Healing Exercise for Self, for Healthier Relationships, AND for Healing Neediness

I want to share one of my current fave self-healing techniques, called "Re-Parenting." It’s awesome. Super healing for self AND for relationships, particularly useful for attracting healthier relationships. I have been using it for a couple of months now and really love it (and so do the clients who have tried it). Really you could JUST focus on Re-Parenting for months and do a lot of healing in so many areas and make a huge, deep difference in your life.... I got this exercise from Katherine Woodward Thomas, who rocks.

So Re-Parenting is a technique where you take full responsibility and control of the things you didn't feel you received during childhood (cause hey, everyone is human and growing, including your parents). Even the best parents in the world may have been lacking in certain areas, sometimes for reasons beyond their control. Alternatively/additionally, you can also choose to take full responsibility and control for things you feel like other people/past lovers don’t/didn’t give you. And you commit to providing these things for yourself now. This is really awesome because I run into so many people who can list off all the ways they’re traumatized from childhood and why, and while they can now pinpoint why they have this or that issue, they haven’t been able to heal it yet, and this exercise shifts you from blaming others, to actually taking full responsibility. And full responsibility means you have your POWER back. And on top of that you’re nurturing yourself. As is popularly known, the way you treat yourself sets the pattern/standard for how others treat you. So when you give yourself what you want/need, you are now establishing the energy you wish to receive from others (I’ll have a p.s. on this point at the end for people who aren’t as familiar with this concept). I’ll go over the exercise step by step, give my example and then add the P.S.

Exercise:

Sit down with a pad of paper and pen, and write down everything you feel was missing in your childhood (or in past relationships).

Some examples to get you started include:

-Nurturing (soothing you when you were disappointed, regular touch, kindness)

-Consistency and Dependability (kept their word, you knew you could count on them, were able to earn a living),

-Basic Life Skills (managing a check book, keeping up with the bills and home),

-Encouragement of Your Talents (recognizing them and supporting them to grow),

-Attention (spending time with you, noticing and responding to your moods, listening to you),

-Protection (from hostile behaviors of others, other kids bullying you, from danger, etc.),

-Respect of Boundaries (honoring your privacy and your right to say no, right to stand up for yourself),

-Basic Hygienic Care (washing of body, doing laundry, caring for your teeth, clean home),

-Unconditional Love (loving you without needing you to “perform” in return, etc.).


So you make your list of the things you feel were missing and then you go through your list and you write and say out loud for EACH of the things you listed:

"I, _________ release and forgive ___________ for failing to __________. I give up failing to _________ myself. I promise to do my absolute best to begin _______ myself from this day forward, and I claim ________ as mine fully and completely."


To fill in the blanks for example, let’s take consistency, stability, and dependability, it would read like this:

“I, Jaycee release and forgive my parents for failing to provide me with consistency, dependability, and stability. I give up failing to give myself consistency, dependability, and stability. I promise to do my absolute best to provide myself with consistency, dependability, and stability and to be dependable to myself from this day forward, and I claim consistency, dependability, and stability as mine fully and completely.”

I would write that down and say it out loud for each thing on my list. In doing so you're basically taking complete power over these things. They're now yours to give yourself and you release others from it. So you’re not only claiming these things for yourself and taking back your power, but you’re fully forgiving others and releasing blame. This is SUPER powerful and very healing.

In my case, I'm currently focused on the example I used above. My parents were absolutely awesome and did the best they could. But they were teenagers when they had me, didn’t speak English, and we lived in very poor conditions. Because my father was always trying to find work, we were constantly moving to wherever work was and I went to 13 different schools before age 12. So I think it’s fair to say that despite my parent’s best efforts I didn’t have a lot of stability or consistency when I was a child, and they weren't always dependable. Twenty-year-olds don't always realize the importance of keeping their word and don't always make the best decisions. Even when they wanted to keep their promises, sometimes they couldn’t. So I did the exercise above and claimed these things as my own and am focused on providing them for myself. I’m focused on keeping my word to myself and on being consistent. For example, if I say I’m going to work out every day for an hour, I do it (and am consistent about it!). I’ve been showing myself just how dependable and reliable I am for me. I don’t have to worry about suddenly getting lazy, not working out, and gaining weight because I know I can count on myself to be dependable. I sign up for a few dance classes a week and volunteer work, and I make sure I keep these promises to myself and that I’m consistent. I do the things on my to do list. I make commitments and keep them. I do what I tell myself I'm going to do. And that’s just one of the examples. I’m doing multiple ones, but that’s my been my focus.


