Step into your Bigness*

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us” – Marianne Williamson

In a recent session, a client who has chronic physical pain saw herself unzipping the small, narrow suit she has been trying to fit into since her childhood, and stepping into a big, unlimited self. Her big self (which can also be seen as her essence, or whole self) was free from old patterns of either needing to collapse to be safe, or fight back to try to assert her autonomy. Her body—and in particular her joints and nerves—had so much more space to breathe when it wasn’t trying to fit into others’ ideas of who she needed to be.

Although the degree can vary widely, all of us have been wounded. As a result, we developed beliefs and coping strategies to help us understand and manage those wounds. When our circumstances change, but our beliefs and strategies do not, the latter end up perpetuating the very thing they were designed to fight against. Crises (physical or emotional, internal or external) and feelings of stuckness are usually an indicator that a part of us is ready to grow and evolve, while another (usually younger) part of us is clinging to the old strategies for dear life, terrified of what the consequences might be if we let go. The way forward is for the young self to feel heard, held and acknowledged, while simultaneously realizing that the situation has changed, and that it’s safe to let go.

Here are five tips for accessing your bigness and stepping into your power.

1. Notice your small self

Start tracking what it feels like when you are triggered, reactive, or shut down. How does your body feel? What is your posture like? What are you believing about yourself and the world? Is there a pattern to what triggers you—such as feeling misunderstood, or like you don’t matter? I invite you to keep a journal for a week or more to take note of this.

2. Explore the origins

When we are triggered, we are usually filtering and reacting to the world through wounded child eyes, even though the arguments we use to justify our reactions may tap into our adult faculties of reasoning. When you are feeling reactive or collapsed, ask yourself “what age is associated with this response?”

If nothing comes up, I invite you think about your childhood. If there was an age when you started learning X (whatever belief you identified in #1), what age/ages might it be? It might also be a timeframe more than one age. What were the situations or the people you were learning that from?

3. Send compassion to your small self

Imagine that your adult self is with that young part of you. What would have been helpful to hear back then? For example, “It’s not your fault.” “I’m proud of you.” “You’re not alone anymore, I’m here.” “You did exactly what you needed to do.”

If it feels appropriate, imagine that you are projecting images of your current life to your young self/selves. Let them know that their situation isn’t going to be like that forever, that things are going to change, and that you have resources they didn’t have.

4. Step into your big self

I invite you to close your eyes, and feel back into that feeling of a small self. Imagine that in front of you is your big, wise, essential self. If that’s hard to call up, you can also bring in a powerful energy/being you feel resonance with. For example a tree, a tiger, a mountain, a spiritual teacher or religious figure. Visualize yourself unzipping your small self, and stepping out of it. You can do that as slowly as you need to, over several days or week if necessary. When you are ready, feel yourself merging with your big and wise self and/or with the powerful being you called in. Notice what that feels like in your body. What does the world feel and look like when you look at it through your wise self eyes? Once you feel somewhat comfortable with this big version of you, you may want to bring up a person or a situation that has felt problematic to you. Does looking at it through these eyes shift your perception?

In a recent session, a client of mine merged with mountain energy. When she looked at people who had always been intimidating to her young self through mountain eyes, they seemed much smaller. She could see how they were trapped in their own pain.

5. Creative depiction

I invite you to find a creative way to further anchor this version of you into your body and subconscious. When I say creative, I’m referring to whatever way you have of accessing a deeper part of yourself. You could do this as a guided meditation, or feel yourself stepping into your bigger self as you are hiking, walking, biking, running, swimming, paragliding… You can draw/paint it, write a poem on the theme, or dance the transition from small self to big self. You could do a body sculpture or mime it. A combination is also possible. I wrote a poem entitled “Ode to my small self,” drew a picture of myself shedding the old patterns and fully stepping into my essential self, and have been visualizing it in some of my daily meditation practices. Just in case the universe didn’t get it the first time.

I wish you luck on your journey, and feel free to leave a comment on how that went for you.

The following is a guided meditation for stepping into your wise self.

