notifications on your car’s dashboard that signal “low tire pressure,” when there really is none. The source of that signaling error is faulty wiring that needs to be addressed, both in the car and the nervous system.

The path to healing physical sensations that no longer serve you involves rewiring the communication system between brain and body and clearing the energetic blockages in your nervous system, otherwise known as the emotion and belief energy keeping you stuck and in an outdated mode of performance. Of course, you are an embodied being and there will always be sensations for you to navigate just as there will always be emotions and beliefs to practice releasing, but with awareness you can understand the source of these sensations and move through them with ease rather than unnecessary and toxic reactivity spiraling you into fear and despair. With practice, your car will no longer need to display a myriad of warnings across your dashboard as you upgrade the wiring to accurately detect threat and safety within the body. You can upgrade your nervous system to see the truth of who you are beneath all the wiring - an expansive energetic source that is capable of speeds far greater than what you have come to accept.

INTUITION: Intuition is the source within you that emerges once you recognize you are not the previous things mentioned. Once you set the intention to expand awareness of your brain’s neural patterns, your nervous system signaling, your emotional waves, and your limiting beliefs, you discover a deeper truth within you that has always been there. Some may refer to intuition as listening to your heart and gut, which collect and send more sensory and emotion information to the brain than vice versa. I agree that connecting to these parts of you is vital and brings you closer to a truer sense of knowing. Additionally, your intuition holds the key to your connection with Spirit or the energetic source of all things. You are an energetic being at your source and, with practice, you can connect more deeply to this truth, which resonates at the highest frequency of love, gratitude, and peace. The truth of who you are never punishes, blames, shames, or judges… it only loves. To connect more deeply to your intuitive home is to relinquish the chains of fear conditioned by survival patterns in your brain and throughout your nervous system. As you clear the energetic blockages throughout your body, you clear a path to this energetic home. With practice, you can align with this frequency as a long-term home rather than a short-term vacation you take every so often. From this home, you remain in love, in alignment, and in conviction with the path meant for you to walk in this life, and with knowing it need not involve so much suffering. Cultivating intuition is like learning to drive. At first, you do not recognize any of the signals on the road or within the car, but with practice, you begin to discern which symbols mean what, where they come from, and which ones are meant for you. From a place of intuitive guidance, you learn the power of your mind and body as energetic sources of information communicating with you at all times, as well as the power of your environment and the energies of others. Energy medicine is an expansive field and provides a framework for understanding the mind body experience on a level beyond traditional medical and psychological landscapes. The practice of connecting with this framework for your experience is the practice of moving from automobiles to air travel.

Connecting to Spirit

The journey of connecting to your Spirit team, or the guides that support your path beyond the physical realm, is a journey of surrender. You may be someone who has received hints along your life path that such a realm exists and may have received signals, voices, or intuitive hits that you never trusted because they did not fit within society’s view of knowing. You may be someone who has never entertained such an idea in your life, yet for one reason or another you are open to hearing it now. Or you may be convinced that no such element of life exists and this writing may not be for you. In any case, here is an unfolding of my own witnessing experience and an offering to those who may be ready to receive it. I have written previously about intuition, which has been my window into the spiritual world. I, like most, was conditioned to see my thinking brain as the container for all answers regarding life and what I could know, but it was a painful process. The brain is a powerful mechanism of logic, reason, and survival, but it is always scanning for threat or danger. Depending on your level of trauma, early life or ancestral, your threat response will vary. My inherited, generalized fear for life was so high that I often did not have access to the benefits of my brain’s power and often received its consequences. The brain focuses on problem solving and, therefore, views life as one big problem to be solved. For some, that may be an exciting challenge. For others, it may be a threatening and stressful existence. My life appeared to be a series of problems that could not be solved no matter how many compulsions or negative thoughts my brain produced. The patterns only led me down paths of despair and anxiousness, rarely resulting in success in the areas of my life I had hoped to see it in. I fought tooth and nail with this brain, trying medications, meditations, drugs, and just about every escape I could think of to manage the onslaught of toxic emotion states that came along with my brain’s neural patterns. The logic and reason were often buried beneath layers of negative emotions and beliefs sending constant messages to my brain and reinforcing its response to threat. Not until I learned how to create the optimal environment for healing, including bringing safety to my nervous system, was I able to redirect the flow of my brain’s awesome power. At this point, I have simply spoken to modern trauma research and the evolutionary function of the nervous system, which most are in agreement with and as far as some are willing to go on their healing path at this time. But I was called to go further.

As I navigated debilitating states of mind body experience, I considered the nervous system to be the foundational layer of healing until I was encouraged to see the energetic process working beneath or alongside it. From my own witnessing and intuitive understanding, I saw emotions as literal energy in motion, meant to flow through the nervous system with ease, and only when the brain detected threat associated with a limiting belief did it disrupt this natural process. But how could I trust I was actually an energetic being with the capacity to connect to higher realms? Only with the desperate pursuit of answers beyond traditional Western medicine did I begin to witness experiences within myself in combination with powerfully intuitive healers that guided me closer to this truth. As I felt the energetic impact of various healing sessions and modalities in my physical body, including the relinquishing of debilitating pain and sickness, I could no longer deny the power of something energetic taking place beyond what could be explained by traditional therapeutic practices. The source of energy arising within me began to feel bigger than any individual wave of emotion, and I recognized a growing connection to something beyond myself - what I refer to as Spirit.

