THE JOURNEY
Case Study I 'Recognition' | Case Study II 'Nurturing the Self' | Case Study III 'Being Accepted'
Case Study IV 'Chronic Back Pain' | Case Study V 'Building a Relationship'
ANIMAL STORIES
Frankie | The Cat Without a Name | Jasper | Macbeth | Austin
The Journey
The journey addresses health issues as well as emotional issues. I have worked with clients on different types of cancer in different stages, digestive problems, unhealthy eating habits, inflammations, severe chronic backpain, and a simple bronchial virus. We have also explored and released the causes of many different anxieties, low self worth, various dysfunctional relationship patterns, marriage estrangement, fear of making mistakes, childhood abuse, and the roots of financial troubles. The possibilities to apply the journey to make changes in your life and to come closer to the essence of who you truly are, abundant.
I hope you will enjoy a glimpse into this amazing process with synopses of a few of my cases. I’ve not used the real names of these clients to protect their privacy.
Peter came to me not because of his cough and sore throat, which he had not been able to get rid of for several days, but with unresolved questions about the meaning of his work, and the difficulties of making changes that would result in him feeling more respected by the people who hired him.
The physical journey took us directly into his throat, where we found a memory of his stepfather, standing tall and distant above him at a time when he was about 7 years old. During the dialogue at the campfire the young Peter could at last tell his step dad how neglected he felt, sometimes as if he was invisible to him, and how much he longed to be understood, how much he yearned to feel that he had at least some interest in him. During the exchange he realized that his step dad had given what he was able to give, and had indeed tried to be a father to him, and in a short while he was ready to forgive him for his lack of understanding, interest and presence.
When the journey was finished the pain in Peter’s throat was already almost gone and only half an hour later it disappeared completely.
On the very next day he received four different e-mails from entirely unrelated people, all of them complimenting him on the high quality of his work.
Peter has since done a two more journeys and is currently in the process of fundamentally restructuring his work process.(top)
Selma had done some hypnosis work with me in the past,and had made some good progress, but she felt she had not yet reached the core of the issue, which in her mind she summed up as: there is something seriously wrong with me.
During the physical journey we went to a place in her body, that was not clearly identified and looked like a cave. It linked her to a very early memory of lying in her crib as a baby, utterly neglected by her father, who had ignored her crying and had neither changed her diapers, nor been feeding her. When her mother finally came home, she first argued with her husband instead of taking care of her baby daughter. There is an additional memory later in life when she was about 3 years old. Her parents were still making her eat food she didn’t like, or making her eat when she was not hungry: there was still no offering of the right food at the right time. And there was still the experience of feeling dirty, she wasn’t taught how to wash herself “nicely”.
After receiving her bouquet of inner resources and replaying the situation, the potential of a different life literally unfolded before her inner eyes. She could see the different child she would have been, the playfulness and ease that she could have felt, her grandmother’s presence who would have given her all the food that she loved, and her parent’s ability to actually respond differently toward her, she saw how pretty and graceful she would have looked. She even witnessed a long relationship with a man that had never manifested beyond a light friendship in her actual past.
During the dialogue at the campfire she was not only able to express her feelings, her hurt and her pain to her parents, but she also understood what her parents had experienced themselves. For the first time she could see inside her father how much he was hurt emotionally during his time as a soldier during the second world war, how much that experience had left him forever damaged. She also understood that the choices she ended up making, gave her the very life her mother had always dreamed of, but had never been able to realize. After this substantial exchange she was at last able to forgive both her parents for the way they had treated her.
Selma called me very excited a few days later: She couldn’t believe how different she was feeling! Food was different, eating choices very easy, and when a call for help came from a friend, she was able to respond to it for the first time in her life with first taking care of her own demands, before rushing off to where she was needed. She was thrilled.
(top)
Vera came with an issue seemingly out of her control. It was a dispute with her ex-husband Matthew over their daughter. The child was facing some issues in her well-being, and while her husband wanted to stick to a more traditional method of treatment, Vera, who was herself working in the field of alternative health care, was convinced she had the tools that would help her daughter. She found herself vehemently opposed by her husband. Because she also believed that her daughter’s problems had their roots in the emotional disruption and aftereffects of the divorce, and that any further argument and disagreement between herself and her husband would only negatively affect her daughters well-being, she had agreed to not use any of her knowledge. And while she intellectually understood that this was a good decision, it felt as if she had been dealt a deep wound.
