In modern times holistic healing is frequently spoken about. Even the WHO refers to a holistic approach in its definition of health: health is the state of perfect physical, mental, and social well-being and not the mere absence of disease or infirmity. (www.pflegewiki.de/wiki/World_Health_Organization)
Beautiful words, right? However, I have learned from spirituality that feelings and not words are the dynamic and creative energies. So, do you have a feeling about this statement?
Could it be that in your imagination, health is actually “only” present as a condition of the absence of disease?
In my practice I have sadly found that we are familiar with difficult situations, with grief, anger, anxiety, etc., but we often do not know anymore how joy, abundance, happiness, etc., feel like! We can endure hatred, anger, resentment, and manipulation. Many have developed a strategy of enduring. They move from moment to moment of what is tolerable. But when I talk to them about happiness, joy, or abundance, and encourage them to extract this feeling from formerly experienced moments of happiness, they either have no access to the beautiful feelings, or it turns out that they have no idea at all how this would feel like. Others confuse imagination and real feelings. They believe they would feel it, but do not (anymore).
Now, I would like to give you a feeling that concerns the topic of health.
Imagine yourself before your inner eye, healthy, powerful, and full of joy. You stand with both of your feet on the ground, the head raised, your walk is upright. You look through yourself. At the heart, linked to the physical heart, a bright sun shines, warm, loving, and alive. Sometimes shades of different colors pass through the rays of the sun or it sparkles golden, just as you like it. This sun is powerful, authentic, joyous, inspiring. He animates all the cells in your transparent body, so that they also radiate, bathe, and dance in a bright light. But not only that, the core is so strong in its power that it fills the aura with its rays. It is a picture full of light, pure joy, and vitality. You vigorously express all that is in you. Your life is intense, fulfilled, exciting, and full of love for life. And when you go to bed in the evening, you do that with the intention: I am recovering now, so that I can again get back to strength and curiosity for the new day.
In addition, you are fed in two ways. Once from the deepest depths of the universe and once from the heart of mother earth. As the Chinese already said, we are strained between heaven and earth. Both streams flow abundantly, luminous, loving. From heaven the fatherly principle descends, trusting, supportive, encouraging and when we fall, we are given space to get up again and try again until we make it.
And, from mother earth, from her fiery heart, a nourishing, loving, caring energy flows, which says: You are alright like you are. It nourishes on all levels, psychologically, physically, mentally, and spiritually. We just feel completely satisfied!
Now, we let the sun in the heart be flooded of these two energies.
We change this image until we can say deeply in our hearts: “Wow, I am beautiful!”
Everything we do in our lives, we do with this focus. We take the space we are, we do what we can really stand for. We express all that is in us, loving, joyful, and powerful.
A beautiful picture, isn’t it? Almost too beautiful to be true! But I maintain that that is precisely the true nature of man! The work in practice confirms it. The more I guide my clients towards this picture, go with them in search of what slumbers hidden in them willing to be expressed, the better they feel and it lasts! Everything is already within ourselves. We just have to allow it!
But what has happened, what has brought us out of our wake? What prompted us to hide, to obstruct ourselves, to shut ourselves up to refuse to deal with this world at all?
Let’s compare how our lives would look like if we were to live on the image above? We are centered, connected to ourselves, and self-conscious. We express what is in us no matter what others think of it, nothing and nobody can push us away from our path. Not even from our love. We use our imagination, charge it with feelings and emotions in order to bring new and interesting situations into our lives. If we fail, if we fall, we get up again, knock our clothes, recover from the fright, think how it could come about while changing our attitude towards life, clean our feelings and smooth our emotions. We do not get the idea of blaming others. We have learned that our thinking (fantasy), the resulting emotions and emotions create our lives, and that we are solely responsible for them. Confidence is felt that no matter what we do, it comes out well. We are in abundance and create abundance. We are healthy and powerful. In this centering, we also take care of others, let them go their way, support them in difficult situations, inspire and are in a constructive exchange. We follow our hearts and become more than we could ever have imagined.
But how does our everyday life look in reality? Our thoughts are somewhere, our heart anyway, so we’re in a completely different state than being centered. Only those who do not feel themselves rush through the day and in the evening, when coming out of the function-mode, are exhausted and empty. To avoid this emptiness, one switches on the TV!
picture 1
Functional mode means we are lived, we are not aware of ourselves, so we have no self-consciousness. This necessarily results in the fact that we do not know what is in us, who we are and we cannot express ourselves. If we cannot express ourselves, we lose a great deal of life energy. We therefore hope that the partner, friends, or even the children will fill this deficit. These are, over time, not enthusiastic to serve as a tap. In most cases, constellations are found in which the stronger give energy to the weaker one until both are tired. Whoever dares to take his own life back into his hands, which indicates that the tap is closed, is cursed as an egoist, feelings of guilt are projected on him, or another strange treatment is following.