Even then, I attempted to keep my spiritual path separate from my clinical pursuits until my body literally would not allow me to. I was continuing to get sick weekly and nearly falling asleep in my sessions. After a grueling push to pass a licensing exam, I recognized my life was meant for something different than the pursuits of those around me. I was finally ready to open up to a path of knowing beyond the thinking brain and the limits of the unconscious emotions and beliefs I had carried up to that point - the path of intuition and connection to Spirit. Opening to intuition began by recognizing that the fear-based patterns of my brain were no longer going to guide me forward and I was going to need to let go of every connection I had to this style of living. No longer was I going to make decisions based upon some fear-based expectation or limiting belief of myself, others, and the world. More profound than leaving my clinic, my title, and nearly all of my professional relationships, was leaving a way of thinking about myself, others, and the world. I began to have faith in a different source, a source that aligned with my spiritual path and operated from a different perspective about the world. From this source, my life was no longer a problem to be solved but a path of divine purpose to be walked. I had faith in a blueprint I could not see but could feel coursing through me. I was guided to focus my energies on things like writing, speaking, and crafting the truth of my unfolding story. For the first time in my life, I was choosing to move in direct alignment with a path that had been hitting me over the head for years, a path I saw up to that point as a problem to be solved rather than a message to be heard. Fears and doubts rose like waves crashing over heard, but with courage, I persisted. As I begin to align with this path, my lifestyle began to change rapidly and I could feel stress begin to fall away. I had already changed several habits that weren’t serving me, but in addition to dietary and exercise changes, it was the internal changes that were the most monumental. I had always been a meditator in the traditional sense, but I learned how to actually listen to the intuitive guidance within me. I learned not only how to make decisions that best served me, but how to do so from a place of authentic power and integrity rather than fear and lack. The more I practiced checking in with a source beyond my brain, the more answers took shape with clarity and conviction. The practice of connecting to my higher self was a practice of moving through fear and doubt. Each check in presented an opportunity to recognize the place of fear, anxiety, hope, or disappointment I was coming from and to re-center. Over time, the answers began to shift from mere visual imagery representing “Yes” or “No” to voices that I could distinguish. Different guides carry different messages and, as I have learned, some come from the light and some from the dark. As I continue to practice, I continue to gain ultimate trust in the messages I am receiving and to know that I am supported beyond measure.

Once you set the intention to connect with Spirit and begin the practice of checking in, you may recognize that you have been receiving messages all along but have not felt supported enough to entertain them because of how imposing societal conditions can be. You may have written off voices, premonitions, symbols, or powerful states of presence as mere fantasy, and attempted to corral your mind back to the “important” information that others seemed to be taking in so seriously, like what kind of job you should get or car you should buy. But a part of you always knew the truth - you are an energetic being with a purpose all your own, and the only way to fully embody this truth is by finding ways to connect to the source of this energy and to the spirit guides serving your highest intention. You may feel alone in your path as you let many things go that no longer serve or define you, but what you appear to lack in human relatedness you will make up for in spiritual guidance and support. The more you lean in with your whole being, the more your guides will lean in to support you and make their presence known.

Creating an open channel to your guides all begins with present-focused awareness. All healing, all listening, all spiritual connection unfolds in the present. All of learning to D.A.N.C.E. is a present-focused practice to connect with spirit, in addition to healing mind and body. By creating the optimal environment for healing, you create the optimal environment to connect with your guides and the messages meant for you. Connection can come through breath and stillness, in meditation and visualization, and in allowing emotion and belief energy that no longer serves you to release. Growing an intuitive connection is like growing a muscle, it takes practice. I check-in hundreds of times per day with my intuition and my guides. However, I am not always looking for deep messages. Often, I am just checking in on what or when to eat for that day in highest service of my body. Cultivating the intuitive muscle begins by recognizing that the messages you receive from your brain are based in outdated wiring and survival, and by learning to discern this from a higher truth. If you pause and reflect on the messaging produced by your brain, you will see it is often laced with a kind of fear or need to achieve or prove something. A particular story in the area of health, relationships, or money may produce an impulse to act, but underneath the story commanding your attention is a motor running on fear-based fuel. On some level, your brain produces messages based on what it thinks you need to survive, honed from years of evolutionary and societal conditioning in addition to the ancestral beliefs you carried into this world. The process of connecting to Spirit is a process of recognizing your brain’s conditioning and beginning to unhook from that, like disconnecting from the Matrix (as overused as that reference may be). You will go through many trials and tribulations, but keep going. You will be rewarded for your efforts.

