As in every blog I write I share from my own experiences. I am not a god, a prophet or a guru. I am a spiritual being living a human experience like all who read this article. I have found a way to manage my past traumas that work for me and this is the path I offer guidance in. I also acknowledge other teachings that I have learnt that have added to my recipe of wellness and recovery.

So lets begin by sharing with you what I believe happens when trauma occurs.

Trauma: a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.

You have heard of what they call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is the termed used after someone has come through a traumatic situation and is left deeply disturbed and rattled from it. They feel they have no way of escape as it feels as if the trauma lives within them. This happens to all who have experienced extreme trauma. PTSD triggers will send the person right back into the event and because it’s all too much to bear then and now, dissociation (fragmentation) often occurs.

This may appear like the lights are on but nobody is home or freaking at the triggered replay so heads into battle mode to protect themselves against a past threat that feels like its come back to claim them. You may see this protective instinct as your ally until it becomes overly reactive due to more stress factors and then the inner protector is way out of balance and starts acting out to the detriment of the person experiencing the trauma.

The key word here is FRAGMENTATION.

For someone who is experiencing trauma and feels overtaken by it the energy there is a natural tendency for a part of the emotional body to split off and fragment. You will find this time and time again in references to do with childhood trauma. The victim may split off so much as to lose the memory however the memory still stays within the emotional, the astral, the mental and the etheric body, so if there is a trigger from the outside like a trigger memory threat the alarm is set off and more fragmenting will occur. The body goes into automatic pilot to save itself. People who experience trauma have often told me that their spirit was not in the body at all when the trauma occurred. I can relate to that experience fully. It had left the body already in horror. This leaves the Auric body like a broken spider web with holes and that’s why recovery can seem so hard as the Auric web is damaged and not strong enough to cope with the continual triggers.

The memories of the trauma do not leave. Talk therapy does little to assist. As it’s deeper than what the logical mind can cope with. You will notice when things get too close to the bone in talk therapy that dissociation will occur, they have left the room, not deliberately, just because that’s the only way they have learnt to cope with overwhelming pain.

Returned soldiers know this feeling well. They are programmed and conditioned to handle things but how can a heart be conditioned to handle trauma? The brain can be brainwashed to a certain extent but the heart, the spirit, the soul will still carry the torment. There is no war without trauma. Whether that is the war going on outside of you or the wars going on inside of you.

Steps To Healing Trauma:

Inner Child Sanctuary.

It begins with the child needing to feel safe.

One cannot heal from the core without feeling safe.

I cannot share enough of the benefits of inner child work as that is the core of the being that is traumatized. It needs to feel what safe is, it needs to feel what trust is. This begins with you. So how do you build a sense of safety or trust when you really don’t feel you had much of it growing up or what you had was ripped from you?

Start by creating your inner sanctuary space (Utube guide on my website). Make sure you have spent some time in there making it cosy and peaceful. A place you would like to invite your inner child to come to meet with you. If you have suffered great terror and you want to create a boundary around your sanctuary do it with nature e.g. trees, mountains, stones etc. If you have a known totem that makes you feel safe, call upon them to join you in the sanctuary to stay with your child. If you have yet to work with totems, look into that first and make sure you call upon one to work with feeling ‘safe’.

Then when you have been to your sanctuary several times and can rest in there and feel comforted, invite your inner child to come forward. Your child may be feeling very emotional, shy perhaps, grumpy, it might look fearful or full of darkness or simply run into your arms. Whatever it feels, its ok. It has a right to feel any feelings. Simply validate how it feels. Be the wise and loving one that brings it comfort. If you are a wounded parent and that makes you feel resistant as you have enough kids that need your energy, remember that when you connect with ‘your’ child and you nurture your own child, you automatically get nurtured, not drained. Spend time listening and asking your inner child what is it they need to feel safe in their sanctuary, follow your gut feelings on this. When you come out of that journey, write what your child told you and take steps towards it.

C.G. Jung often talked about the benefits of healing trauma from working with the inner child. As that is the place where the first impressions are made in regards to safety, trust, love and connection.

In time after you have done more work in the upcoming techniques you may like to call upon a guide for the balanced feminine and the balanced masculine to be with your child in the sanctuary. This will help to mend the broken masculine and feminine aspects within you. This will also help attract healthier partners and bring change to your self esteem and self worth. When your masculine within is worth trusting, you will gain more trust within yourself. When your feminine within is more nurturing your life will develop a more nurturing attitude towards yourself.

Soul Retrieval

Reclaiming the loss fragments and energies that were stolen or given away.