 

© 2020 Jenny Brav

 

 

 

 

 

Step into your Bigness*2023-06-20T11:50:38+00:00

Cultivating Greater Self-Love and Acceptance *

Can you be your own worst critic? Is loving and accepting yourself contingent on changing all the things you don’t like about yourself?

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” – C.G. Jung

In Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT, or tapping), the standard setup sentence is a variation on “even though I have [_____ fill in the issue you are working on], I deeply and completely love and accept myself.” For many of us, however, the idea of loving ourselves as we are seems like science fiction.  This may due to a history of receiving praise or rewards for good behavior or achievement, and of getting negative feedback/punishment for misbehavior or under-achieving. We may also have learned that loving ourselves was tantamount to arrogance.

In the healing world and spiritual realms, however, it has become accepted wisdom that whatever we resist persists, and that the gateway to change is actually being able to accept ourselves as we are. Easier said than done, for many of us.

The following are 8 tips for cultivating greater self-love and acceptance.

Note: For some people, the word love itself is a loaded term. Clients sometimes say: “I don’t even know what the word love means!” If that is the case for you, you can replace the word love with acceptance, empathy, or any other word that resonates with you.

# 1 Notice your self-judgments

For the duration of this article, I invite you to take off the hat of self-critic, and put on your curious explorer hat. Imagine that you are an anthropologist newly arrived in the land of You, who is wanting to understand what makes you tick. With that perspective in mind, I invite you to start noticing what gets in your way of accepting yourself. Are there specific themes or patterns to your self-judgment? For example, does your self-critic get activated about your appearance, your performance, your articulateness, an addictive habit, your productivity, your ability to socialize with others? Do you ruminate about the past, or compare yourself to others?  

I recommend keeping a daily judgment journal for a week. Either as you go or at the end of the day, jot down the thoughts and self-criticisms you noticed coming up during the day, or any way you felt disappointed in yourself. If self-judgment is not the main obstacle to loving yourself (but rather an addictive behavior, being too other-focused, and so on), track that instead.

#2 Notice the impact on your body and emotions

Now that you have a sense of what your judgment patterns are, start noticing what happens in your body when you judge yourself. Do certain areas of your body contract? Are those habitual areas of holding for you? What emotions arise when you are hard on yourself? Do you feel shame, frustration, helplessness, anger, overwhelm, defensiveness and so on? Do you want to check out? After a few days of tracking your judgments, start adding the physical and emotional impact of your self-criticism in your judgment journal.

#3 Acknowledge your patterns for trying to help you

Ask yourself what your judgment is trying to achieve for you? Is it wanting to motivate you to do better? Get you to change a negative pattern of behavior? Do better than those around you? Prevent you from experiencing failure by keeping you from trying?

Send gratitude to your judgment and self-critic for what they are trying to achieve for you. And then ask yourself how well it’s been working for you. Does judging yourself actually motivate you to work harder, or does it just lead to feeling bad about yourself and wanting to give up? And is there another way to meet the same need that might be more effective?

#4 Trace the pattern to its roots

After a week of keeping your journal, start feeling into the beliefs about yourself that might be underlying your judgments. For example: “I always mess things up,” “no matter how hard I try it’s never enough,” “it’s OK for others but not for me.” Start noticing if the belief feels familiar. Ask yourself: “if there was an age when I first started believing this, what age (or time frame) might that be?” And see if any number or memory pops up. If not, do not worry about it, you can just stay with the belief itself. Otherwise, start feeling into what was happening at the time, or who you might have gotten that belief from. Whose voice or judgments (either about you or themselves, or both) might you have internalized?

#5 Send yourself compassion and forgiveness

Now that you have identified where some of your patterns come from, see if you are able to give yourself compassion for the messages you might have received about yourself. If you aren’t able to have compassion for your current self, try sending empathy to your younger self. At the same time, begin to open to the possibility of forgiving yourself for having absorbed these messages. If you have regret over the past, things you did or didn’t do, see if you can forgive yourself for that, too. Realizing that when you withhold love from yourself, you are likely to perpetuate the mistakes you are beating yourself for. Remember that accepting yourself doesn’t mean giving up or resigning to an unwanted fate. It just means that you are no longer fighting with what is. In fact, it is often only when we are truly able to be love ourselves unconditionally that old stuck patterns begin to shift, because it was conditionally of love that made us develop the coping strategies in the first place.