As in all of healing, the practice of connecting to Spirit stems from the foundational conviction that it exists and that you can actually do so. From this source of conviction, all practice flows and your channel widens. The messages will become clearer and your commitment to letting go of what no longer serves you will amplify. The process of connecting to Spirit is a process of recognizing yourself as a spiritual being and resisting the brain’s addictions to temporary fulfillment in all of its conditioned ways. Everyone has an intuitive capacity that can be nurtured in order to align with their highest spiritual intention for this life, which will no doubt bring the most inspired joy and passion for them. Everyone’s calling is designed differently; some may be destined for certain pains and sufferings, as I have no doubt experienced, but there is a different quality between the pain that flows from a natural source of expansion and the pain that flows from resistance to your calling. I have experienced both and one leads to growth while the other remains mired in stuckness and repeated enactments of trauma. Ultimately, as cliche as it may sound, every soul’s calling is to live in the highest available frequency - the frequency of love and gratitude for all things - though this will manifest in different paths for all. Personally, I have continued to receive the message that I am a bridge between worlds, meant to traverse the spiritual and the earthly so I may invite others to receive the light of such seemingly invisible offerings. I have so often fought against this while conceding to my brain’s impulses to fit in, to be validated, and to pursue pleasure in the way others do. I will no doubt continue to learn my lessons as I walk my own path of alignment. You may experience your own stuckness in the form of repeated relationship dynamics, career pitfalls, health problems, or chronic emotional strife. The issues may seem so unfair and isolating, but I promise you there is a greater path to surrender to. Spirit will continue to hit you over the head in more ways than one until you are ready to listen or to say “Yes” to the journey. If are sick and tired of a path that never felt truly aligned, I invite you to a place of readiness to begin.

What is the Medicine?

All of life is a medicine if you set the intention to heal. You may currently label only certain substances or treatment modalities as “medicine” based on your conditioning and the societal ideas around what heals. Maybe you have expanded the the notion of medicine to include food, or even the absence of food in the practice of fasting, since it has profound effects on the mind, body, and spirit. If you are open to connection with the spiritual world, and rewiring the brain’s trauma responses, you may consider things like psychoactive plants, meditative states, and energy healing work to be medicines as well. The truth is that all of life’s circumstances present an opportunity for medicine, but the choice to perceive them as such remains up to you and your intention.

In addition to all of the modalities I mentioned, and many I did not, relational experiences offer one of the most potent forms of medicine as it triggers emotions and beliefs meant to be released. Some relational experiences are pleasant, some are not so much. Both provide windows into what ancestral or early life emotions and beliefs you are carrying within you. When you see glimpses into these emotions and beliefs, they can be hard to tolerate, especially while the brain latches onto a story about why such feelings were elicited and who or what was at fault. However, the practice of healing takes on new meaning when you allow yourself to see the medicine in every situation that arises. The more triggering the situation is, the more medicine there is to be received.

Your mind body experience is not simply a collection of random events that create chain reactions within you, but invitations to heal various unhealed parts or trapped emotions and beliefs you have been carrying. From an energetic perspective, the frequency of the emotions and beliefs you carry will continue to attract similar types of people and situations until you are able to learn the “lessons” meant for you in this life. Your brain has been wired by continuous messaging from ancestry and early life and, therefore, will continue to perceive you, others, and the world through that filtered lens until you begin to say “Yes” to the medicine. With practice, you begin to rewire the brain and use its power to support your highest intention for this life rather than allowing it to remain limited in fear and other toxic emotion states.

You may choose to go through life seeing every negative interaction as an unfair slight against you for no other reason than the unfairness of life. In this case, you may be holding some beliefs about inherent unfairness or poor treatment from others, as well as associated emotions that align with this frequency. Your brain may convince you that the best way to solve this problem is by becoming more entrenched in a competitive energetic frequency and belief that you must look out only for yourself and take what you can because one will support you. The belief and emotion you are carrying may shape your worldview and become a vicious feedback loop in your personal reality. From an energetic perspective, the negative emotion energy will continue to attract such events, thereby reinforcing the beliefs around unfairness and poor treatment. From a neuroscientic perspective, your brain’s wiring, which I refer to as trauma, will continue to perceive and interpret events through this traumatized lens, limiting you from seeing the opportunities for higher states of love, gratitude, and joy. The medicine in this example is to practice recognizing that the source energy of this production is living within you. It is not to excuse others behavior or tragic situations, but rather to invite you to identify the power you have within you to change your brain, your environment, and your life. By releasing the blockages of emotion and belief energy keeping you stuck, you create space to move toward the frequencies of love, abundance, and opportunity that will create new neural patterns in your brain. The combination of your upgraded nervous system and emotion and belief energy will allow you to expand into the truth of who you are and who you have always wanted to be. This is the medicine of life. It does not always taste good, but it is the greatest gift you have to give yourself - to recognize that you have the power within you to take these medicines with intention in order to grow and expand. From this place of readiness and intention, there is no stuckness, only medicine.

One personal example is that I have always carried ancestral beliefs of lacking support and, as a result, rarely trusted that others or systems would be there to help me. Even though my parents were always supportive, I rarely trusted an authority figure in my life and, to no surprise, often experienced contrast with such figures. Though I have known about these aspect of my personal reality and mind body experience for most of my life, I only discovered the ancestral roots of the core beliefs and associated emotions recently. The difference now being that I do not blame myself or even identify with these parts as the truth of who I am, but instead see them for what they - energetic matter and bundles of emotion memory I have been carrying and allowing to define me. Much of that has changed as I have exposed and transformed my life in more ways than one, but limiting beliefs and attached emotions continue to surface as I chart new territory in my life’s design. I notice how triggered I get when I sense others are attempting to dictate or influence my vision. Of course, I am human and I react poorly at times, but with practice I continue to recognize such beliefs and emotions as opportunities to be cleared. I can choose to stay in blame and judgment, which I have spent more than enough time in throughout my life, or I can take the greater medicine and practice owning what lives within me in order to expand.

