The Power of Unconditional Love

Isn't it true that we can thoroughly understand all of the reasons why we are suffering, yet still feel stuck?

We can GET why we struggle - Everything that has happened that has shaped us, for better or worse. The how and the why of it all makes sense.

Maybe you have worked hard to get to the bottom of it all - you see the psychological patterns, and you have come to understand why they are there.

Yet, insight alone doesn't allow for transformation.

In Buddhist philosophy, there are the two wings: insight and compassion. We cannot have one without the other for a true sense of healing to emerge.

It's the emotional experience paired with insight that truly enables us to transmute our suffering into wisdom at an embodied level that encompasses our full being, not just our rational minds.

This is the difference between talk therapy and somatic therapy. In talk therapy, we may gain significant insight into our suffering, which is incredibly valuable and necessary - but it only engages one small part of our brain.

In somatic therapy, we work the felt sense of the body in the present moment - a process that engages so much more of our brain, and therefore has a deeper, long-lasting impact.

Creating room for raw emotions - grief, anger, shame, fear - along with accompanying sensations in the body in a safe container allows for processing in a way that is much more encompassing.

When insight arises from an embodied experience, it is often more meaningful, and can hit with a much more impactful "aha!"

However, for many of us, access to our internal sensations and emotions is hindered. It may not feel so safe inside. Instead, what we experience in our internal world is a panel of critical voices, and internal pressure to fix or avoid everything inside that's so messed up.

So, one question to ask yourself is this: are the healing practices I'm engaging in helping to create space inside of me, or are they creating more constriction?

If what you are doing to try to help yourself - whether it's meditation, journaling, yoga, art, etc - is creating more constriction inside of you, then it's important to remember that it's less about what you are doing, and more about the how.

These critical voices and ways that we pressure ourselves are often a result of introjection. When we are in a situation in which we have to attach to survive - whether that's to a world that doesn't honor our dignity as a person of a marginalized identity, or a child who needs a neglectful or abusive caregiver to survive - our boundaries and identity become diffused.

The negative, critical, or dismissive voices projected onto us from the outside world are then taken by us and unconsciously introjected into our internal world. We turn those voices inward on ourselves as a way to preserve our connection to the abusers we needed to attach to for survival. The introjected voices inside of us can continue to internally hijack us, even years later when the original source of external threat may no longer be present.

Next time you notice a judgemental voice or an internal sense of pressure inside of you, slow down and ask where it's coming from. How familiar is this? How far back in time does this go? Whose voice is this?

Supportive Ways to Cultivate Compassion

If this speaks to your experience, I encourage you to bring in sources of unconditional love and compassion for yourself.

This could be a pet, or the memory of a loving grandparent, or beings in nature such as a mountain, body of water, an animal or a tree that helps you feel safe and held. It could be a human who you have never met before, but one from whom you feel a sense of love or allyship such as an activist, or someone who has created positive change in this world.

Bring this source of compassion into your mind, and notice what sensations, images, emotions or thoughts are evoked that support a sense of safety. Stay with this experience and savor it. Notice if perhaps there is more space cultivated inside of you.

Two practices that work well for me personally:

• Lying on the earth, like on a warm rock, and savoring the feeling of being held. Or you could imagine floating effortlessly in a beautiful body of water in which the more you relax, the easier it is to float.

• A daily writing practice of writing a letter to yourself from the Beloved, Spirit, Source, your Higher Self, or whatever you want to call anything that helps you connect with a benevolent presence.

For me, this active, regular engagement in giving and receiving messages of unconditional love to myself has deeply healed my nervous system over time.

It's a safe space I create for myself where I can express my deepest sorrows, weirdest quirks, and expansive joys in a space of non-judgemental, compassionate presence that welcomes all of it.

It's a taproot into the wisdom and compassion that's already inherently here inside.

Try these practices, and then check to see if they are cultivating spaciousness or constriction.

If you are having trouble accessing a sense of spaciousness or compassion for yourself, it may be a sign that reaching out for support is warranted.

It's quite normal and okay to need help. Relational wounds almost always require relational healing.

And you don't have to do this alone.

If you feel you need support in your process, please reach out to schedule a 45 minute low cost consultation, or book a session.