An Elemental Approach to Healing the Sacred Wound of Sexual Trauma.
Healing our Sacred Sexual Wound as path of initiation into our authentic power.
"We are capable of freedom through the fire of healing sexual trauma."
Peter Levine recognises that "What generally gets overlooked is that sexual energy and life-force energy are virtually one and the same." Our life force energy is build from the Elements of Nature: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space.
Through this work, we will access the power of the Elements to heal form the sacred wounds of sexual trauma - reconnecting ourselves to our authentic selves and deepening our connection to the natural world around
Elemental Healing is a multi-system approach to healing that addresses the root of sexual trauma - in our mind, body, spirit as well as how we connect with the world around us and how that world impacts us our multi layers of self.
Sexual abuse and other abuses of power have been an impact women have endured in a misogynist culture for many generations. We need a multi system approach to healing that looks at our minds, bodies, spirits, as well as the external factors that impact our healing.
We are being called at this time to heal our deepest wounds so we can support in healing the Earth (who is suffering from her own wounds of exploitation). My belief is when we do this work with ourselves - it is shared multi-fold into the world around us. The greatest gift we can give our Earth is our own healing.
Now is the time to release this imprint from our mind, bodies, spirit and find the true freedom of our souls.
This Elemental Approach to healing helps us to connect to whole system healing in a gentle yet powerful way.
Our wombs are our greatest sources of wisdom and power. Healing any womb woundings is essential to reconnect with our authentic selves and our full feminine power. We face the intensity of healing together with a fierce compassion.
What is the Sacred Sexual Wound
- Rape, molestation, incest, - saying yes to sex out of obligation - being sexualised as a child by a parent or elder - witnessing sexual violence on TV or at home or in community - sex with a partner who isn't connected to you or themselves -
Elemental Healing integrates ancient healing practices with modern Psychotherapy and Neuroscience. Yet the practices are adjusted for a more feminine approach to healing.
Earth - helps us heal our bodies and bones. We can re-pattern how our body holds the trauma of our experiences as well as the experiences we carry in our bones from our ancestors. Neuroscience has shown that the cells in our bodies hold the memories of our ancestors from five generations - Ancient wisdom traditions hold the belief that we carry much more than five generations and that our whole lineages are connected to our lives.
Water - helps heal and release stuck emotions. Our emotional bodies can be so powerful that it can at times overtake us and often result in us being someone we are not. Working to release and reconnect with our emotional bodies is an essential part of this work. We will work directly with the core emotions that are often at root of trauma and then we can create some tools with the help of water to work with other emotions as they surface.
Fire - supports in the healing of our mind. Trauma can often create thought loops and patterns of disassociation. We can work here with the element of fire to helps us release these patterns and build a whole new relationship with our mind. Part of our thought loops can be create from our environment (ie. family and culture) - as children we often adopt these mind patterns and belief systems as our own. Fire can support us in removing these thought loops that are not ours and create freedom to be who we are meant to be.
Air - helps us release what is not ours. During life and especially during trauma, we can take on energetic intrusions that don't belong in our body. This is especially true with sexual trauma as we can take the others energy into our body and this needs to be released. Air Element can support in clearing our body, mind, energy body, and soul of anything that doesn't belong and is no longer serving our greatest good.
Space or Ether - helps us reconnect to the work around us in a different way. Consensual reality tells us that there is nothing in the space around us yet an Animist view holds that there is much in the unseen aspects of space around us. With Ether Element we learn the essentails of connecting to the space around us and noticing how to find protections, safety, and oneness - creating a new relationship with our external world.
Love and Compassion as the Sixth Element -
Our main assumptions and principles:
1) We cannot heal sexual trauma without looking at the culture/society that let it happen.
2) There are emotional, mental, spiritual, and energetic wounds resulting from sexual trauma and work with them all to provide whole system healing.
3) Our nature is deeply connected to the Earth and we due this through our bodies - connections to our bodies and nature is essential to healing.
4) A lot of the aspects of ourselves we are trying to heal are not ours. We exist within a network of family connections, societal and cultural connections, and land connections that influence us in a way we interpret as ours. We can work to let this go and find our own unique thread in the web of life.
5) Compassion is an essential component to the work. This is hard yet essential to shift out of victim consciousness.
6) Working with Healing Allies or Spirit Allies is way we stay protected and discerning in the work.
7) There are different elements to healing and no correct place to begin. Building a 'map' can be helpful to discern direction.
8) Commitment to yourself through this work is invaluable.
9) Our wounds are relational and we must heal them in relationship and at the same time we can empower ourselves to heal with the right tools and knowing help is nearby.
10) - When we don't have closure on a spiritual level this means that the energy, emotions, and experiences of this event are still replaying as if in a loop.
This work is a combination of a number of healing modalities from traditional Indigenious healing methods and modern day neuroscience. funnily enough, during my studies and explorations I found that there is already so many areas where these two overlap so it felt like a given that the two worlds combine. A lot of my bigger philosophies are based on Orland Bishops work called Whole Systems Healing which talks about the different dimensions that shape our existence. Our body/mind are only one system that determines our identity and our expression and already so much of this layer is created based on the memory of at least five generations of ancestral knowledge and experiences. Then we add the Family level, community level, world space, and environment. To Heal we must borrow from nature and integrate in into ourselves. The Healing is less about healing a particular aliment and more about increasing the will.
Based on the understanding that a lot of the history of healing we know about today (spiritual healing and psychological healing) is based on the old toxic patriarchy model. This way of working describes a model and a philosophy that structures healing in a way the founder sees best....not necessarily what is best for the individual.
This approach we can integrate the tools already created for us yet I have stripped them down to the core essence and not labeled them so energetically there is a different level of flow and freedom already attached to the healing. To heal from sexual trauma - we also need to heal from the cutlure that perptuated it. I find it difficult to do this when we are using therapy tools developed from this same energy....even though they have different intentions, there is still holds an energetic link.
Words Matter and so below you may find language that you haven't heard before...please feel into the resonance of the words to get a sense of how it may fit for you. Let's begin this healing journey by integrating past the mind's knowing and into the bodies feeling.
“What generally gets overlooked is that sexual energy and life-force energy are virtually one and the same.”
- Peter Levine