By saying “Yes” to the medicine and a readiness to practice, the collection of emotion memories that shape different parts of who you believe yourself to be can actually be dismantled and reconfigured over time. As you heal, soothe, and release these aspects of your experience that no longer define you, your environment will naturally adjust to meet the rising truth within you. No life happens in a bubble and there are many forces at play that create the majesty and wonder of existence, but your capacity to receive the medicines emerging all around you, in every moment, is the most powerful force you have to transform.

A Guide Through Anger

The D.A.N.C.E. through your mind body experience is an imperfect one and may often show up as anger at yourself and others in the process. You may rage at the unfairness, confusion, and pain of your circumstances. You may rage at how long your healing journey has been, how nothing has seemed to help, and how stuck you may still feel. You may rage at how misunderstood and alone you feel. You may rage at your imperfection. All of this makes sense. Your anger is the anger of hope and of desperately wanting a better life. It is the anger of your child self and it is perfectly okay. The anger is showing up to be released and, with practice, you can create space to honor such feelings and release them, in addition to any associated symptoms.

Many people, including myself, have had difficulty allowing the presence of anger to show up. I grew up in a household that freely spoke the language of fear, but was not well-versed in the language of anger. As a result, I became familiar with the fear, but the anger remained shameful and foreign inside me. When anger emerged, it was messy. I could not push it away nor could I fully be with it. I raged at others for their inability to understand or be with my experience, while I silently felt shame for having such a “troublemaking” part of me. I punished myself for the anger energy in addition to everyone else. I directed it inward and pointed it at all my vulnerabilities and perceived weaknesses. This is the way my brain learned to survive environments where anger was dangerous. The anger is uncomfortable and messy, but it does not make you bad and it is showing up for a reason. You may not like how you appear in these moments and others may not understand the intensity rising up inside you, but your relationship with yourself is the one you must honor. Remind yourself of your worthiness even in your most rage-filled moments. Your anger is a result of the trauma you carry from this lifetime and your ancestry, as is mine. Alongside the emotion of anger is a traumatized belief getting triggered about yourself, others, and the world. The emergence of anger is the opportunity to practice releasing this energy and expanding into a new state of peace and love.

As a child, I often carried a belief of feeling unsupported, alone, and misunderstood. The traumatized belief merged with the response of others around me and created a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I navigated continuous environments where I felt alone, unsupported, and misunderstood, the belief remained hardened in me and produced anger and resentment as a result. Certainly, environments can be objectively worse than others and lead to new or exacerbated traumatic experience, but this is not about blame or fault. At a certain point, it was most helpful to recognize what I was carrying within me that elicited such powerful emotion and continues to at times. I hated just about every authority figure in my life up to a certain point. Was everything authority figure and caregiver perfect? No. Were they all deserving of my anger. Also no. The dynamics of childhood are very difficult to process in real time for various reasons, including development and dependency on your environment for survival, but once you get to a certain age the responsibility becomes yours to practice honoring and owning your anger for what it is, as well as continuing to release it. And there will be no shortage of opportunities to do so!

Another example of a powerful belief that shows up in association with anger is the belief that you are not living up to your expectations or the expectations of others you have internalized. Recognize how unforgiving a learned part of you has become toward yourself, and see how this part is now punishing you for your experience. You may simultaneously direct this anger inward and outward as others never seem to live up to your expectations either. Again, the punishment has roots in a traumatized belief and associated emotion you are carrying. Remember that the journey is messy and you can find ways to let the messiness show up without shame or guilt and with as much courage and humility as you can muster. Whenever you feel that punishing belief and anger emotion show up in regard to your own progress in one area of your life, including your own healing, do your best to remember this is only your brain’s conditioning. Remember that the emergence of the belief and emotion is itself the opportunity in the moment showing up for healing and demands your attention. You are courageous enough to be with this and you are not bad or unworthy for being where you are; in fact, it is exactly where you are meant to be.

Your anger may not always look like anger at first glance, and there are likely other emotions mixed in. Alongside anger will always be a feeling of hurt and perceived threat. There is a biological basis for this since the brain is always scanning for danger and threat, and both anger and fear are produced in the amygdala - the primitive part of the brain geared toward survival. Your brain perceives emotion energy as a threat, like lava from a volcano ready to burst, but there is no lava and there is no volcano. You are safe in the ocean of your experience. You cannot be destroyed. In reality, a core belief has been triggered that your brain has been conditioned to see as threatening. Whenever such a belief gets triggered, typically in a relational experience, you or the other person may seem dumbfounded at how such profound anger emerged from such a seemingly innocuous situation. You must consider that when such a belief gets triggered, your brain immediately recalls the threat of the original situation, likely from your childhood or even your ancestry, and it no longer sees the current situation for what it is. This is the definition of a trauma reaction. Your brain cannot actually tell the difference between past, present, and future, and the information it feeds on is based in the emotion and belief energy you are carrying. If someone says or does something that elicits the belief of “No one understands me,” and this belief was shaped at a very pivotal and fertile time in your childhood, an enormous wave of anger, fear, and hurt may show up that was produced and manifested from that experience.

