A major reason that the mind and energy body collude to keep painful childhood experiences stuck in the body is that as children we are not emotionally or developmentally equipped to handle traumatic, shameful and painful experiences. Thus a part of the young child dissociates from the conscious mind and stays frozen at the trauma, which is actually an adaptive response. Often a protective part or defense mechanism forms to keep the memory of the experience buried as at the time of the trauma as the child is not equipped to process the experience. When we reach adulthood and have a formed ego structure as well as accessibility to a variety of external supports, we are capable of handling the old trauma. However, the protective part, the child part and the body do not understand that they are safe as they are still at the scene of the trauma and to these parts the experience is alive and happening.
In the earlier years of my career as a psychotherapist when I primarily practiced talk therapy with trauma survivors, I found it challenging to convince the traumatized parts of my clients that they were safe and that the trauma was over. But once I integrated shamanic work into my practice, the healing process was greatly facilitated. If we view the traumatized parts as energy frequencies that are stored within our energy field then it is possible to understand how these parts can be healed energetically. By working in partnership with spirit guides, it is possible to find the traumatized parts or energy vibrations and their protectors, do a healing for them and then bring these healed parts back into the core system of the person. It is also possible to do this for a child at the time of the trauma, and this is common practice in cultures that still use shamanism as part of their healing system. In following blogs, I will share vivid examples of how this works so as to make it easier to philosophically embrace the ancient practice of soul retrieval and come to see how it can speed and greaten the healing process in western cultures.