#6 Start welcoming the parts that have been rejected

As you begin to give yourself compassion, begin to feel into the possibility of accepting even the parts of you that seem unacceptable. Most of us make self-acceptance conditional on living up to our expectations of ourselves, which means that we split off from parts of ourselves that feel unworthy of love. However, those neglected or hidden parts often manifest as our shadow or self-sabotage patterns, trying to get our attention. The more we are able to embrace all of ourselves, including the parts we are less than proud off, the more likely we are to feel whole and integrated.

Feel into the parts of yourself you have been judging. It may be your fear, your vulnerability, your anger… Or it may be the part of you that shuts down and goes into overwhelm, or the part that wants to check out and distract. And see if you can start welcoming that part in. If it helps, perhaps put a hand on your body where it felt tight earlier. And give that part reassurance. For example “it’s ok. I’m here. Even though I’ve been angry at you, I’m open to accepting you are here.” Or whatever feels genuine to you.

#7 Honor your strengths

Our minds are conditioned to focus on the negative. In order to begin shifting your perspective, I invite you to start making a list of your strengths. Transform your judgment journal into a gratitude and celebration journal. Every day, write down something about yourself that you want to honor, and/or that you are grateful for.

#8 Connect to your future self

If accepting and loving yourself as you are still feels elusive (and even if it doesn’t), I invite you to call in a future self who is at peace with themselves. You may get an image of them, or just a felt sense. Imagine that you are approaching this version of you, and letting them know that you are struggling with accepting yourself as you are. Ask for any message or advice they may have for you to get to where they already are. You may also ask for their support in helping you heal any remaining limiting belief or outdated coping strategy that may be getting in your way. If it feels accessible, imagine you are merging with this version of you. How does it feel in your body to accept yourself? How are you living your life? Feel this in every cell of your body. Feel yourself embodying this version of yourself every day for 21 days, and by the end of that time you are likely to feel more at peace with yourself. 

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit” – E.E. Cummings

© Jenny Brav

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cultivating Greater Self-Love and Acceptance *2024-04-02T12:24:31+00:00

Making Space for Forgiveness *

Do you feel weighed down by the past? Can it be difficult to forgive yourself or others?

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it” – Mark Twain


In this era of flinging blame and pointing fingers, forgiveness often feels like a scarce commodity. While there is general consensus in the mental health world that forgiving and moving on is beneficial for our well-being, in practice the topic can be a thorny one.  Especially for those who have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect, forgiveness can seem like being asked to excuse what happened and to give the perpetrators a free pass. Or it may feel like one more instance of being asked to take the higher ground. In the case of something that we did, forgiveness may feel like letting ourselves off the hook.

Anger is an appropriate and important response to trauma or any kind of boundary violation, and being able to access and accept anger is often critical to healing. Conversely, anger at ourselves may be a first step towards owning and changing old patterns that no longer serve us. In the long-term, however, hanging onto resentment often keeps us energetically tied to the event or people we are angry at, and therefore unable to heal or move forward. When directed at ourselves, it may actually perpetuate the very behavior we are wanting to transform.

Whether you are working on forgiving either yourself or others, the following are six tips to help you on your journey:

#1 Accepting your anger

If we leap to forgiveness before connecting to and accepting our anger, we will merely be bypassing the hurt that is needing attention. The first step is therefore to validate the wisdom of the parts that are hanging onto resentment towards yourself and/or others.

To do that, feel into any part of you that is unwilling to forgive. Ask yourself what that part is trying to achieve for you. For example, it wants to protect you, punish someone (or yourself) for what happened, ensure it never happens again, motivate you to change, and so on. Send gratitude to that part for its intention for you. And ask yourself if holding onto the resentment has been effective in achieving the goal it has for you. If not, see if that part might be open to trying a different way.

#2 Accepting what is

Wherever there is a reluctance to forgive, there is usually resistance to accepting reality. Unfortunately, we cannot change the past, and resistance only further entrenches us in what happened since it prevents us from moving on.

