Is there someone that you respect and admire and would like to emulate? We can incorporate this person’s belief system, mental syntax (the way a person organizes information) and physiology into our childhood character. By going back into the childhood incident as the empowered child with an informed adult perception, we can experience the incident anew, using all our senses to filter the experience in a more positive way. When you rewrite your story, project these qualities in your own personal wise guides; you are not locked into using Jasper and Zephyr.
We have discussed the importance of understanding our beliefs and the way we filter information, but we haven’t addressed the very important element of our physiology. The stories locked in our unconscious not only affect our memory, belief systems and the way we filter our present experience, but they can live in our bodies. A friend of mine who is a body worker includes the following slogan on her business card, “Our issues are in our tissues.” We are living out the decisions we made in childhood about who we are and the possibilities and limitations of our lives. These unconscious decisions and beliefs have also affected our physical health. Often, re-storying our early experiences can help us restore our bodies as well.
The Mind/Body Connection and the Chakra System
Have you ever awoken from a dream of falling off a cliff? Do you remember how your breath quickened and your heart beat furiously? The fact is our bodies don’t know the difference between an imagined event and a real one. Conversely, if we had a pleasant dream of swimming in a tropical island lagoon, we can feel peace and relaxation as we wake up to greet the day. Stories have the same powerful effect. Other cultures know the power of storytelling and give it due respect as a healing modality. In Islamic societies, loved ones tell a sick person an uplifting story. It helps the sick person imagine their own triumph over circumstances, which then empowers the immune system to heal the body.
Hindu physicians employ fairy tales to help emotionally troubled patients because they understand their mysteriously powerful effect on the subconscious.
Because of my own struggles with Epstein-Barr Virus and breast cancer, I felt it was crucial to address the connection of my emotions and beliefs to my physical health. As I began to study books on the mind/body connection, I saw examples of how certain beliefs based on childhood experiences positively or adversely affected physical health years later. It seemed that going back to rewrite these childhood traumas might also improve our health as well as our attitudes. I incorporated into my story the ancient Indian system of the chakras and gave Jasper a rainbow colored tail of feathers representing each of seven chakras.
Chakra means “wheel.” Chakras are energy centers or vortices. They are used to understand the way energy is processed by the human being. The “Lower Triangle” chakras focus on elimination and reduction and are balanced by the “Upper Triangle” chakras which accumulate, create and refine. The fourth chakra, the heart chakra is the balance between the two, where we experience shifts from “me to we.” A seventh chakra represents the aura or magnetic field of the body. It is said that cosmic energy flows down from the eighth chakra and collects in the other chakras. The chakras affect our perceptions, feelings and choices. They affect the flow and types of thoughts we have. They affect the relationship between the conscious and the subconscious. There are many practices and healing modalities, such as yoga, Tai Chi, acupuncture, etc. that address balancing the energy of the chakras and clearing blockages that lead to mental, emotional and physical distress.
Each chakra has a particular location in the body and has organs and glands associated with it. There are positive qualities of each chakra when balanced and negative qualities when they’re out of balance. For instance, the first chakra, or root chakra, is located at the end of the spine between the anus and sexual organs. It concerns security and survival issues and governs the organs of elimination. The color associated with this chakra is red. The positive qualities of this chakra are a feeling of being grounded, security, stability, loyalty and healthy bodily functions of elimination. When out of balance, we feel fear and insecurity. Life can feel like a burden. We can feel out of touch with our families or culture. Physically there are problems with a weak constitution, elimination problems and lowered resistance. In the Appendix a chakra chart has been included for your reference, which identifies each of the chakras and their qualities.
When rewriting our stories, it’s important to pay attention to how you feel in your body. How does it feel in your gut? If you were hurt physically, where was the wound? Did you feel grounded in your body during the experience, or were you in your head? By re-experiencing the emotions associated with the event, we can often find the reactive patterns in our body that stem from those emotions. Feeling an emotion in a certain chakra can also give you insights into the unconscious issues associated with that chakra that need addressing.
In my own case, it was no wonder that the accumulated hurts and emotional pain I’d experienced caused an imbalance in my heart chakra, which then manifested as breast cancer. During my recovery I attended a breast cancer support group and the psychologist leading the group asked me if I knew the profile of women who experienced breast cancer. I replied that I did not. He informed me that these women were very competent about taking care of other people’s feelings but not as competent in taking care of their own. Hmm, I definitely identified with this group. Therefore, I decided to approach my recovery with the best of western and alternative medicine, while addressing the emotional and spiritual causes of such a disease. As part of my treatment, I chose to rewrite my Bea Wished story again. This time, I delved deeper into the experience than before and concentrated on what I felt in my Heart Chakra. The Heart Chakra rules subtle feelings and the ability to touch others with our purity of feeling. It is also about boundaries, both on the physical and emotional levels. When it functions well, it knows how to discern when something is foreign and needs to be examined, versus when something is a part of you and can be accepted in. It can also help you determine what people are worthy to enter your heart space and when to protect your boundaries. In rewriting my story about feeling abandoned because of my father’s emotional absence, I allowed myself to feel kindness towards him and the possibility of his warmth and love in the moments I most needed them. I started to feel my heart opening. I could feel that the healing taking place in my emotional heart was also healing my breasts.
During that time, I also discovered another avenue of healing: sharing our stories with each other. When we are really listened to, we feel cared for, respected and heard.
When we really listen to one another, we are actively and creatively engaged in opening ourselves to new places, people and experiences. We give our energy to the storyteller and can even heal the storyteller through our loving attention.
Family Story Sharing
When you, as a family, share your stories with each other and by asking each other “what can we learn from this?” you are encouraged to draw your own conclusions and consider how the story feels to you. The story then becomes a lesson that you can use in your lives. I encourage you to dive into the workbook section and give yourself and your family the gift of exploring the depth and richness of your inner world.
There was a time, as a society, when we gathered together to share stories. Storytelling was a nightly event that helped to synthesize and bring meaning to the events of the day. Now we live in a world that feeds us constant information via media which keeps us isolated from human interaction. Yet we still are famished for the words that would deliver a deeper connection to our experience of the world, of each other, of ourselves. By getting in touch with our own life stories, we offer to ourselves and each other the possibility of deeper, shared understanding, compassion and the possibility of a true and lasting experience of peace.
How to Benefit from this Book
I would like to suggest that you first read the stories. Each story gives you a brief synopsis of the adult whose story you are about to read. Of course, the name and locations have been changed