Safety was also a big one for me. Having grown up in dangerous neighborhoods at the height of the nightstalker/Richard Ramirez thing (he was caught like a block away from my house- my mom/grandma lived in a state of fear during that time), and coming from a loud/dramatic Cuban family, there were always huge screaming scenes about how I was going to get killed or kidnapped anytime I forgot to padlock the door or set foot outside my yard. And you can imagine the type of screaming scenes that would take place when my "big kid" parents were exploring their new environment and would do things like light a Roman Candle INSIDE the house, not knowing what it would do and then the couch would catch on fire. So I grew up feeling pretty unsafe and like my parents/adults couldn't protect me because they were scared themselves. Now I’m giving myself affirmations about how safe and protected I am and how everything is OKAY, and come up with creative ways to make myself feel safe.

Those are just a couple examples. Funny thing is that I've always been such a free spirit and love being spontaneous, so I hadn't even realized these were things I needed. I only started there because it was the thing that was definitely missing back then. And after starting, now I realize how great and peaceful these things make me feel.

Re-parenting yourself and nurturing yourself feels GOOD. You can have all those things you felt you were deprived of in some way, or that you’ve always wanted. It’s now ALL in your hands.

Katherine gives this exercise in order to heal people’s hearts, and their neediness, before they enter into an adult, romantic relationship. She says, “’Neediness’ is a state of inner deprivation based upon unmet dependency needs in early childhood. When we are needy, we are trying to get from others what was denied us in the past. Unfortunately, though, many of these childhood needs cannot adequately be met in present-time, and particularly not with people we barely know...... It’s not that our needs are wrong. It’s that we’ve been going about trying to get them met in the wrong way.... Even when someone else wishes that he or she could provide what was missing for us in our childhood, unless the original wounding has been sufficiently dealt with, it’s like water through a sieve. Until we are healed, it doesn’t matter how much someone loves us.” And concludes, “You cannot get what was missing in your childhood from another person, until you are actively engaged in doing all that you can to give it to yourself.” And then she introduces the re-parenting exercise. She states, “We aren’t going into romantic relationships as adults, but rather as children posing in adult bodies. It’s like giving a 4-year-old the keys to the car: You can pretty much count on a wreck.”

So this exercise is also very beneficial for healing your romantic relationships and breaking old, negative relationship patterns. Super useful. :-)

Now the promised P.S.:

It’s often stated that your relationship with yourself defines your relationships with others, and the relationships you attract in your life. A typical line of questioning when someone complains about others not appreciating them is, “Well, in what ways don’t you appreciate yourself or what ways could you appreciate yourself more?” And then you have them make those changes. This shifts their relationships. Or "He doesn't listen to me!" "Well, in what ways don't you listen to yourself?" I’ll now just cut and paste my own channeling on this subject from about a year and half ago (sorry for the spelling, I had to copy from my Twitter because I couldn't find the file! So it was in 140 character blocks):

"Wondering how many people have the kind of relationship with themselves where they give themselves pleasure but not respect.....? i.e. you eat something that is horrible for u because it brings you pleasure but u are disrespecting your body and health at the same time. Or you buy something expensive cause it brings you pleasure. But you're disrespecting yourself by putting yourself in debt to someone else.

And in turn how many people who give themselves pleasure but not respect, attract romantic partners who give them pleasure, but not respect? i.e. they'll sleep with you, but wont give you the relationship you want. Or they'll sleep with you, but are cheating on you, lying to you, etc.

You teach other people how to treat you. And it ALL starts with how you treat yourself. Make sure you give yourself what you want others to give you. Your relationship with yourself sets the pattern for the rest of your relationships.

If you don't keep your commitments to yourself , how can you expect someone else to commit to you? (New Year’s resolutions anyone?)

Think about how others treat you and be honest with yourself about how you do the same thing to you. Then start changing it.”

How to Work With Your Ego & Insights from a Self-Healing on Procrastination, Sabotage, & Competition

I journaled some insights/major shift the other night that might be useful to others. It’s always good to see how others break patterns and what causes the patterns. Since I do healings all the time and meditate every day, I tend to have a lot of self-insight that helps with self-healing and so I don’t mind sharing my experiences. Particularly since I’ve learned a lot from watching others heal.