Feel into ways that you may be resisting things that cannot be changed. Again, send gratitude to the resistance for trying to protect you. And then ask yourself how it might feel to simply allow things to be as they are, and move forward from there. For more tips on accepting things as they are, see my blog post on the topic.   

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.” – Martin Luther King

#3 Realizing it’s not personal

If you are working on forgiving someone, it can be freeing to realize that whatever happened wasn’t personal (which doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge personal impact to you). Of course when something tragic happens or your boundaries are violated, it feels very personal. However, it’s not your fault. Other people’s actions are their responsibility. Freeing ourselves from responsibility for others’ behaviors actually creates more space for giving ourselves compassion. And eventually may give us compassion for the other’s pain, if that is appropriate.

If it feels safe and will not be too triggering, I invite you to call up the image of someone who you are having a hard time forgiving. You may want to set your energetic boundaries first as described in the guided meditation at the end of this blog post or do anything else that will help you feel grounded and safe. Give yourself plenty of space to feel and allow for any emotions that come up. And imagine that you are giving back – preferably without anger — anything you might be unintentionally holding of theirs. Their judgment, pain, anger, insecurity, jealousy, power struggles… You can say out loud “this is no longer mine to hold.”

#4 Forgiving yourself

Although it seems that forgiving ourselves means we are likely to repeat the same mistake, when we are angry at ourselves we are actually more likely to repeat the behavior, because there is an internal war going on. Taking full responsibility for our actions usually requires the ability to fully face and accept our own imperfections.  

Whether your anger is towards others or yourself, at least some of it is usually directed at yourself – be it consciously or unconsciously. Notice if there is a way you are blaming yourself.  Feel the impact that the self-blame is having in your body and heart. See if you can send yourself compassion for the pain that you have, instead. Ask yourself what you would need to be able to forgive yourself.

#5 Letting go of inherited pain

Often, when we have been hurt or hurt others, there are old ancestral wounds on both sides needing healing. While that doesn’t exonerate us from responsibility for our own actions, realizing that there are often generations of unresolved baggage wanting to be healed through us can sometimes help put things into perspective. The following is one resource for healing ancestral wounds: http://ancestralmedicine.org/ that has been very helpful to me in my path.

#6 Choosing freedom

Forgiveness only works if it is not an expectation, but a choice. And a choice you make not to be a better person, but because you want to free yourself of the burden of hanging on. Ask yourself, if today were the first day of the rest of yourself, would you want to be weighed down by resentment towards yourself or others? Close your eyes, and imagine in as much detail as you might be feeling and living your life if you chose forgiveness. 

 

Forgiveness

Is the lightness
In my step
As I shed
The old shackles
Tying me to my pain
And to your transgressions.

I release myself
From your shadow
And my own.

I unravel
The rope
Of suffering
Snaking back
Through centuries
Of inherited wounds.

I see past
My stories
To the mirror image
Of my sorrows
Reflected
In your eyes.

© Jenny Brav

 

 

 

Making Space for Forgiveness *2023-02-07T20:56:44+00:00

Healing Childhood and Family Wounds*

Do you feel like your childhood wounds are still interfering with your life? Does being with and/or thinking about your family trigger strong reactions in you?

“When we’re all living in the space of the inner child, loving, honoring, respecting, and embracing its desires, we are at peace.” Kim Ha Campbell

Most of our core wounds come from our childhood experiences. We might have gotten the message that we were too much, not enough, that parts of us weren’t acceptable and had to be hidden. We may have experienced neglect, abuse or other forms of trauma. The beliefs and coping strategies we developed as a result often stay with us long after our circumstances have changed.

Whether we are still in touch with our family or not (and whether our family members/caretakers are alive or not), the holiday season and certain anniversaries can be triggers for all that old stuff to come to the surface. Similarly, the old patterns often rear their heads when we are on the cusp of big transitions, and one part of us (usually the current, adult self) is ready to change, while another part (usually a very young self) is terrified and thinks change means certain death.