It does not feel like an opportunity in the moment, but you are being triggered precisely so you may release this trauma you have been carrying. The opportunities are simply a byproduct of human relationship. We trigger one another so we may heal and it is up to us to practice doing so. Not with shame, blame, or guilt, but with as much courage and compassion for ourselves and others as we can muster. We continue to dance between moments of exciting growth and frustrating stumbles as we navigate our mind body experience. To learn to D.A.N.C.E. with anger, we learn to dance with what we carry, what others carry, and with life itself. You are not your symptoms, your traumatized beliefs, or your anger. You are a soul being human and you are here to expand.

A Guide Through Fatigue

Fatigue is one of the most debilitating mind body experiences and an insidious wave to surf in the ocean of physical sensations. If you are getting hit daily with waves of fatigue, it can feel like being caught in the undercurrent of a stormy sea with no orientation and nothing to hold on to. Like all mind body symptoms, fatigue must be listened to as a signal but not given power as a command. In the moment, you will not be able to trust your brain’s alarm signals or the sensations of your body shutting down, so you must rely on an inner set of navigation tools to get to safety. I invite you to summon courage - all that you can muster - and practice grounding yourself when the experience arises.

The fatigue may feel like it’s ripping the ground from under you, which is why it is important to have D.A.N.C.E. tools available to you in every moment. The illusion of a mind body experience is that what appears on the surface is rarely what lurks beneath. Underneath the experience of fatigue is actually a hypervigilant or dysregulated nervous system on high alert after detecting danger or threat in the mind body system. The source of this threat is typically a belief and emotion energy triggered by a given situation. As you expand your awareness to include the emotion and belief energy you are carrying, you begin to notice when stored emotions of fear, sadness, or anger show up to be acknowledged, along with beliefs of “I am… unworthy/not good enough/unsupported/rejected.” I invite you to practice getting clear on which beliefs and emotions you are carrying so you can be prepared in the moment to recognize what is showing up. You can engage in this practice by setting aside time in the morning or evening to reflect on the stories of your current life and writing out the beliefs and emotions that surface from a particular conflict or tension. You do not have to wait for symptoms to appear to set aside time to check in. Within any current story playing out in your life, there will always be a preceding belief and emotion energy attached that has been triggered. If you practice getting quiet and listening beneath the brain-driven patterns of thinking, you may start to touch the energetic source manifesting your symptom experience or other various conflicts and stuckness in your life.

To begin this practice, you may start by bringing safety to your experience. Rather than grabbing for something external like a food, drug, or other distraction, use the tools available within you. Unlike a surfer caught in the undercurrent of a wave, you have the power of the breath - use it. Wherever you are, breath is always the first and most effective way to start bringing safety to your mind and body. With breath, you can move into a brief meditation and visualization practice (you can find mine in the ‘Resources’ section of my site) or a gentle movement practice (walking, stretching, etc.). Sometimes, a simple 15 minute rest or bath can help settle the nervous system enough to allow tension points to release and emotion and belief energy to emerge. Always ask yourself whether the activity of your choosing is creating the optimal environment for healing or further burying the emotional stuckness. In the moment when symptoms hit, you may be overwhelmed by the pain, confusion, or fatigue, but with practice in these safety building techniques you will start to create space for imagery, feelings, beliefs, or memories to emerge. Do not push this away as fantasy, no matter how faint, spontaneous, or unrelated it may seem. I promise you there are no coincidences in what shows up in your mind and body for you to be with. The quieter you are able to get in your mind body experience, the more you allow your soul to speak and, with that, the layers of trauma in its way.

Regardless of what the trigger is, there will always be some level of fear present in the nervous system as a result of your brain’s fire alarm response to the threatening source of belief and emotion energy. Like other mind body experiences, just identifying the source emotion or belief may not necessarily make the fatigue lift instantaneously, but by expanding your awareness and your tools to restore safety to your experience you will turn off the alarms over time by rewiring the neural patterns in your brain. For a while, all you may detect is the fear that is present, but consider this an achievement to be able to go one layer beneath the fatigue and to touch the state of dysregulation in your body. From there, you will continue to open and relax into the layers beneath that. Like a diver going hundreds of feet beneath the ocean surface, your foot will eventually graze the sandy bottom of the ocean floor while the waves swirl overhead. With the right tools, you can find your emotional footing and recognize that the storm happening on the surface was never the truth of who you are.

You may have formed socially conditioned habits of escaping the fatigue through external substances such as food, drugs, energy drinks, sex, screens, or stimulation of any kind. The external sources may alleviate the experience temporarily, but they are not actually helping you engage the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the optimal environment for healing practice, release, and transformation. Resist the attempt to eat, drink, or push away your experience and instead use tools that bring you closer to your inner home. Take your body for a walk, sit on your meditation cushion or yoga mat, use the breath, and set the intention to release what is showing up. With these tools, you start to direct your powerful brain toward the path of safety and conviction in the truth of who you are underneath the layers that no longer serve you. Healing is a D.A.N.C.E. so do not beat yourself up for not always saying “Yes” to the invitation. Sometimes you may want that coffee or snack to change your state externally and that is okay. Just know that with practice, you can always come back to the source of healing within and continue to rewire your brain from the inside. Once you can identify that fear or other emotion energy present, you can take more conscious and intentional actions to be with and move through it. Remember that the emotion and belief energy manifesting your symptom experience may have never been yours to carry; it may stem from your ancestry or lineage so it is important to snuff out thoughts of self-blame or self-punishment. The mind body experience is not your fault nor does it represent your truth as a soul being human. The layers of trauma you carry are a manifestation of what has been absorbed and stored in your body at a molecular level and, with practice, you can let them go. You no longer need to be dragged so easily into the undercurrent of danger, and as you allow the energetic waves of emotion and belief to move through you, your body will return to its natural state of aliveness, peace, and joy.

