Wait, what?
Through the past 5 years of doing my own deep inner work, I now understand fully that when I give any experience of suffering and pain over to my heart for healing, I am able to hold my shadow in love.
It is also my belief (through years of my own personal experience, and my time with hundreds of client sessions) that If you don’t hand it off to your heart, you keep replaying your story and repeated patterns over and over, again and again. The wounded self loves to create familiar, even if it’s sh*t familiar, it stays there, and brings in more patterns and repeated relationships that affirm your source of pain.
Maybe your friend at school stole your boyfriend, or girlfriend, so in later life, you end up working with someone who steals the limelight? Maybe you witnessed aggression or emotionally absent parents at home, so later in life, you struggle to allow anyone to get really close.
Maybe you grew up with very little, and money, and the language used around money was a negative one, so now you struggle to create sustainable wealth for yourself.
You keep digging up what you thought you had laid to rest, and when you do that you are reenforcing old patterns and stories.
We do not heal the past by dwelling there, we heal the past by living in the present. By deciding and committing to BE-ing the change that we want to see in our lives. You want to change so much, you want to feel more connected, more confident and more free, and you believe that this is separate from you. That there is something outside of you that can make this happen? This is a lie you tell yourself every day.
You may make some changes to your life, you may even work with a coach, or you begin to practice meditation. You listen to some podcasts, read some books, and hey presto, you feel a shift. Then, you repeat the same patterns you always repeat. The relationship, the job, the unworthiness, the fear, the shame. And then you are back where you started.
I believe this is because you are not handing your shadow off to your heart. You are not willing to not only see, but fully accept and love all of your dark. Not just fully feel your pain, shame, anger, sadness, but really alchemist it.
To hand it over to your heart, and allow love to wrap its arms around all of your wounds.
If we don’t, and we choose to keep perceiving people as repeats of our past, then we will keep on repeating our past.
But how do you let go? How do you offer up everything to your heart for healing?
Caution before reading more - Whilst I believe everyone is capable of doing this exercise, there may be deeper inner child work, and or emotions that involve other people and depending on your level of trauma, or wounds, I would recommend working with a trauma specialist or reputable Coach who can guide you through this work on a deeper and accelerated level.
With that said, this simple exercise is incredibly effective and can be applied to so many of our wounds, and repeated cycles.
Identify the wound on a conscious level.
Identify the impact of the wound. How has this impacted your life in all areas? Journalling around this will allow you to go deeper.
Create space in your day, to be still. Stillness allows space where you to drop out of your head, and in to your body.
Where in your body do you intuitively feel drawn to? Go there, and connect. Use your breath to help support you in this space?
Allow any and all emotions to come forward. Again, use the power of your breath to support this exercise.
Apply the medium of forgiving, and loving kindness to yourself. Feel what needs to be felt, holding yourself in love, compassion and kindness.
Don’t live in the past. Depending on the level of emotions, often, there is no need to repeat this exercise over and over again. When you intentionally hand over all of your wounds to love, trust that this is being taken care of. Then, send it all off to your beautiful heart for healing.
Remember, that most of the time, underneath all of your shame, fears, cycles, pain, repeated patterns and anger is your inner child screaming ‘Love me’
If you have any questions around this exercise or anything else in this blog, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on hello@jill-ritchie.com with the title ‘HEALING”
In my Empowered Woman - Authentic Success programme I guide you through every step of this exercise, as well as many other deeper healing lessons that allow you to finally release all of your own patterns that are holding you back from BE-ing the truest and most authentic version of you.
This is 14 weeks, working closely with me, being coached in a safe and sacred space, that will allow you to fully live in truth, integrity and authenticity.
We begin our journey mid February.
If you would like to find out if this could be the best coaching programme for you, then please email me at hello@jill-ritchie.comwith the title EMPOWERED.
Have a beautiful day my friends,
Jill x