The following are five tips for beginning to heal childhood and family wounds:

1. Identify the wounds

Most of the time, we are not even aware of the old programing that is still running our thoughts and our nervous systems. Something happens, and whatever we are feeling and thinking feels like the truth: we are being dismissed, or victimized. Others really don’t care and can’t be trusted. However, these are just beliefs, the lens through which we are interpreting events. The first step is therefore to identify what the wounding and the beliefs are.

Is there a feeling or thought that is often recurring for you? For example, do you have a story that you are not welcome, or that nobody sees you? Perhaps think of a recent situation that triggered a strong reaction, or a difficult interaction with a family member. What were you believing about yourself or the other in that moment? Examples include: “I don’t matter,” “I’m invisible,” “others’ needs matter more than mine,” “I can either honor myself or please others, but not both,” “showing vulnerability is weak, and others will take advantage of me…” Write down your belief.

2. Feel into the emotions

To go more deeply into the wound, I invite you to notice what emotions come up for you when you are believing the words you wrote down in #1. These might include sadness, frustration, helplessness, rage, fear, confusion and so on.

When you access these emotions, check in with your body and notice the physical sensations there. Does any area get tight, achy or jittery? Does any part of your body (or perhaps even the whole body) feel distant or numb? There is no need to try to fix or change it, we are simply exploring and getting curious about what is there, what is wanting our attention.

3. Trace the belief and feelings back in time

Closing your eyes, imagine that you are following the belief, emotions, and physical sensations back in time, to a time, situation or place when you first or most significantly felt something similar. You might get a memory, or just a felt sense of something. You might also access a time period more than a specific incident. What was happening at the time? How was your young self feeling? What was he/she learning about him/herself and the world? What was s/he deciding to do to cope with the situation?

4. Bring love and healing to your young self

The wounding happened because your young self was needing something he/she didn’t get. Common unmet needs include safety, connection, feeling seen/understood, feeling that our voice matters and so on. The best way to begin healing the wounds and upgrading our coping strategies is to start offering that missing experience to the young self. What were they needing that they didn’t get?

Once you have a felt sense of your young self, imagine that your current self is entering the space with your young self. Let them know you are there to support them. Say something to them that would have been really helpful for them to hear at the time. “It’s not your fault.” “I’m here, I’ve got you.” “You are perfect exactly as you are.” “Their inability to be there for you in the way you need reflects on them, it has nothing to do with your needs.” Or if what your younger self is needing is physical presence more than words, you can feel yourself holding that part of you, giving him/her love.

 5. Start imprinting new possibilities

Give your younger self an energetic hug. Let them know you will keep on checking in on them. Now imagine that you are fast forwarding in time to a time when you have released that belief about yourself and/or the world. You realized that it was just a belief you developed when you were very young as the best way you could make sense of your experiences at the time. It’s not the actual truth.

What new belief would you like to replace the old one with? How are you feeling and living your life with this new programming? Feel and imagine it in as much detail as possible. And if it doesn’t feel accessible yet, keep doing the first four suggestions until it does. When you are ready, visualize yourself dropping this image of you operating on this new belief into your crown, and letting it permeate all the neural pathways that have been conditioned to the old belief. Feel it spreading to all the cells, muscles and tissues in your body. Placing your hands on your heart, imagine you are filling your heart with this new belief. When your heart feels full, feel it radiating back out into the universe.

The following is a guided meditation for healing your younger self based on the above tips:

 

 

© 2019 Jenny Brav

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Healing Childhood and Family Wounds*2023-07-11T11:41:30+00:00

Befriending Your Inner Critic *

Do you have a voice inside your head that can sometimes be your worst enemy? Chiding you, berating you, shaming you? Or perhaps rehashing the same thing over and over? Do you wish you could love yourself more, but that seems impossible until you’ve changed certain things about yourself?

My Journey

My inner critic’s favorite channel is the “not enough” channel. I’m not doing enough, I don’t know enough, I’m not good enough. There’s not enough [money, support, time…]. When I’m tuned into the “not enough” channel, my whole nervous system gets jangled up. My mind then starts spinning even more, ostensibly to try to get things back on track, though usually it just derails me further.