Last week I was working on huge project. Suddenly my computer started malfunctioning and not letting me work. To the point I felt like throwing it out the window. And I was about to use it as an excuse to get out of meeting a deadline.


But out of nowhere, it hit me that I had a really long pattern of procrastinating on assignments/projects until last minute and then finding an excuse to ask for an extension or to get out of it. I can remember doing this all the way back to middle school. Nicole and I always joke about “ don't treat this like a paper extension!” Its a joke about how we always get extensions and are like, “Whew! We have two more weeks! Awesome!” and then go play and do everything else and then the night before it’s due again we’re like “Uhoh!!! How did this happen??” And we (used to) do that with everything. Like if we have to be somewhere and are running late but then it gets moved back 2 hours, somehow we’ll mess around and still be running late 2 hours later. (btw, I was very rarely ACTUALLY late, just always waited until last minute).

I decided I needed to go ahead and release this pattern.

I went into meditation and asked what was going on here, and immediately realized that it was my ego doing it. Here’s what I got back: 1) Feelings of unworthiness- which cause self-sabotage, and procrastination is self-sabotage. 2) Fear of own greatness. 3) Fear of not being good enough or smart enough. And it was a crazy set up from my ego, because my ego would procrastinate for those reasons, and to make myself get mad at me, dislike myself, and feel out of control. Looking for self-punishment (that’s what guilt does), perpetuating it further and creating a repeating pattern….

So after knowing what was up, it was time to release all of the above, but I needed to get my ego to cooperate because I could feel it was holding on tight.


Here are some blurbs/insights from my journal written right after releasing.


-ON GETTING THE EGO TO SUBMIT:


With all this talk over the last few days about Christ teaching to “Love them until THEY submit,” I was thinking about one the most applicable situations… Your ego. NEVER wage war on your ego, as tempting as it might be. Don’t get mad at it and lose your temper or try to scare it with threats. That’s what it was trying to get you to do. It wants you to get mad at it so then it can play the victim and go into self-pity. “Ah, I cant believe I did that. I’m a terrible person with no self-control. Ah, I’m so mad at myself. Why don’t I have more strength? What’s wrong with me? etc.” Plus with more self-h*te and anger towards yourself, you’ll be weaker. Instead, love it into submission. Send tons of unconditional love to it. Let it know it’s safe. Have a conversation with it. Make a compromise. Tell it the change will just be a trial and if we don’t like it, we can go back to your way. Get it to calm down, to mellow out, and relax for a second, so that you can let go of the negative cords, negative patterns, beliefs, or emotions you want to release and make the changes you want.

Remember to look at your ego as the scared 4 y/o child inside of you. Treat it with understanding and compassion. Comfort it and you’ll get much further. If you make it feel safe and loved, it will be much more cooperative and your inner wars will diminish. If you don't, it will kick and scream and hang on with all its might. And Dr. George Washington Carver’s advice that if you love something enough, it will reveal its secrets to you is very applicable. When you send love to your ego, it will open up to you and reveal its secrets.


So I went with that. Instead of yelling at my ego, I sent it tons and tons of unconditional love and said, “Don’t you feel all this unconditional love from God, from the Divine Mother, from me? Don’t you realize that no matter what you’ve done you’re still loved unconditionally? In your opinion you really f’ed up tonight by doing other things instead of working on this, and yet you’re getting more direct unconditional love now than last week before you got yourself in this mess. See?? Calm down.”

And I asked it to please just relax and move aside so we could let go of the old negative patterns that were being held. The ego complied. We had a long talk about its different issues and a lot was released.


MEDITATIVE CONCLUSION FROM THE HEALING:

"Shift your intent/life goal/perspective from trying to be the best at whatever, to loving. Instead of trying to be the best at everything and seeing the world as an endless competition, your focus will be on just to love." My inner voice started saying that and it really helped when it came to releasing the fear of own greatness and the fear of not being the best or not being good enough. The ego was scared to release these things because it thought life might get boring if it wasn’t always trying to compete for something. What would it do? Because it didn’t know anything else. “If you’re not always trying to be the best or have the most, how will I be entertained?” it asked. Loving. That will give you the best life. Cultivate a heart of love as big as the world, as you say at Agape. Love as much as possible, share as much love, build with as many people, build intimacy, be of service, spread joy, find different ways to love. Just love. Love. Create. Life will never be boring. It will be full joy, happiness, expression, and adventure. The ego was also scared to let go of the need/desire to always be the best because it thought if we didn’t care, we would then be bad at things, and it couldn’t deal with that thought (it’s the ego after all). I told it to stop it. That when we let go of that need to be the best, we’ll still be amazing. Because everything will be based in love and that’s always filled with greatness. In fact, all miracles come from love, as do the greatest works. And God, the Divine Mother, Archangel Gabriel, the Holy Angels will be there to work through us, and will work through us more easily because we aren’t in the way. Everything will always be clothed in the greatness of love and God. You can’t go wrong. And the ego calmed down and let go. Of course, this was while asking for the constant help of the Divine Mother’s grace and mercy, compassion and love.