Cultivating Intuition

Toward the end of my 10+ year journey with mind body pain and sickness, I decided I was no longer interested in being led by my brain’s fear-based thinking. I began to say, “No, thank you” to the voice I had grown so familiar with throughout these years and my childhood leading up to it. The voice had been punishing and fearful for so long that I was not sure there was another voice within me or another way to be guided through life. When I started saying “No,” firmly at first and then more gently over time, other voices emerged. I discovered a softer voice that supported settling down my nervous system, staying present, and letting emotion and belief energy pass through me like waves. As this voice grew more powerful so did my practice of present-focused awareness, and I significantly reduced the spirals of fear and despair that so often trapped me in a given moment, day, or week. I received the message from my healers to begin recognizing not only a a more authentic voice within me, but also an intuitive connection to Spirit that served my highest and best intention for this life. I have always been an open-minded person, but not until this moment had I trusted that I could actually access a source of knowing beyond my brain. I had already come to believe fully in others’ abilities to use intuitive guidance to be of service to themselves or others, but I believed them to have unique gifts qualitatively different from my own. I was not yet ready to let go of my attachment to the intellectual knowledge I had built up over the years, including all of my clinical training, which I put on a pedestal and always strived to perfect. Upon reflection, it was painfully clear that this knowledge never served me in the way it appeared to serve others. My intense pursuit of intellectual knowledge stemmed from a place of lack, and the illusion was that a certain amount of knowledge would ever be enough to validate my sense of worthiness.

I never felt smart enough as a child given my proclivities for intense emotional experience which pervaded my view and disrupted my behavior and attention. I was frequently in trouble with teachers and even when appearing still, my mind was elsewhere, dancing off in fantasy escapades of how I could break out of these systems keeping me stuck. Amidst the stormy experience of my emotion and belief energy, I pushed for the intellectual knowledge that I was conditioned to desire within my educational and family systems. Everyone around me seemed to value this knowledge, though it was hard for me to take it in at times. A more spiritual understanding, such as the buddhist philosophy my father exposed me to, always resonated on a deeper level and came more naturally to me than history books or mathematics. As a result of my struggles, I received several psychiatric diagnoses common for children with emotional and attentional difficulties, none of which addressed the source of my issue. With great effort, I persevered in high school, college, and ultimately in graduate school. I continued this pursuit in earnest, especially as I got closer to the area of study that interested me and aligned with my purpose as a healer. Through graduate school, I pursued knowledge in the area of psychodynamics, trauma, and attachment theory with fervor and became adept at navigating these fields, though underneath this burgeoning library of information lived the same fears and doubts that I would never know enough and, therefore, could never be enough. Alongside my studies, I weaned and wained with more eastern philosophies and mindfulness practices, striving to embody this knowledge as well but always falling short and never fully understanding or feeling at ease with my inner experience. I was able to speak the language of these concepts well, but there remained walled off parts of me that I could not access. Many times on this intellectual pursuit, I felt I had finally stumbled upon the theory for which I could understand my life and the lives of others, yet I was ultimately left dissatisfied, anxious, and confused.

My intellectual pursuits persisted as I was hit with mind body sickness, which presented the perfect opportunity for my brain to attempt to think it’s way out of suffering. I learned all of the theories and concepts related to mind body medicine and could speak the language well, just as I had done in other areas of my life, yet I remained sick. The illness was a true wake up call that this pursuit was simply not going to work, though I stubbornly pushed it as far as I could. As I grew more disillusioned with my conditioning to pursue western knowledge, I became more open to the world of energy medicine and intuition - a source of knowing beyond the brain that had the capacity to transform suffering in a way I had never experienced. With acceptance of the ways western medicine was not serving me, I practiced being present to and honoring the truth of my experience. I left my therapist at the time and stopped consuming the many books and podcasts by leaders in the more traditional mind body community. The limiting beliefs and fears I had been carrying for a lifetime came more clearly into focus, specifically the fear that I had to continue proving myself as intellectually worthy to those around me. Once I began to let some of those expectations fall away, a space opened up and a readiness emerged to practice listening to a different source within me. I was finally ready to acknowledge a more intuitive nature and connection to Spirit that served my highest intention for this life and was not distorted by the expectations or conditioning of others.