In the emotional journey we took, she too was taken back to a time during the first months of her life. Alone in her crib in her room, she was crying for her mother until she finally fell asleep. She couldn’t understand why she was all of a sudden so cruelly abandoned, as her mother would routinely lavish so much attention on her and nourish in her the feeling that she was important, wanted and needed. In her little baby brain the only conclusion she could reach was that there must be something wrong with who she WAS. The fear wasn’t about anything she might have actually DONE wrong, because as an infant, she wasn’t doing anything yet, but rather just being.
During the campfire dialogue she expressed all of her deep pain to her mother. In the process she understood that her mother was in fact only doing what most people did at the time: teaching the baby to go to sleep on her own. Her mother had only wanted to do everything that was right and proper for her. Vera forgave her very easily.
Quite as importantly, she also realized that this very early experience had shaped the way she interacted with people throughout her entire life. It had sensitized her to read people and their needs from the very beginning, in order to be who they needed her to be. There was a second startling realization: because she had become so very good at responding to people, and so good at making people like her, it was only someone as impenetrable as her ex-husband who was still be able to show her this deep, old, inner wound. He had in fact provided her with an invaluable service.
Vera wrote to me a few days later.
“... So, now I understand that Matthew's fear, which has of course it's own story and roots, just gave me reason to be reminded of that pain, because what he was trying to stop me from doing has not so much to do with what I do or don't do, but has everything to do with my being, my purpose, my calling, my core. As if, by asking me not to work with Nellie, he was confirming my worst fear about myself: that there must indeed be something wrong with me at my core, so much so that I must be forced to stay away from helping my own child. What an astonishing discovery!
I have to tell you that the charge over this issue has almost completely evaporated. I do feel a new calm and peace inside myself...”
Like no other healing work I know, the emotional journey takes you through the many layers and faces of your inner limitation, accepting them, even inviting them, until you break through into the very part of you that is eternally connected, unconditionally loved, loving all that is, peaceful yet powerful, timeless, vibrant. Everybody experiences that source, that self that is source, in a different way. But nobody who visits this place through the journey comes out unchanged.
While the emotional journey addresses and releases any emotional patterns, relationship dysfunctions, traps, codependency, or addictions, it can also have an instantaneous effect on our physical bodies. The next case study gives a great example of that.(top)
Paul had had back pain for the past 20 years. It started when he was 18; at 21 he had his first disk hernia and another severe one at 22, while he was in the army. He described the pain as a beehive in his back that would never stop buzzing. He had been to chiropractors, acupuncturists, doctors and surgeons, who performed four surgeries on him during the last six years alone. None of these treatments ever made the pain go away; the only success he was able to achieve was a temporary and minor easing of it.
After his health insurance refused to cover yet another surgery, he was forced to look for other ways. A friend had recommended my work to him.
In his emotional journey he went through 17 different emotional layers until he came into his source experience.
His breakthrough into source, or transition, happened from a feeling of being trapped and boxed-in, which appeared as a dark, black space, a circular room. This was also the emotional layer in which his parents showed up, and this always indicates the layer we will do the campfire process in later.
As we explore further, he feels an excitement as he discovers a light area, a room with white bone walls, sensing this is a place he’s been looking for a long time. It turns out this place is right above the dark space, and he finds he can consciously go up there when he finds himself back in the darkness and the feeling of being trapped. But even though up there is a better place to be, the earlier feeling of excitement is now replaced by boredom and he realizes the real solution is outside either of those rooms. Outside is the unknown, the outer space. There is an opening in the light room that would allow him to leave, but he is afraid to go into this unknown; something is holding him back. At that point he realizes that what he needs to find in this journey is his connection with the unknown. After some communicating with an inner part of himself that shows up as a strong authoritarian voice holding him back, a part that really wants to keep him safe, we find another inner part: a guide, or a sense of guidance that will protect him out there and lead him back safely. Once that is discovered, he is ready to let himself drop into the unknown outer space.
After he enters that realm, he floats around for a fairly long time.
