the four selves

Or as I call them - the Four Jess’s.

I came up with this concept deep in meditation and reflection with the BioCybernaut Institute in Sedona. Here, they measure your brain waves and teach you how to get into alpha state in order to do deep internal work on your subconscious; you can access deep subconscious healing with forgiveness and compassion through finding truths, previously hidden.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

- Dr. Carl Jung

Something that we all know - forgiveness can be really hard. In my time of reflection and solitude in a dark room in Sedona - it occurred to me why forgiveness can be so difficult.

The answer I found is: because we are made up of different versions of ourself - so there are different people inside you that have to be in agreement in order to give permission to fully forgive.

Now, I’ve already written some blogs on forgiveness - you can find one here. However, this is a brand new concept, an evolved method of forgiveness, if you will.

Say you were hurt when you were really small, which may have made you sad, or feel powerless or hopeless.

Perhaps you were angry and vengeful as a teenager.

Now, because some time has passed, you can look back on it logically without getting too triggered (although you still might get a little triggered.) Compassionate thoughts like “they were doing their best with the information they had,” may float around in your awareness.

Perhaps in 40 years you can look back on it and be completely at peace with it.

These are the Four Selves - these selves not only have to feel the feelings, but have to allow external expression of them in order to approve Full Forgiveness. Let me explain:

The little self

The little self is most likely the one that got hurt. How you got hurt will vary from person to person. Maybe you weren’t physically cared for, maybe you weren’t emotionally cared for, maybe you weren’t mentally cared for, and maybe your life circumstances didn’t provide safety or stability to feel cared for.

This makes the Little Self sad; feelings of despair arise, feelings of ‘I’m not worthy,’ ‘I’m not loveable,’ will come up here. Feelings of ‘I’m unsafe,’ ‘I don’t belong,’ can arise here. Feelings of shame can arise here because ‘If I was good enough this wouldn’t have happened to me.’

Sound familiar?

There can be no forgiveness without acknowledging and fully feeling the emotions.

Why?

Because your heart and your head have two different consciousnesses. Logically reasoning something in your head doesn’t access your emotions or allow you to feel in your heart, and forgiveness is a feeling, not a thought.

Let’s allow the little self to be sad, to cry, to yell, to sob, to despair, to deeply feel the feelings of sadness, AND to allow those feelings to become unstuck in our body and be expressed.

So, we emote and express the emotion; after all emotions are energy in motion, and we feel things to heal them. This is the opposite of shoving things down, compartmentalizing, and ‘I’ll deal with that later,’ mindsets. We are pulling these emotions out of being stuck in our body to be processed, live their entire life span (beginning, climax, resolution) and therefore actualized and finally released.

the teenage self

Because the Little Self cannot protect itself, our Teenage Self avenges the Little Self. It has to, because now, it can! The Teenage Self is smarter, bigger and physically stronger than the Little Self. The Teenage Self has access to more resources, coping skills, concepts, wisdom, friends, therapists, counselors.

So, outwardly - we might rebel, we might steal, smoke, drink, yell; or inwardly - we get depressed and implode on ourselves, self harm, become introverted, stay away from people, isolate, maybe we take things personally, or out on other people.

This of course will look different to different people. The way we react will always vary based on our environment and personality.

The idea here is the Teenage Self is now protecting the Little Self, and it will do it anyway it can.

So what do we do?

Once again, we allow the emotions. We allow ourselves to fully feel the hatred, resentment, and betrayal. We allow ourselves to feel these emotions as we felt them as a teenager and once again we express them.

To help process this rage we might hit a pillow with a baseball bat, find our nearest Rage Room, listen to angry music to allow the fullest expression of these emotions. We might write letters we never send to those who have harmed them.*

This is cathartic for the Teenage Self.

the current self

Now we are older and wiser, and have the ability to intellectualize concepts: ‘My dad was this way because his dad was this way.’ ‘My parents did the best they could with the resources they had.’ ‘Therapy was taboo when my parents grew up.’ These are enlightening realizations, no doubt, but it still does nothing for our Little Self that was deeply injured and couldn’t protect itself and our Teenage Self that needs someone to answer for the crimes committed against the Little Self.

Time has given us space to heal, but if we don’t allow our Little Self to cry, and our Teenage Self to rage, and both to express this outwardly, the process is incomplete. Mentally understanding an emotional concept does nothing because it’s not on the same wavelength nor does it speak the same language.

Here we must accept the feelings and allow our Little Self and Teenage self to express these emotions without judgment. To allow yourself to hit rock bottom, to fall in a puddle sobbing or howl at the moon.