The path of returning home to your intuition takes courage - all that you can muster. Those around you that support the conditioned expectations of how you are supposed to work, relate, heal, or make decisions will likely be challenged, triggered, or simply not understand your path. Many of the clients I serve now arrive to me after learning all there is to learn from the overwhelming amount of information in the worlds of mind body healing, chronic pain, and trauma. Psychoeducation is important at first, but at a certain point you no longer need more information and you need to practice filtering out others’ opinions in order to create space for your own voice to emerge. With encouragement from intuitive guides, I began by asking a deeper part of myself questions. For those of you who are guided by the familiar voice in your head, you may easily be able to recognize when an answer comes from that brain-driven place versus when you focus your attention on a different source and a different voice. I started with very low-stakes choices like what to eat or drink throughout the day, though even these proved tricky! The fear-based patterns in my brain quickly took over and injected doubt and indecision into every question I asked or answer I received. As I went toward this truth, inevitably the conditioned blockages in my way showed up first. I was often left paralyzed with fear, but I persisted because I had enough conviction and healing experience at that point to know what was possible. I had crossed the 51% threshold of faith in the intuitive life I was being called to birth, and the conditioned, fear-based life I was being invited to let die.

Over time, I started to notice that I would get a visual representation of a “Yes” or “No” to the questions I was asking, but the truth is I had no idea what it meant and was surrendering completely to this experiment. In the beginning, I would go against the stronger answer I received just to see what would happen. One low-stakes example is when I asked about eating potatoes for dinner and got a “No.” I really did want potatoes and did not have much other food in the house so I ate them anyway. I ended up feeling bloated and uncomfortable that night. I practiced not fearing the answers as much as learning what what is in my body, mind, and spirit’s best interest. From there, I still had free will to choose to live my life as I please. To further this exploration, I would ask for an explanation of the answers in order to become clear on understanding the why. Otherwise, I would fall into a trap of impulsively following guidance I did not understand. I committed myself to listening to this source of information in every facet of my life and was soon checking in hundreds of times per day. It might sound crazy, but I knew that if I was really going to unlearn my previous conditioning, I needed to lean in. I moved back and forth between experiences of pure astonishment and magic to painful frustration and confusion. It felt like everything I knew about life hung in the balance. Despite the fear and doubt about what these answers meant, I was motivated by the bizarre fact that these answers proved to serve my highest good every time. I also learned quickly about the importance of what emotional state I was in and what place of intention I was coming from before checking in. If I knew prior to asking that I wanted one answer to be true over another, the process would inevitably be distorted and unclear. I had to learn to settle my mind and be open to receiving what was meant for me in order to discover what was in my best interest.

So what is “intuition?” Others may refer to this practice simply as a deeper knowing within the body that can bypass the thinking mind, specifically, the heart and gut due to the plethora of neuronal connections there. I value the natural intelligence of the body as well, but I want to be clear that I consider my intuition a connection to the spiritual world beyond mind body medicine. For me, it has become a combination of muscle testing, which is an intuitive process that allows you to detect what is healthiest for the body; energy medicine, which is the capacity as an energetic being to pick up on the energies within you and around you; and a connection to Spirit, the source energy or creator of all things, which may take the form of guides delivering messages for me on my path. You may not believe in some or all of these aspects, but this is how intuition manifests for me. With this understanding, I have to be intentional about who or what I am asking for information and to recognize that not all information I receive in this form is in my highest and best. Just like I would not ask all friends or family for certain relationship advice, I see that not all guides have the same source of information or intention. Just as you have to shed the layers of your childhood in order to grow into the truth of your adulthood, I invite you to shed the layers of your conditioned ways of knowing in order to grow into the truth of your intuition. I still do not always understand the messages I am getting or where they are coming from, which is why I continue to practice.

Here are a few crucial lessons I have learned on my journey in connecting to Spirit:

-In matters of the heart, Spirit always knows.

-In matters of finance or competition, check your intention. You are not meant to use this connection for greed or ego, so you must become clear that you are using this practice to serve your highest intention for yourself and others. I continue to grow in this area.

-Do not ask questions you are not ready to hear an answer to. Remember that life will continue to be a mystery and you may not be willing to learn certain truths yet.

-Similarly, if fear or anxiety shows up as you ask, you are likely not yet ready or able to listen clearly and you must not force an answer or decision until you can come from a grounded place of readiness.

The more I practice, the more clarity and conviction I gain. I continue to let go of the fears around being “right” or “wrong” and focus more on the intention to be of service. With practice, I clear the cobwebs of emotion and belief energy that were keeping me stuck, misguided, and mistrustful of myself and others. Recently, I discovered my capacity to receive answers about ancestral trauma and to specify where limiting beliefs come from in a person. I use this when guided to do so with myself and others. I do so only with permission and with guidance from Spirit. I am a bit rebellious by nature and have a human ego just like all of you, so this journey is also one of humility as I continue to learn what is in highest service of myself and others in this practice. Cultivating intuition is a practice of strengthening the deepest and truest part of yourself with integrity. I encourage you to begin checking in and asking yourself questions. Inevitably, you will first recognize the voice you have been listening to on repeat for many years and it may seem daunting, but you will also begin to understand how and why you make the decisions you make on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, and you may recognize the readiness for a change. Keep listening. Even if you do not associate intuition with all the energetic and spiritual connections that I do, you will likely resonate with the innate knowing of your body, which holds more accurate information about you and your environment than your brain does. As you practice, you may recognize sensations of fear and doubt emerge because your brain is not used to taking a backseat and will try to steer you back to its learned patterns of survival. Do not despair, the emotion energy is a sign you are beginning to expand beyond your limiting beliefs and outdated brain patterns. By checking in with a deeper source, you begin to align with the truth of your being. Start small and see where it goes. Your intuition is waiting for you.