After years of resisting my inner critic and trying to get her to shut up, I have found that the best way to calm that voice is to acknowledge that part of me. “Hi inner critic” I say to her, “I hear you. You have a lot to say today. OK, I’m paying attention.” It’s counter-intuitive, I know. Most of us learned that when there’s a behavior we don’t like, we need to do whatever we can to change or resist it.

Where the Inner Critic Comes From

The thing is, in order to transform our inner programming, it is important to get to the root of it. To understand each part. First, there is our inner critic. The tactics our inner critic uses often mimic those used by our parents or other authority figures to get us to behave. This might have involved punishing, yelling, ignoring, reasoning, arguing, shaming, or a mixture of tactics. Behind the often misguided tactics, however, there is generally something that part is trying to achieve for us.

The Inner Child Part

Then, there is the other part – the behavior or trait our inner critic is trying to change. I call it the inner child part, because it is often linked to coping strategies we developed early on to minimize or avoid difficult emotions or situations. Underneath the behavior is generally some early wounding. The message we received as children that certain parts of us were not OK or not acceptable. That we needed to trade-off parts of ourselves to get love.

Changing the Pattern

When we engage in the behavior or trait we want to change, it is often an indicator that our inner child part is needing reassurance. When we chastise ourselves, or make ourselves wrong, we perpetuate the very wounding that led to the behavior in the first place. Which then only reinforces our inner child’s resistance, and leads to the sense that we have a battle raging inside us. And may replicate the tug-of-war relationship we had with our parents or other authority figures growing up.

What I have found to be the most effective way to break the whole cycle is to be able to give understanding and acceptance to both the inner critic and the inner child parts.  In the following 8-minute guided meditation, I walk you through that process. And you might find that your inner critic has become your greatest ally!

 

 

Guided Meditation for Befriending Your Inner Critic

© Jenny Brav

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Befriending Your Inner Critic *2022-05-03T11:20:39+00:00

Healing Trust Wounds *

Can it be hard to let down your guard? Do you hate feeling out of control? Can it feel like life is an uphill battle?

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight.”—C. JoyBell C.

The ability to trust is critical to our capacity for manifesting ease and flow in our lives. During a difficult period in my life, each time I ask my higher knowing what I was meant to be learning, I heard: “to trust and surrender.” While it is a work in progress, being able to open to and accept myself, life, and others exactly as we are has loosened the vice-grip of doubt and judgment, and opened up space for curiosity and play.

Without trust it is difficult to take risks, to be resilient during challenging times, to face the unknown. Our natural state (free from trauma and other experiences that disconnect us from our essence) is trusting and open. And yet so many of us learn at some point that being too trusting is naïve and can lead to pain at best, and dire consequences at worst. We decide that to be safe we need to be hyper-vigilant and/or in control. These wounds and resulting coping strategies can impact our ability to trust ourselves, others, and/or the universe.

The following are possible indicators of the different types of trust wounds (the list is not comprehensive):

1. Difficulty trusting others

  • It is hard to put your guard down around others
  • There are few people you trust enough to be completely vulnerable with
  • You have self or other-identified “commitment issues”
  • You try to control others’ behavior in subtle or overt ways
  • You’d rather drive than have someone else drive
  • You are constantly scanning others to know if you are safe with them

2. Difficulty trusting yourself

  • You have low self-esteem
  • You have a hard time making decisions
  • You judge the “rightness” of your decisions based on the outcome rather than the process
  • You struggle with not feeling enough
  • You are envious of others and feel like it’s inherently easier for them than for you
  • You often ruminate over the past and regret past actions/decision

3. Difficulty trusting the universe

  • You have patterns of generalized anxiety and hyper-vigilance
  • You spend a lot of time trying to manage and predict the future
  • You have a belief that if you are too happy something bad is going to happen
  • You need to control your environment to feel safe

Often we have a combination of a few indicators from two or all of these categories. The following are six tips for beginning to make space for trust and surrender.

A) Identify your wound(s)

Look at the above list, and highlight the ones that you feel apply to you. If there are multiple ones, pick 3 that feel like the biggest obstacles to happiness and/or ease in your life.