Now, some of us do not feel like we have certain emotions, or that certain emotions don’t have an affect on them. I’ve met a lot of people who claim they never get angry and yet have uncontrollable sugar addictions. I find whatever emotion you definitely don’t think is a problem - is definitley a problem - and in dialogue with it you can find fertile soil for self inquiry and evolution.

If you have trouble accessing these emotions try my concept on Emotion Hacking:

1. If you can’t access sadness - try watching a sad movie about a dog, trust me you’ll cry.

2. If you can’t access anger - try listening to the angry or angsty music you loved in high school.

3. If you can’t access those old feelings - get a sound healing session with me and we’ll bring them right up to the surface to work on them.

The point of Emotion Hacking is sometimes we have trouble accessing certain emotions, this is normal, so we use an external stimulus (a sad movie or angry music) to pull up resonance in our internal space.

the old self

The Old Self is wise, the Old Self has lived so long and seen everything you have grown through. The Old Self is the version of you who has allowed the Little Self to cry, the Teenage Self to yell, and the Current Self to heal by feeling and responsibly expressing.*

The Old Self is who you needed when you were younger. The Old Self has compassion for all Selves AND all the people involved in the circumstances that resulted in injury. This is because the Old Self is all of your expressions of self and also has a grander perspective having transcended the stormy seas of your youth, your pain and your suffering.

This next part is a Thought Experiment so try this on like you were trying on a T-shirt - if it fits keep it, and if it doesn’t take it off:

Quantum Physics says that the present moment, right now, is the only thing that is technically real. So if we access all Four Selves in the present moment we are Little, Teenage, Current and Old together, united - therefore by feeling all the emotions and allowing the physical expression of those emotions we can find forgiveness because we've received permission from all the Four Selves, because we’ve allowed them to feel, to express, and to be witnessed by all other Selves.

Here we can release the binds and emotions that hold us captive to these past harmful circumstances or people - in this spaciousness of acceptance and surrender, through feeling and healthy expression, and then letting go of expectation.

feel the feelings and then rest in the spaciousness

Once you allow yourself to feel all the feelings you might find there is a sensation of spaciousness, of lightness and freedom. You might have more compassion and true forgiveness because you didn’t try to gloss over your own pain. In accepting our pain and dialoguing with it we deepen our understanding of ourselves, and therefore others.

When we forgive ourselves we can more easily forgive others, when we allow our emotional expression we can sit easier with the emotional expression of others.

~

Try it on and let me know what you think!

~

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

—Rumi

*Expressing responsibly is important and an internal journey. You don’t have to do it alone and can have a vulnerability buddy. You are allowed to feel angry; just make sure you are being emotionally responsible by not blaming or yelling at others. You are allowed to hit a pillow with a baseball bat - that does not affect anyone else negatively. This is about YOU and your feelings.

energetic hygiene

Something feels ‘off’ but I just can’t put my finger on it?

My healing room seems ‘dense?’

How can I stay cleansed from the energies I work with?

How can I keep my clients clean from energy?

I get asked these questions a lot and my answer always is:

it is imperative to instill an energetic hygienic practice into your energy healing practice

& luckily for you there are a bunch of different ways to do this! Regardless if you’re just curious how to keep your living space’s energy clean, or your a client receiving sessions or a practitioner working with people, you’ll find this blog helpful!

What the heck do I mean by Energetic Hygiene?

I’m glad you asked. Just like body hygiene is important, so is energetic hygiene. You’ve probably experienced this before if a person emotionally dumped all their “stuff” on you without your permission, sometimes you walk away feeling ‘icky.’ This is because of an energetic transfer - nothing happened physically - but you can feel that something is off.

Practitioners

If your client is off-gassing a lot of energy:

You’ll know this because of the constant pressure changes in the air around you, temperature fluctuations and need to constantly dragon-breathe.

You can place a bowl of salt water underneath the massage table and set an intention for the wild energy that is flying around to be pulled into the vortex where it will be cleansed, dissolved and disintegrated safely.

Pro tip! Grounding is an absolute essential part of doing healing work. Practice this by going outside and standing barefoot in the grass, in the sand or in the dirt. Feel yourself dropping a line of energy down through your legs out the sols of your feet into the earth, releasing excess energy into the earth, while receiving negative ions from the earth that have good health indicators!

