Growing up again

I was broken, dragged down the path against my destiny, without a single memory that truly felt like it belonged to my being. Continuously going through the motions until I had forgotten what I was moving toward, I covered the feelings I refused to let myself express under thick smoke that only further clouded the clarity of my future. I didn’t want to admit I had no plan. The journey I started to collect the parts of myself I had lost along the way began before I even realized what was happening. For a while, I was picking up pieces to then only leave them in different places I didn’t want to go back to. Putting myself back together without the internal compass to even know who that was; it was beautifully exhausting. The determination to feel complete, while simultaneously overindulging in actions I didn’t want to claim, led to my downward spiral to rock bottom. The dying silver maple I had grown into was finally chopped down and it was time to heal my roots so I could bloom into the sturdy oak that would last the storm.

I won’t take you through the detrimental events that followed, I am here to share how I dug myself out of that hole and finally freed my being. A healing journey is specific to every individual because we all have different events in our lives that we have held onto. We have all endured tragedies that stuck with us, changed us in ways we don’t want to acknowledge because those feelings are seemingly too overwhelming. I had the tendency to avoid how I truly felt and simply adjusted my actions to try and make myself feel comfortable. I was running in circles attempting to escape the feelings that I was choosing to hold onto. The goal is to recognize these emotions, accept how those events made you feel, and move forward with your life in the direction of your dreams.

The first steps to achieve this involve connecting to your body. Mind and body connection is essential for awareness of what your body is experiencing. It sounds obvious, but the majority of people are existing through their thoughts. The ego creates defense mechanisms to ensure you do not have to experience the emotions you are avoiding; it separates you from reality and therefore, separates you from yourself. Any kind of exercise is beneficial to reconnecting you to your body. It forces you to be in the present moment and allows you to feel what your body is experiencing, even if it’s uncomfortable. Yoga bridges the gap to the next step because it allows you to feel the tension that exists in your energy field and breath into those blocks, loosening their grip. Meditation is the next step. The goal is to quiet the mind, become aware of the fact that you are not your thoughts, and simply connect to your body. When you are present with yourself, without your thoughts causing a distraction, you are able to feel the emotions that reside in your body. All emotions are simply energy, energy that wants to be recognized and released. In order to release all that has been pushed down by negligence, you have to feel it.

This is where the real fun began. I started to explore emotions that I used to be afraid to feel such as shame, guilt, heartbreak, abandonment, fear, and anxiety. Everytime I would avoid feeling these emotions, they would just continue to build in my body. Every time something triggered them, my thoughts would do anything they could to attack the threat and return my body back to its comfort zone where I could put on a good front of being unbothered. when I finally let those emotions be recognized and welcomed them into my space, some of them were overwhelming, but it was anything but scary, it was beautiful. Observing my body as it was overcome with a rush of emotion was such a unique release, it felt like the world was lifted from my shoulder, like I could breath past the boulder that was once on my chest. It felt so good to finally let myself feel.

When you release these emotions from your body, you heal your energy and open your chakras. What I failed to realize at the time was that certain emotions, like abandonment, could be held in different ways through your chakras, creating different kinds of blocks in each one. Meaning certain energy was held in different parts of my body even if it was caused by the same emotion. For example, I could release the feeling of abandonment from my heart chakra, but it could still be affecting my solar plexus and in turn, affecting my confidence. This is why it is important to be intune with your body and notice its reaction to certain situations. When you are able to notice its reaction, but still consciously choose how to respond, then you have gained back control. Then you can analyze why your body reacted the way that it did and release the emotion that was triggered that could’ve held you back from choosing to consciously respond. Consciously responding consists of using your wisdom to respond to your environment and not simply react based on your emotional response. When you allow your body to feel intense emotions in a controlled environment, such as meditation, it makes them easier to recognize and control outside of meditation. Spirituality is not about perfection, it is about authenticity. Living as your authentic self means responding to your environment and not simply reacting to it.

This information may not be something you can find on a google search and it certainly isn’t a fun fact you can learn on the discovery channel, but this is my story. I have taken the hard path to self discovery and all the information I learned along the way I consider fact. I know my experience and it is all the proof I need to know this information is true. I am sure there are people on similar journeys and I hope to spread this knowledge to perhaps make your journey home a little less difficult. I hope this finds you in the moments you begin to lose hope, or feel completely isolated in the world. know that there are other souls that have the same destiny to freedom, know that you are never alone and you will indeed complete your journey to feeling whole again.