B) List possible limiting beliefs

Write down what you think your limiting beliefs around trust might be (it might be more obvious for some of the indicators than others). These might include some version of: “I’m not enough,” “trusting others is gullible and naïve,” “I can never get it right,” “Those I trust always betray me,” “The only person I can trust is myself…”

C) Notice your body and emotions

As you look at your list of limiting beliefs, notice what it feels like in your body. Does any area of your body get tense or jittery? Or do you leave your body and/or does it go numb? What emotions come up for you? For example, do the beliefs bring up anger, fear, helplessness, grief…? You might want to write these down as well.

D) Trace the beliefs and emotions back in time

I invite you to close your eyes. If it is part of your practice, you might want to set up ceremonial and/or meditative space. This might involve lighting a candle, putting on relaxing music, going out in nature, or anything that helps you drop in more deeply into yourself.

From here, imagine you are following the physical sensation, belief, and emotions back in time, to a time when you first or most significantly experienced something similar. If the trust wound was in response to a specific event you might access a memory, or if it was linked to repetitive experiences you might find yourself at a certain time period in your life, or see a series of memories.

E) Bring healing to your young self

Whether you have a specific memory or not, imagine that your current self is entering the space with the young you who was learning that it wasn’t safe to trust him/herself, others, or the world. If there are others in this image, be sure to freeze them so your younger self feels safe. Let him/her know you are there as an ally. Say anything that might have been helpful to hear at the time. Doe example: “It’s not your fault.” “Even though it feels personal, this has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them and their wounds/coping strategies. They were like this long before you were born.” “I love you. You are not alone.” “You are perfect exactly as you are.”

Tell your younger self that it was very smart of them to develop the beliefs and coping strategies that they did so they could make sense of what was happening to them.

F)  Update the beliefs

Once it seems that your younger self is feeling seen, heard and safe, tell them that if/when they decide they want to let go of the belief, they can let you know and you can help them release them. It is critical that the decision to release the limiting belief come from the young self and not your current self, otherwise you are just one more adult who’s needing something for them rather than just being there for them. If it feels appropriate, you can perhaps show your young self that what they wanted more than anything else at the time was to trust and be open, but because that wasn’t possible they developed the belief they did. Back then, it served a purpose, but at this point, the only thing between you and freedom is the belief.

When/if they are ready (and if not, keep doing step E as long as is necessary), imagine you are releasing the belief together. You might write it down on a piece of paper, and then tear it up.

Next, write down what new belief (or intention) you want to replace the old one with. For example “Everything is always as it needs to be.” “I can trust that I have everything I need.” “I am learning to trust my inner knowing.” “I am healing my mistrust of others and the universe.” “I am enough exactly as I am.” You might see yourself dropping this new belief into the top of your head and feeling it spreading through the neural pathways that were impacted by the old belief.

Envision yourself stepping into your life with this new belief about yourself and the world. Imagine this in as much detail as possible, in different areas of your life such as work, relationships, creative endeavors, health and so on. Keep doing step F (especially dropping the new belief into your mind and body) every day until it feels more and more true.

Trust
Is allowing
Our heart to rule
Our actions.

Trust is letting go
Of the fantasy
Of how things
Should be;
It’s the deep knowing
That things are exactly
As they’re meant to be.

There is no other way.

Trust
Is the jellyfish dance
Of opening and contracting,
Of testing the boundaries
Being self and other,
Of honoring
Our true yes and no.

 

© 2019 Jenny Brav

 

 

Healing Trust Wounds *2022-02-03T14:40:07+00:00

Inviting in Fun and Play

Does life often feel heavy and overwhelming? Do you wish for more flow and ease?

“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold” – Joseph Chilton Pearce

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” – George Bernard Shaw

Whether there was space for fun and play when we were children or not, most of us learned that by the time we are adults, it’s time for us to get serious. That wanting to integrate play into our lives is immature and irresponsible. However, a number of studies and books have explored the importance of play for adults, such as Dr. Stuart Brown’s book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. In fact, play can help improve our memory, our ability to connect to others, and can mitigate the effects of depression and anxiety.

The following are 6 tips for inviting in more fun and play into your life, and also understanding the difference between play and behavior that may be self-sabotaging/addictive.