In this atmosphere of lovelessness, blame, sacrifice and mutual injuries, we had to close our hearts to survive. Closing our hearts means we have switched off the feelings. In order to have some life intensity, we live in emotions. Emotions come from the belly, feelings from the heart. Emotions are reactions to events and experiences, they are often valves so we do not boil over. Feelings, however, are more moods in us, they go deeply and they nourish us. Joy, grief, harmony, anger (not rage), intensity, psychological pain, compassion, to name a few.
But some people even turn off their emotions, they cannot get inspired by anything and do not even get angry when treated badly. That means banning the disconnected feelings into our subconscious where they perform their misery in a shadowy existence. By rejecting the painful feelings, the pleasing ones are also split off. Either we feel or we do not feel.
Our creative potential, however, is only actively connected to feelings and emotions. Emotions can very well be manipulated. Treat a person badly and you will be facing his emotions. Let the public enjoy games and emotions will arise strongly.
If the feelings are split off, more or less a sense of victimhood will be the result. Focusing on lacks and powerlessness dominate. With the prey, one proceeds as one likes. It is physically and mentally exploited, and it obeys to what is said. It cannot resist because it feels helpless. It is paralyzed by guilt and shame. Visions and fantasies of freedom, love, and a fulfilled life are relegated to the narrow limits of reason and our prison is perfect. And we do not even know that we’re sitting in it! Bye, bye beautiful power of creating!
Moreover, we are isolated in this prison, a meaningful exchange, connecting with other people is not possible anymore.
Whoever runs around freely is left out, marginalized, made small, and devalued. And our intuition, the voice of the heart, will be an annoying side tone getting in the way again and again.
It takes a lot of courage to get out of prison and to enter the area of freedom. Freedom is not simply being allowed to do what you want. Freedom is to create your own world on your own responsibility. Freedom is to be alone, to go in one’s own proper way, even against all conventions, against all security, trusting one’s own confidence. Only then we will be able to truly and genuinely connect to other people.
In therapy, I have found that I have to talk and work with many people about their way of life, their ideas and the life before starting the “actual” therapy.
I am trained in Somatic Experiencing ® after Peter Levine. It is a method that combines mind, feelings, inner images, interpretations, and bodily sentiments. It has emerged as a dream therapy, copied from nature and made accessible to humans. What I like about the method is the instrument of bringing down the spiritual into the emotional world and into the body. In other words, the anchoring of the spiritual in matter. If I am allowed to speak in terms of alchemy then thoughts are air. With a breeze they’re gone. The wind is able to set in motion feelings and emotions. They are like water, they come and flow away again; if we don’t let them flow through us, they are thrown up and blocking further progress. Emotions in turn trigger feelings in the body. The body is the earth. It is able to hold the feelings and thoughts, so we can act. The fourth element is fire. The fire of life, the fire that makes our heart burn when we are excited. Lastly, what holds everything together is our essence, what we truly are, unadulterated, angular and edged, but adorable. It is the quintessence, our ego.
picture 2
So, I had found out that I could not change anything in some of my clients. On the contrary, what normally stabilized the system of man (body, soul, spirit) this “grounding” resulted in even greater instability. What was the reason? I was looking for an answer. It was found quickly. Life was felt being heavy, exhausting or senseless, and the being had retired from life. I call this retreat “intermediate world” or “somewhere in nowhere” because it is neither here “down” in the now, nor there “up” in death. Often the soul cannot simply be convinced to come down to life. Too great were the pain, the disappointment and the injury of the experienced, too hard the struggle for survival.
However, what is most convincing is the chance that the soul can influence life and do what deep inside it really wants. And that this process can be quite easy and joyful. The person must be ready to go his own and presently appropriate path. It has to take that decision and do everything in its power until it has achieved the goal stated. Then we start digging until we meet the spilled desires, abilities and preferences that make the heart burn. And sometimes it is hard work freeing the imagination, to strip all learned reason and to stand bravely to what one had hidden deeply in oneself. Many people who come to me have no average wishes and longings. They want to move something in the world, make something, create something unique, not to be perceived as a great one, but to generate more joy, more awareness, more quality of life for themselves and others.
It is a great hindrance that they do not dare to think of such great realizations or feel the challenge theses visions come along with are too much for them. And the fire is off again. No problem, Then we start again from the beginning.
It is sad when people no longer believe that life can take a turn. When they resign and believe that their destiny just is this suffering. I also experienced that.
And then, when the soul is convinced that hope is worthwhile, when joy again gains the traction, then therapy begins to help. Then it often does not matter which method is used. The individual quickly realizes what suits and what does not.
This is what gives me so much pleasure in my work. The client has gotten up, goes forward again, this time with the voice of the heart, the joy and his own creativity as the way marker!
picture 3
Literature
Wesenspsychologie by Harald Wessbecher (german) www.haraldwessbecher.de
Somatic Experiencing ® according to Peter Levine
www.traumahealing.ch/index.php?id=0214&l=de
Images by the author
Picture 1: Hotel in Perth Australia
Picture 2: Sea waves East coast NSW Australia
Picture 3: Heart of moss on red stone
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