A little more from journal on the fears that came up during the meditation-before the conclusion:

-Fear of not being good enough, not being smart enough. So would rather not do the project/assignment. Or do it with an excuse just in case it’s not good enough. The belief that just me is not good enough was released. Ego said, “People assume we’re smart. I don’t want to prove them wrong. Maybe we’ve just gotten lucky every other time??” I carefully explained, "Ego, you’ve done this a million times before and you’ve done fine every time. Why are you still scared? Do you think you’re going to be less good at it than last time? It works the other way around. You get better with practice. Let go of the need to compete. Let go of the need to be the best. It’s not supposed to be a competition. That’s not what life is about. If it was, then all the people in the rat race wouldn’t be so unhappy after winning the race and constantly needing to find a new race. You know this from experience. Released beliefs of inadequacy and not being enough. With the grace of the Divine Mother.


-Fear of own greatness. I’d always felt a lot of resistance to this concept. Felt impossible to me. But because of the resistance, I knew it had to be present. Particularly since the feelings of unworthiness had been present and this fear comes with a “Who am I to be so great?” There was a serious thickness and feeling of heaviness as it was releasing and I talked to my ego, telling it that it was okay for us to be great and to release whatever this fear was tied to. That lead to releasing a fear of it being lonely at the top. Of people being jealous. Fear that if I’m more successful or get better at things, it will be a bigger challenge to find a romantic love partner (WOW! All those guys who try to play mind tricks saying things like, “wow it must be really hard for someone as awesome as you to find a guy on your level to date. That must suck, ” had crept into my subconscious w/o me noticing! Who would’ve thought?) And in my head I heard the voices of people who tell you to dumb down a little to make men feel more secure. I told my Ego that we believe in soul mates, remember? So that stuff is irrelevant. And reminded it, “If you believe in soul mates and you’re still waiting for yours, he won’t arrive until you’re willing to be more authentic than you now are in this present moment." You can’t attract your perfect match if you aren’t even being who you truly are. So releasing fears that keep us caged in or restrained will be much more helpful than trying to be small. And because you actually really love people, they love you back. You will never be lonely- top or bottom. “Who am I to be so great?” left easily due to my strong feeling of Oneness with God. You can't refute God's greatness.”


Those were the blurbs. Oh, and my computer started working right afterward and the project went 150% perfect. It exceeded the person’s expectations (though I stayed up for over 48 hours to finish).


Also, wanted to note, because it comes up with clients, when you work through something big, chances are you will re-visit multiple times. Usually going into deeper layers every time. So if you worked out something 2 years ago and then suddenly it pops back up, don’t get upset thinking, “But I thought I let that go already!” You did. But there’s a lot tied to it. You probably let go of a huge portion of it (and certainly noticed the improvements in your life), but now you’re getting rid of more. Rev. Michael often analogizes it to having a super dirty car and washing it. Then you look at the car and notice there’s still a spot there. That spot has been there the whole time, but because the entire car was dirty, it blended in. Now that the car is clean, you notice the spot and some fixate on it like, “WTH?!” Just note it’s normal. Especially with big, normal themes. Don’t trip. The above is a great example of this. Most of the above wasn’t new and it’s healing 101. But while a lot of that stuff had been released, I needed a shift in worldview in order to evolve even more and the stuff that was still there helped me go back in and shift.

Exercise to Help You Listen To Your Heart and Also to Self-Heal Any Other Organs

I'm going to start by sharing my meditative insight as to why it can be so challenging to hear your heart, and describing the process by which the exercise came about. Then I'm going to share the exercise. I suggest reading the first part, but you are welcome to scroll down for the exercise at any point.