He finally describes the experience to me: ”I am one with the unknown, it is infinite, it is everything, I feel very light, I am floating, I am being part of the universe, there is a lightness here that eliminates the heaviness of being in the body”
During his campfire circle a 10-year-old Paul needs to speak to both his Mother and his Father. His Mother is finally hearing his true feelings about her criticizing him and even his friends all the time. Interestingly he learns that she really just wants to protect him, (just like the authority part inside of him wanted to protect him) and she almost can’t help herself. Exploring further, he discovers that deep down she is experiencing a fear herself, and that this fear comes from constantly being criticized both by her father, and also by her husband. He realizes that because she is hiding this fear from her consciousness, she is acting it out against him.
We empower Paul with some new inner resources: the courage to set his own boundaries, optimism, the sense of belonging, self love, a protective crystal layer against criticism and verbal attack, and the ability to look for love in the right places. After breathing in these new qualities he feels very different standing there looking at his parents. When at last everything is out in the open, when his feelings are fully expressed and he feels that both his parents really heard what he said; he is ready to wholeheartedly forgive them.
During the last segment of an emotional journey, which is called the ‘future integration’, we are able to check whether the work is complete, by projecting the experience of what just happened into the future.
In this case, when we noticed that Paul's issue never completely disappeared, not even at 10 years into the future, I knew there was something else that needed clearing during this session. When I invited another younger Paul, one who also needed to speak up today at the campfire, he found himself brought to a memory of his first girlfriend cheating on him when he was 16 years old.
Again, he could now, at last, say everything he needed to say and let her know his full feelings about what she had done. During the exchange he understands that even though he was ready for this love that felt very deep to him, she just wasn’t there yet. After completing their dialogue, he decides to cut an energy cord that still connected them, to completely let each other go. This feels very uplifting to both of them. After he thanks her for all the love she did give him, and she thanks him too, he is ready to forgive her. When we do the future integration now, the issue disappears completely by 6 months.
I talked to Paul three days later on the phone. He described the rest of the day driving home from our session as being in a fog and very tired. When he woke up the next day though, he was stunned to find no pain in his back; all that remained was a certain stiffness that felt like it too was unwinding. He also showed some signs of detoxing: symptoms like a flu coming on, and no appetite, also some sudden strong tingling in his hands during a walk he took, almost like an electrical discharge over a period of 5 to 7 minutes. His eyesight felt clearer and he felt his sense of smell coming back.
Three weeks later the pain still hasn’t returned. I haven't heard from Paul since.(top)
Joanne was visiting with friends in this area when she heard about my work. She wanted to address a particular emotional pattern in a growing relationship. When a relationship wasn’t progressing in a certain way, it always brought up a lot of anxiety, worry and anger in her. There was always the longing of wanting more, mixed with the confusion about not getting it and the feeling that it might be wrong to want it after all, because she really wasn’t worth it.
In her emotional journey we went through 9 layers in reaching source. Unlike in Paul’s case, her emotional layers didn’t have much of a story, or sense of space to them. She was dropping, in textbook fashion, from one pure emotion into the next. There also wasn’t a big obstacle to reaching source, but rather a soft transition. From a last negative state of anger she found herself dropping into a pure “alleluia”; from there transported to a feeling of awe that sat as a tiny bright star in her heart, until finally she entered into a vast “inspiration, a humility that is bigger than love. It is like a chalice, almost untouchable, almost too sacred, and it is everywhere: inside myself, outside myself, without boundaries.”
Her mother had shown up in a layer of nothingness, in a neutral feeling, but when we invite everyone to the campfire, the 9 year old Joanne has a lot of intense feelings to express to her: “I need to let you know how much I hate you! How unprepared you were to be a mother. I have never felt so confused or misunderstood, or hated , or blamed, mishandled, mistreated and unappreciated before. I feel I grew up in a nightmare!” Her Mother responds that she really could not do it any differently. Visiting her mother’s own inner world to understand more, Joanne can feel those spikes, those ‘shoulds’ that go toward the people around her, as much as against herself. Dropping beneath that layer, she discovers her mother’s fear; a fear about letting go, a holding on, so that ‘nothing will ever catch her’. Underneath that is simply pain, a pain that Joanne senses came from her own childhood long ago.