You Are A Soul Being

What is the essence of who you are? If you have read my work, you know you are not just your thinking brain, not just your emotional body, and not just your belief system. All of these things certainly contribute to your mind body experience, but there is a deeper truth to who and what you are. At a subatomic level, you are an energetic being and that source energy makes up your mind, body, and even your consciousness itself. But beyond the energetic matter of your human body, I invite you to consider that you are an individual soul - a timeless, spaceless blueprint living out yet another human life with all its trials and tribulations, successes and failures, loves and losses. You are a soul being human, connected to the source energy of all things, and you are here to expand.

I know this information may be hard to take in. After all, the “you” that you know has an ego and a personality based on this lifetime of experiences. But there is more to “you” than just this ego and personality, and though you may not be able to see it or hear it yet, there is a soul part of you that holds the truth of who you are and your purpose on this planet. It reveals itself to you in numerous ways, often with pain as you make choices that do not align with your truth. Pain and suffering seem to be one of the best ways to communicate that your current personality structure, ego, and behaviors are not serving your highest soul-based intention. Some souls may in fact come into this life to suffer, maybe that is serving a purpose in order to expand and learn certain karmic lessons, but if you are here and reading these words, you likely have a readiness within you that is choosing to release this suffering in favor of a deeper truth. Remember that the intensity of pain your brain can create, whether emotional or physical, is just energy that can be harnessed with the right level of readiness and conviction. Some may not find that conviction within this lifetime, and maybe were not meant to; however, the opportunity remains for you to see the invitation - the medicine - in your life experiences to move beyond such debilitating states. After all, human life is for growth and expansion, and if you are ready to say “Yes,” you can begin to practice, to release, and to transform your human experience in a way that aligns with your soul’s design and highest purpose.

Consider that your soul knows the truth of who you are from day 0. It waits patiently for you to grow and develop in this human body and to have the necessary life experiences that invite you to grow into your power. Trauma can be horrific but it can also be the medicine your soul has asked for in order to ascend to the heights of your highest vision and contribute to the world in the way you were meant to. I know this viewpoint may be difficult to swallow and even trigger some who may read it, but regardless of your life experiences you are tasked with the job of unlearning all of the environmental influences imposed on you, not to mention the traumatized beliefs your human body came into this world carrying epigenetically from your ancestors. No one escapes childhood unscathed and no one escapes ancestry. Your human body is not a blank slate when it is created into this world and it carries all the ancestral trauma of your past. From one perspective, this just seems cruel and unfair, but from a deeper, soul-perspective, consider that you may be called into this life with all of your traumas for a reason. This lifetime may be the lifetime meant for you to cut the chords of your ancestral lineages that no longer serve you and open up a world of possibilities for you, for those you love, and for those you may choose to bring into this world. You can expect to be placed in the same relational situations over and over until you start to recognize your need to expand. Remember that you are not defined by your trauma or any labels you may have received, let alone your brain or body. Recognize that your human form with all its ails and intense feelings, negative thought patterns and maladaptive behaviors, cannot touch the powerful soul of who you are.

I know this idea may threaten some of your pre-existing beliefs or non-beliefs in this area. I am not here to convince you of my definition of who you are nor to shame or criticize what you experience as true for you. I am only here to share the experience that has emerged within me and, in fact, that has been with me all along. I refer to ‘soul’ as a deeper knowing within you that holds the truth of who you are and who you are meant to be, beneath the energetic layers of your human wiring and consciousness. Unlike the learned response patterns in the brain or the ancestral and conditioned beliefs in the mind, your soul will never lead you astray or betray you. It is with you always, waiting to be heard when you are ready to acknowledge it. In addition to the idea that you are connected to all things energetically, an idea you may be familiar with, your soul is unique to you and outlines a path that is yours alone like a fingerprint of your possible destiny. Of course, you also have free will and may choose to say “Yes” to the path put forth in front of you or not.

If I have lost you at this point, this post may not be for you and that is okay, simply ignore it and move on. However, if a small part of you is curious about the possibility of such origins, I invite you to reflect on how you make decisions for your life on a moment-by-moment basis. Who or what are you listening to for guidance? Like most of us, you are likely led by your thinking brain, which is often rooted in fear and conditioning. Experiment by asking yourself a simple question like, “Should I eat breakfast this morning?” and witness the process of how you determine your answer. Does your brain immediately produce a thought based on some expectation? Do you witness a physical sensation or emotion in your body? Consider that beyond these sources of knowing, which all serve a purpose in their own right, there may be another part of you that has a grander plan for your time in this life. Once I began to believe that there was indeed a deeper truth in me - a deeper knowing and design - I simply started asking to be guided by this intuition in most all situations. The details of this intuitive process are beyond the scope of this blog, but they are deeply interconnected to your truth as a soul being. From the source of your truth flows the possibility to make decisions that actually serve you. Imagine that! If you, like me, recognize that your life has largely been guided by fear and conditioning, consider that maybe there is more to who you are, who you can be, and what is meant for you.