During meditation I felt like sending love and gratitude to the Universe and started radiating it out from my heart. Suddenly I decided to send that love and gratitude from my heart, up to my crown, and through my spiritual cord up to God. The second I started sending it, I felt the energy get stuck in my throat. I imagine that if the love energy my heart was sending to my crown got stuck in my throat, then the messages my heart sends to my brain are likely to have often suffered the same fate.

This is really interesting because the throat chakra (or “Daath”) is the center of intellect and knowledge.

That leads me to think my intellect and the knowledge I’ve acquired from books have often acted as a web where the messages from my heart get stuck and never reach my brain. Which is why it took me so long to be able to hear my heart. I remember the first time I read “The Alchemist” I was so frustrated because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hear ANYTHING from my heart. And I’d always considered myself to be an “intellectual.” Click. We need to bypass some of our intellectual blocks to listen to our hearts more freely.

Anyhow, I wanted to share that observation because I found it interesting. Also that led to a good exercise.

When the love from my heart got stuck in my throat, I didn’t give up. I started sending my throat love instead. Filling it with the energy of love and embracing it. Healing it with the love energy from my heart and saying a few times in my head, “My throat is now cleared, healed, and healthy.”

Then I went back to sending love up through my crown and it didn’t get stuck! It went up all the way up through my head. It was kind of intense and human fear started to creep in a little due to the head rush and the feeling really light (I thought, “what if I’m accidentally making all my blood rush to my head with this exercise??”).

So I started to feel my left kidney clear. My left kidney has been clearing all week. And yes, it feels crazy, in case you are wondering. I’m used to feeling my throat clearing. That was weird when it first started happening but I got used to it. I once canceled a date because my throat was clearing and releasing all kinds of old energy and didn’t feel right about hanging out with this guy while my throat was shooting off negative energy (that was a fun conversation. Thank God the men I attract are very open minded). But I’ve NEVER felt my kidney clear before and its been pretty weird to walk around feeling an organ I usually have zero awareness of, functioning and processing. BUT I’m happy because that must mean I’m making leaps and bounds in releasing old fears.

Anyhow, when I felt my kidney clearing, I started doing the same thing I did to my throat, to my kidney. I started sending love from my heart down to my left kidney and visualizing my kidney being completely surrounded and filled with that love energy. And saying in my head, “I love you kidney” while sending it my love (hey laugh all you want. But people who’ve needed kidney transplants have been healed w/exercises where they start appreciating their kidneys. I’m appreciating my kidney because even though its perfectly healthy on the physical level, it had fear blocks on the emotional level and you want to handle that before it ever turns into a physical block). Then I started saying, “My left kidney is now cleared, healed, and healthy.”

During this process I started feeling my spleen heat up and process a little too. So I repeated the steps above for my spleen (likely released some resentment tied to fears of my own emotions, which is what was processing in my left kidney. Which makes sense cause who knows how many people I ended up resenting over my own fear of getting hurt?). It was a fun and beneficial exercise and felt very powerful to me. So, here it is- an exercise to help you clear the path for messages from your heart and to help you self-heal other organs.

EXERCISE:

1) Lay down somewhere comfortable and quiet.

2) Put yourself in a relaxed/meditative state. You can do this by taking deep slow inhales and exhales (see last blog entry).

3) After you feel your body relax, on your deep inhales feel/visualize all the love energy in your heart being gathered up and concentrated into the middle of your heart. Then on your exhale send all that love/gratitude energy from your heart up through your throat and to your crown chakra (right at the top of your head), out to God/the Universe. If you aren’t sure how to “send” this energy, you can will it to go up, intend to send it up, or visualize it going up. You can visualize it as a cloud of pink energy (and I personally like to say “Thank you God. Thank you for everything” while I do this. But optional. Chant what feels right to you). Do this at least 3 times. But as many times as you like.

4) If you feel the energy get stuck in your throat, repeat the instructions in step 3, but sending the energy to your throat instead. As you’re sending the energy of love to your throat, you can use, “I love my throat” (or I love you throat) as a mantra. Repeat at least 3 times. Then use the mantra, “My throat is now cleared, healed, and healthy,” for 3 breathing cycles.

5) If you did Step 4, go back to Step 3 and see if the energy goes through. Do as many times as needed.

6) Repeat Step 4 for any of your own “problem” organs, charkas, or spots, one by one (you can even send it to anywhere you feel tension/pain). Each time visualize your organ being healed by the love energy your heart is sending it. Love energy is one of the most healing energies in the world and you have it inside you. Use it. :-)

Enjoy!