But in the mix of all of that, we are also able to find her ‘connected place’: the place inside herself where she feels good about herself and the world around her. That place is in her heart, and from there she feels nothing but pure love for Joanne. Recharging the self with that parental love is always a powerful experience, and we are able to use it to its full extend. After the final cutting of an energy cord, the exchange is complete, and Joanne is ready after all these years to truly forgive her mother.
The second part of the campfire dialogue was devoted to a group of three men. Joanne had needed their presence and participation: each one of them had abused her during her school years. It was the present day Joanne who needed to speak to them: “ I want it healed!” She declared. “I even want restitution! - - I don’t know if it can ever heal, but at least I want to manage it, I want it not to manage me any longer.” None of them have anything to respond to that. It is her mentor who speaks: “You need to open yourself to them. You can’t keep on doing this to yourself”. She realizes that since these experiences, she has deep down hated every man she has ever been with. Her mentor helps her look inside the feelings of this group of three men. What she finds there is in her words a ‘binding experience’; there is selfishness and ignorance: the inability to realize the devastating impact of their actions, but also clearly: guilt. We now invite these men to ‘clean up the mess’ they have caused. This is another powerful mini process we call the ’clean sweep’ where they are able to remove all the residue and waste products, all the results of their behavior out of Joanne’s body. When at the end we fill all the emptied out places in her body with light, the transformation has been successful and Joanne is able to forgive all of them.
During our final future integration Joanne starts to feel lighter immediately and after only one year her relationship issue has completely disappeared.
Speaking to her about one week after our session Joanne tells me that she notices she is letting go of needing the perfect relationship. It feels to her like much is shifting, and that she is able to give old wounds the chance to be acknowledged.
A month later she reports that her intentions seem to be more in the forefront of her mind. She realizes she may not always act on them but they are there. She seems to be more aware of them and what she wants to create in her life. And she feels clearer about some things. And:
“Do you remember in the journey where I met with my three abusers? Well, last week when I was back in my home state, I met with one of them [in person] and expressed my forgiveness to him, which was part of the message I received in the journey. It was an incredibly healing experience. A big space opened up for me after this interaction. One, where I decided it was time to start discussing moving back there and another where I met a man that I deeply connected with. “
That has been my last update from her.
Does everybody have such a tremendous healing or opening after one journey? Of course not. I often see the conditions we are addressing as a layer of ice surrounding an essence of our being. That part of our essence that is frozen up can not direct life force into our physical body nor into our emotional body. When we are working with the journey it is as if all of a sudden we are being given a hammer and chisel. Sometimes that ice is just a thin cover, and we break through to the part that has been sitting there dormant right away. Sometimes that ice is much thicker and we need to use this process more than once to uncover what has been buried. The important thing to remember is that we now have this tool. It is here for us. It is here to serve us. And while successful journeys as Paul’s and Joanne’s seem to indicate that this process works for some people better than for others, it is important to remember that it is not just about the outer success we do this work for, but for the profoundly healing discovery we are having in each single journey we take, the discovery that we have the right and the ability to be who we truly are, that our feelings are, and have always been valid and important, and that when our essence is at last truly seen, it will be seen with nothing but love.(top)
The case studies are excerpts from newsletters I have written. If you'd like to read other issues of past newsletters, please go to my blog: www.thejourneynewsletter.blogspot.com/
Frankie
When Frankie was adopted she had been very thin. After she had been with her new owners, a family with two little boys, for about a year and a half, she still hadn’t gained any weight. She was still just skin and bones. She acted scared, and skittish, would follow her owner through the house as if to make sure she wasn’t being left, and did not easily let other people touch her, especially on her rear. She was very protective of her home territory and barked a lot when she thought intruders were entering. She also was not able to control her bowl movements when she was left alone, unless she was put in a crate.
When I first worked with her it felt like her inside was sealed up. There was a tightness there that specially seemed to block her entire intestinal tract. She also showed me images of being kicked hard by a man in her flanks. It felt like this had happened frequently. I told her that she didn’t have to be connected to her old owner anymore and that I would now help her to release him completely from her body. We also anchored her new owners in her body, and she wanted to be connected to them in her heart. We did several layers of energy and color cleansing in her body especially in her intestines. We found a very young puppy soul part that still held vitality and happiness and brought her back. We communicated about barking, and she explained to me that barking was a dog’s way of claiming something. I asked her about pooping in the house and she explained to me that it was the inevitable result of letting go of tension when the door closes. This used to be her signal that she didn’t have to guard herself any longer, and it was still active. I reconfirmed to her that she didn‘t need to guard herself in her home any more and not ever again. All of this exchange happened over two visits within two weeks.