1) Identify beliefs about life/work/being an adult

On a scale from 1-10 (10 being the highest), how would you rate the amount of fun and play you integrate into your life? And remember that rating isn’t about good/bad or right/wrong, it’s just information for us to be able to better assess and understand the kind of life we want to be creating for ourselves.

If the number is low, ask yourself what messages you received as a child about life and work. Were the adults in your life having fun and enjoying themselves? And if they were, was it in a way that was contagious and joyful for those around them, or in a way that could be neglectful and harmful to you and/or others they loved? You might want to write down some of these beliefs and experiences.

2) Clear childhood wounding around play/creativity

There are many ways we may have been wounded around play and creativity. Some of us had a lot of space to play and be creative as children, but find it difficult to integrate that into our adult lives (or to know how to balance play and work). Others of us have wounding around play and creativity, either because of the messages we received that we weren’t good enough/it wasn’t a serious activity to engage in, or because the conditions we were growing up in didn’t provide space for it. Play can feel like something only the privileged have access to. Bullying experienced at school and other forms of trauma can also be associated with recess and “play time.”

I invite you to feel back into that younger self. If it is accessible, send him/her/them empathy for those messages and experiences you identified in #1 and #2. Let them know that you are sorry they had to go through that. That you are proud of them for developing the coping strategies they did in order to survive. Let them know that you are doing everything you can to allow them to have a different experience now. That it’s possible life can be both fun and intentional.

3) Understand the difference between play and addictive behavior

Some of us learned (or had modeled for us) ways of dealing with overwhelm and the seriousness of life by checking out, or indulging in behavior that might on the surface of it seem fun, but is actually getting in the way of feeling whole and self-actualized.

Although there are exceptions to the following depending on the beliefs we have, in general, one of the differences between play and addictive behavior is how present we are during, and how much it feels like a choice. When we engage in addictive and/or self-sabotaging behavior, it often feels like we don’t have any control over our behavior, and some part of us feels split/ashamed about our behavior. There may also be guilt and shame about play and fun that is nourishing to our soul too if we learned it was irresponsible to have fun, for example. But that kind of guilt usually has more of a nagging quality.

The point is not that one is good or bad. We want to thank the pattern/behavior we have developed for its intention – for example, to prevent us from feeling uncomfortable emotions or to honor our right to have fun. And start bringing in the possibility that there are other ways to meet those needs.

4) Write a joy list

I invite you to make a joy list to help identify what makes you happy. For example, singing, reading, dancing, building things, making art, going to the gym, star gazing, camping, gardening, riding a motorbike, cooking, listening to music, and so on.  If there are things you loved doing as a child which you have stopped doing, you may consider adding those as well. For many of us, life starts feeling a little sterile when we are always doing the same things. Your joy list could include doing something new each week. If you spend a lot of time in your head for work, then doing something that includes the body might be a great way to hit the reset button.

5) Create a joy box/drawer

Looking at your joy list, put a star next to the top 5 that feel both doable and fun (or more if you wish). Write each one on a separate sheet of paper, and put it in a small box. Each week (or month), you can pick a different one, and commit to doing it in that time frame. Alternately, in her book “Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy,” Sarah Ban Breathnach suggests creating a “comfort box” of things you can pull out on days where life looks bleak. It can include games, crayons, puzzles, stuffed animals, magazines, jokes and so on.

6) Create more time in your schedule

Now that you have your list, make space in your schedule. You may block off specific time for fun in your calendar. Or you might schedule “fun dates” with yourself, with friends or with a partner. And as with most things, it’s not so much the “what” as the “how” that’s important. You might consider the possibility that there is no way of getting this wrong.

 

Play is my soul coming home to roost.
It’s my nervous system rediscovering its right to feel safe,
And my essence reclaiming its innocence.
As I let go of shoulds and expectations
I find my way back into my body.
Knotted muscles unwind,
Loosening their iron grip on my bones.
I am home

© 2018 Jenny Brav

Inviting in Fun and Play2019-06-25T11:20:59+00:00
Radiant Wholeness Healing, 3099 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705 | (510) 221-6426 | Copyright 2016 Jenny Brav | All Rights Reserved
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