Self Guided Journey:
Chapter 6 — Healing
This month I have been a nomad.
July has been an adventure. I have travelled through Portugal, Spain, Germany, Israel and the UK. I’ve followed ancient pilgrimage trails — leading a group along 240km of the sacred El Camino — and explored cultural trauma with a master practitioner in Jerusalem.
After so many weeks away, I can feel that I have shifted into Travellers’ Mind and Body. I’m curious about what is happening, rather than what I want to happen. I watch what I resist and what I am drawn to. I feel more fluid.
My cultural trauma training caused me to travel in a different way, this time. I was aware of the land’s ability to hold the trauma of generations — storing the stories of people past and present. And, as I walked day after day of El Camino, I began to notice how much I embed in my body until I have time to process it. As I walked — as I embodied Travellers’ Mind — I began to reconnect, soften. Heal another layer.
Individual pain and cultural trauma are inextricably linked — the hurt I hold within me contributes to something much, much larger.
Likewise, healing expands outwards.
When we begin to heal our relationships with our own self, with others, with our work, with our environment — we are healing the world. It takes just one person to shift a hurtful pattern by deciding on a new, healthy response. It takes just one person to bring healing into a room.
We are not individual objects, we are not separate. We are components of the whole. And so, anything I do to heal myself helps to heal the collective.
This month, in service to wholeness, let’s explore healing.
Inquiry — Your own healing journey
Pause and notice — what is feeling ready for healing and integrating within you? It might be an ancestral pattern, it might be a bodily symptom you are struggling to heal from, it could be an unhelpful behaviour, or perhaps an emotion you are battling — like anger or anxiety.
What would it feel like to turn inward and towards one of these areas? Ask if they are ready to reveal patterns or secrets. Be respectful if they are not. Ask your heart: What is ready? Then, question:
· How old is this pattern/symptom/trauma?
· Is it ancestral — has it been visible within your family for generations?
· Is there an age to it? Did something happen when you were younger which triggered it?
· Can you journal about it?
· If you let it come to the surface, what feelings arise?
· What are your blocks or barriers to healing?
Action — Share your hurt
When we share our hurt, our healing accelerates. So find someone you can talk to about this — making sure to choose someone who can offer you time, space, and compassion. Then, explore really bringing your pain and truth to that person. See what happens.
Practice — Inclusion
Now it’s time to practice inclusion. We love to reject parts of ourselves we think are unacceptable. But what would it feel like to not reject this piece? Can you start to offer it love and healing, rather than rejection? Can you love this part of you, too?