After that she started behaving differently. The bowl movements stopped, she seemed significantly more relaxed and less anxious, but she still was not gaining much weight.
I saw her again about 3 to 4 months later. When I looked at her body from the inside, it felt like an air mattress that had been carefully unfolded, straightened out and stuck together sections freed up - ready to be pumped up. I simply told her that it was now time to let those nutrients be pumped into her body. She showed me how happy she was, and told me that she was starting to grow roots, and indeed there they were, little thin roots coming out of her body all blue and white. This was funny, because the home she lives in is decorated almost entirely in white with blue accents. She told me that it took her some time to understand these colors, and with them the vibration they hold. She had been used to a color environment that was dominated by dark wood, dark brown, olive green, some orange and maybe a bit of beige. This home was so different, so happy and airy, and so easy, it had been difficult to fit in, because she didn’t know what her job was and how she was serving her new family. I told her that her job was to be happy, that that was all they wanted from her. She was starting to understand that. She was starting to feel how she was becoming a part of this world and how she was contributing to it. A few weeks later I heard that Frankie had gained much of her ideal weight back.(top)
The Cat Without A Name
The cat was still young, he had been adopted when he was about 4 months old. He had come from a junkyard. After living in his new home with one human and one other cat for over a year he was still extremely shy, and any fast movement or loud sudden noise would scare him. He never made a sound, neither purred nor even meowed.
Working on him I found three areas inside his body that felt almost as if they were frozen. I wondered if he had indeed been living through a winter on his own and his owner confirmed that she got him in the beginning of spring. It felt like he had been left to fend for himself and only barely survived, in a world around him that seemed very dangerous. It also felt as if this animal needed some precise affirmations. Together we tried out several different ones. The one that rang closest to the core for him was: “This is now your forever save home, in a forever alive world.” I was able to melt the frozen parts and also did some color and release work on him. The second affirmation that we created was: “The world is now again ready and willing to hear your voice.”
After about two days he became more assertive with the other cat, followed his owner everywhere she went in the house, and started sleeping closer to her body on the bed at night. Soon afterwards he came downstairs and meowed loudly for about 2 minutes, the first time she ever heard his voice.(top)
Jasper was rescued “ at gunpoint” from a trailer along route 22. He was just a puppy and had been put into a cardboard box out on the road to be run over by cars. His owner rescued his sister at the same time.
Four years later 4 more rescued dogs were living alongside him and his sister.
He had gotten sick quite rapidly. He had lost weight very quickly, seemed in constant pain, was completely lethargic, kept sneezing excessively, and had swollen lymph nodes around his neck. His vet first thought he was suffering from poison, possibly ingested by eating a dead animal. Then he was then tested for lymes, and put on antibiotics which didn’t improve his well-being at all, finally checked for leukemia. The leukemia test, as well as the lymes had come back negative but lymphoma was still a possibility when I came to work on him.
The first Reiki symbol was very much askew, slanted instead of vertically aligned. Looking inside his body, I saw thin black strings that had penetrated his entire body. I could pull them out of him. The exit point was at his rear end at the bottom of his spine. I also asked him to show me a soul part of the time he had last felt completely healthy and happy, in order to retrieve it back for him. We kept going further and further into the past, but apparently no time in his life had felt that complete. Instead I found myself looking at a different dog in a different place: a bloodhound, who was used professionally to follow the scent of escaped criminals. I understood that he was showing me himself in a previous lifetime. He had been very fulfilled then because he knew he had a purpose, he was in fact extremely good at his job and also extremely well trained in service and obedience, he had a very good nose, and he was known and respected for that. As I watched the scene unfold, he was leading his handler and other men through the forest in this search. Soon they came upon the ones they were chasing, escaped criminals. A gun battle ensued and he was hit by a bullet, which wounded him severely, but didn’t kill him. His owner made the assessment that it would not be possible to save him, and in order to shorten the suffering, he decided to shoot him.
This way of dying had been traumatic, and left a scar in Jasper’s emotional body. While he had been so very capable as a hound, he had not been very bright, and in his somewhat limited understanding of his role, he felt that when he was killed that he was being punished, and his only conclusion had been that he had not done a good enough job.