There are two practices that are highly recommended in this regard. To be honest my life started again after my first Soul Retrievall session. It’s probably the most profound inner spirit work I have ever come across. I can look back at events in my life that broke my heart and my spirit and I have no charge on the memory. I can talk about it without any trauma. There are a few variations on soul retrieval like the one Sandra Ingerman pioneered into the western mainstream (she is a huge gift to the planet) and then there is the more active participatory version that I learnt which is a combination of NLP and contemporary shamanism. Both done by well-grounded experienced practitioners are powerful. It’s much like returning the parts of you that have been lost due to overwhelming pain and grief. This work is best done with a good practitioner. Only attempt it yourself if you have others strong journey skills. Regardless as a highly practiced journeyer myself I would prefer someone to contain me while I explore where my fragments have gone. Fragments will appear differently depending on the individual. They may appear as a child, a symbol, even a pair of run down shoes and however they show themselves they always need to be cleaned of the debris’ or beliefs they have had before returning. Fragments can also be lost in others, by giving power away or feeling as if someone has stolen a part of you eg: your innocence. This is why its important to have a good guide with you to hunt down these things and bring them back. In meeting with the spirit of the abusers (as is done within the medicine I learnt) it’s often helpful to see their inner child and negotiate with them if they have something of yours. Children are much easier to talk to within the astral world. And if fear is overwhelming even when feeling safe then totems can be called upon to sniff out, find, and bring back your lost fragment. No-one should be pushed to do anything when they feel unsafe. Most of my clients have been willing by the time the core safety has been built and totems are always ready to help if need be at any time.

Recapitulation

Recapitulation is something that you can do to build strength before you find the right guide in the practice of Soul Retrieval work. Recapitulation is like Soul Retrievals little cousin. Don’t be fooled though as it can be very powerful. Energy is often lost when trauma occurs and also when one gets tangled in other people’s energy or is very susceptible to influences from outside of self.

E.g.: Your walking down the street and over the other side of the road there is a man and a woman screaming at each other, there is also a child in the car that you can see crying. You keep walking but you can’t shake off the feeling, You absorbed the upset and now you can’t get ride of it. You’re not helping the couple or the child so why are you still carrying it? What is the purpose? Who is it serving? It’s much like you walked past and put on all of their heavy coats of distress and now you feel horrible. It’s shamanic law that energy can only be used by the person that originally owns it. It is no use otherwise. Recapitulation can be done on a big scale or a small scale. I personally use it daily depending on who and what I encounter. Its wonderful at Xmas time with challenging family dynamics where I often go off the bathroom or similar and just do some recapitulation breathing. It can make such a difference and leads to responding rather than reacting. It takes the edge off the urge to fight or flight and the more one practices it the more natural it becomes. You can move to a deeper level with it also.

Here is a basic version from my workbook.

• Remember the situation with the person in your mind make it as real as you possibly can, with feeling, images and thoughts and keeping this in focus….
• Start with you head turned fully to the left, turn you head as slowly as you can all the way to the right, breathing IN, breathing your energy back from the situation with the person.
• Then turn you head slowly, back to the left, breathing OUT all the way, breathing out any energy that is not yours.
• Continue these head turns, breathing as slowly as you can, IN from left to right and breathing OUT just as slowly, turning you head from right to the left.
• Notice your breath, don’t force it, just notice if you are breathing more on the IN breath or more on the OUT breath. Are you taking more energy in or giving more energy back? It is not important which of the breaths is the stronger, it is just energy and there is no right or wrong about the situation.
• Keep turning you head and breathing this way until your breath is mild and gentle and equal in both directions. Then turn you head from LEFT to RIGHT to LEFT with no breath at all, this acknowledges completion of RECAPITULATION with the person. Cut cords with the person and all of the feelings and thought from that time.
• If you had contact with many people in your day this individual recapitulation may only take a couple of head turns with people who were not so important.

Past Life Journey work or Regression.

Some traumas are locked further in the past than this life you are now living. Past life journey work or a well-trained therapist can make a huge difference in unlocking the fear based bonding program you may have with certain people. You may love someone who bashes you and as many times as you try to leave, there is something deeper that makes you stay, something even deeper than what you know of your own inner victim. Many people in abusive relationships have stories that go way back beyond this earthly life. They have contracts with each other that are even stronger than the blood ties that bind families; it’s a soul bond. I have heard people including myself say at times in challenging relationships that ‘I’m not leaving till I work this one out, cause I don’t want to do it again’. I finally came to the realization that the lesson wasn’t in enduring it; the lesson was about saying I no longer want to do this to myself. At that moment I was freed to make a choice not from the elastic band of dependence, but the knowing that I was freeing both our souls from the bondage that was eroding our love. Past life work gave me great insight to the wider story, the wider perspective and what my own learning was about. If you want to have a little experiment, a little taste of what I mean in a very standard form look into Brian L. Weiss. He has a simple regression Utube that is easy to follow. See where it leads you. In past life journeywork that I have trained in, it looks in deeper to other things as well as the regression. We seek to clear vows, promises and contracts made. This can do much to bring the breath of life into the constraints and fears that is trauma. This is not intended to end relationships in any way its to remove the unknown aspects and offer the choice of free will beyond bondage

These four paths are my touchstones to overcoming trauma. They have helped me greatly with my own wounds and they have been incredibly enriching and somewhat enjoyable due to the adventurous spiritual nature of working with dense and wounded feelings. My inner child really likes working this way to the point of when I have sought support and the therapist is not really that way inclined I have told them what best works for me and they have been very receptive. I close my eyes and I can go anywhere as long as I am well contained: Safe.

I hope this has helped to give you a taste of what you can look into to heal core wounds. I have seen the strength that builds in my clients as they do this work. The resilience grows and grows. It’s a honor to be a guide in this way of working with spiritual beings who reside in human bodies.

All of these practices  and more in depth versions are available in my workbook.

The Guide To Contemporary Shamanism In Your Own Home. Through my website

Am just renewing stock and should be re stocked by early September.

Blessings

Odette