It was this deadly fear of not doing a good enough job that had started showing up for him now. The last dog who had arrived at his home had been homeless and roaming the countryside on his own for substantial amounts of time in his life. Even though this new dog adored Jasper, he had little by little assumed a new and more powerful role of leadership among the pack and Jasper’s part in the group had become quieter and less and less visible. With the fading of his position among the dogs, he had more and more given up the belief that he had earned his place in the group and a right to be there, almost as if he was convinced that as soon as his purpose for serving the group was gone, he would be eliminated.
I asked him what his position truly was inside the group, and he identified it as one of quiet but important peacemaking and balance. He could then also show me the place he held in the group in a spacial diagram. And I confirmed all of this to him and assured him that he was indeed still needed and valued and that his owner loved him very much.
From here on he improved steadily and was completely recovered after a few weeks.(top)
Macbeth had originally been a western horse, changed owners about 9 times in a few years and was finally rescued from a horse summer camp just in time to escape the slaughterhouse. He now lives with 46 other rescued horses at a farm down the road from our house. He is a good riding horse, but gets panicky when the rider wants to correct a response he is giving and often doesn’t like to be touched on his side. I was also told that he mostly looks kind of sad, as if he can’t enjoy life much any more.
When I worked with him, I found the presence of a previous owner still in his body. This man seems to have had a very bad temper, when he was riding out with Macbeth, he would make sudden, unexpected decisions, which he also didn’t communicate very well, and get very impatient and upset when the horse would not respond immediately. It feels like he used both very sharp spores and a whip, to get Macbeth to do what he wanted him to. He even would punish him afterwards, before letting him go out on the pasture, by hitting him with a long whip.
The fear from these experiences still sat in his heart. I saw it as some thick, black stuff. Finding the exit point to release this energy out of his body was not easy. The only way to let this man go, was through all four hoofs right into the ground. Macbeth needed to give him back to the earth and as he did the blackness was slowly dripping out of his heart, down through strings in his legs and out beneath the hoofs. I assured him that this place was his home now.
There was a belief that had been shaken, from these experiences as a result as well. What he needed to know was that he would always be treated with respect, that he had the right to be treated respectfully. When i assured him of that as well, he reconnected to a time in his life when he had been very young. I saw him as a young foal, full of energy and full of pride. He was strutting around with his little chest swelled with good feelings about himself. I think it was a soul part that joined him spontaneously. I ended the treatment by very softly stroking all along the sides and the back of his body and giving him the message that he would never be hurt again by a human.(top)
Austin, a brown horse, had been adopted several years ago. He lives with a family with three girls and about four other horses in a beautiful stable and comfortable meadow right below their house. They believe just before they got him he was “pitted” in the stable he had been boarded: put into a sand hole too steep and deep to get out of in order to brake his will and make him more malleable. When he first came to their home he became very ill, as if shedding his former life. Afterwards he had been doing very well, and become a very good riding horse doing well in tournaments and shows, but about a year ago he started urinating without control. The family gave him many different holistic and alternative treatments, but the bladder dysfunction never quite disappeared.
I started with the Reiki symbols and the golden sun, inside his body I could see a mass of black sticky, gooey stuff, it felt like that’s what he was trying to get rid of by urinating. Asking him to show me more about where it came from, I saw him as a wild horse, a very strong stallion, the leader of a herd. There was some doubt inside of him that he could protect his mares and their foals, maybe he had been attacked once already when he had been younger - at this moment I saw him fighting with a big mountain lion, and get badly wounded, maybe even killed. Whether or not he died, what remained from this experience was the very fear of not being strong enough or rather the fear of showing his weakness. He was indeed known as a very strong and extremely capable horse, he had enjoyed the tournaments to show and prove his ability over and over again, but the doubt had not gone away. When I told him that now was the time to let go of that I could also sense his pain in the sad pit, which replayed his feeling of being trapped and not making it out no matter how desperately he tried. All of these old limiting feeling we released out of his body.
Austin went through a short time of not having the urinating problem, and then through a time of relapse a few weeks later. I went back to check on him, to reconfirm what we had already achieved and also worked with him long distance. When I talked to his owners after a few more weeks later, he had no more problems at all.(top)