If the session is crazy intense and you feel like you need some ‘divine’ help:

I have found that using an intentional salt circle around the session and St Germain’s Violet Flame ‘inside’ the session can help cleanse whatever is ‘other.’ By ‘other’ I mean:

• not your clients

• old stuff that is really dense

• energy that came ‘before’ your client (literally or cosmically)

If you’re noticing that you leave with what the client brought in:

This means you need to work on grounding your energy and their energy a bit better. Remember as you breathe you are grounding that energy all the way down, out the soles of your feet into the earth to be grounded.

This could also mean you need to clean your hands. Cleaning your hands can look like

• washing them with soap and water

• spraying them with a alcohol + water + essential oil potion

• you can put your hand in the geode of a crystal (without touching the sides) and allow all the focused energy of the crystalline points to cleanse your hands.

remember whatever instrument you work with needs to be cleansed after sessions:

Your pendulum needs to be cleansed, your tuning forks can be cleansed with other forks, smoke, crystals or sounds. If you’re working with bowls, gong or chimes they generally clean each other throughout group sessions.

It is a great idea to have a little ‘cleansing station’ that can look very much like an altar, or a crystal grid that you can place your instruments in for cleansing after sessions.

If your practitioner says they don’t need to clean their crystals this is a red flag.

People / clients / practitioner

BREATHE

Breathing deeply and activating your diaphragm and vagus nerve is so incredibly important. When you breathe shallow the breath stays in the upper chest; this is not where the breath is supposed to stay!

The breath wants to be breathed all the way down to your low belly! Why? Your lungs act as a great bellows to PUMP your diaphragm and STIMULATE your vagus nerve.

Activating the diaphragm and vagus nerve helps:

• digestion

• the nervous system

• your chakral system

• stress reduction

• heart health

• digestion

• mood regulation

• & more!

Pro Tip! As a client, practitioner, or living breathing person. Please work on deepening your breath!

seriously, please.

protect your energy:

Keep your energy yours and your client’s energy theirs. I like working with the tuning forks because it provides a soft barrier between us (rather than using my hands) and the vibration on the fork cleanses any energy before it gets to my hand.

You can also create shields, but make sure you’re using elemental energy to do so. Otherwise you’re just taking your energy and putting it outside yourself, which personally doesn’t seem like a good idea due to mass and density.

Perceiving myself as an Alchemist: I use a form of Tonglen meditation in my ‘energetic boundaries’ where I breathe it all in, and ground out the good, learning from the ‘dark,’ and recycling the beauty back into the world.

Living or healing spaces

for overall cleansing your healing space:

You can sage your healing space, you can play “om” in your space while you’re not there (low volume works), you can use a tuning fork or whatever your craft uses to harmonize the space - especially the corners of the room, doors, windows, and mirrors.

Pro Tip! If you forget, you’ll notice your attention being drawn away during sessions and pulled into an area of the room. There is a collection of energy in this area that is creating a vacuum.

energetic hygiene for life:

Make sure you are walking in alignment with your truth. If you’re preaching health and wellness your life should really reflect that. If not there is a discoherence between body and mind that will increase and become apparent over time.

the basics:

• Eat well, drink lots of water, salt bath, self care, and journal.

• Practice Mindfulness, cultivate compassion toward yourself and your fellow man.

• Meditate, reflect and visualize.

• nature, nature nature

expert level:

• Take care of yourself by setting good boundaries, this is imperative as an energy healer. If you are leaking energy it’s irresponsible to ‘heal’ from an empty cup.

• Forgive, yes you, yes. Forgive. Trust me, I didn’t want to either. I wanted to hold onto all that delicious resentment, and then I forgave. There is medicine here.

• Be a good person, like really actually good. Not just in public. Karma is real and what goes around comes around, what you do to others will be done to you, what you reap you will eventually sow.

• Keep learning: there is no end to what you can learn when you fall down the “sound healing” wormhole. It is vast and endless. You owe it to yourself and your clients.

~

I hope this blog gave you some extra tips and pointers! If you have any questions or feedback please let me know.

Comment, email, share, like: I would love to hear from you.

Make sure you follow my social medias as I am announcing dates for my FREE 3 Webinar Sound Healing Series next week!

• Is Sound Healing Real?

• Chakras 101-103

• Sound Healing Theory

see you There!

Crystal singing bowls & vibrational Medicine

I have been lucky and infinitely blessed to have played crystal bowls for different audiences throughout California, Arizona, and Puerto Rico.

I discovered Crystal Bowls at the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine Conference in San Diego in 2014. At the time I was working at a Subtle Energy Laboratory in San Diego and was invited to attend the conference. In the corner I saw all these beautiful and mystical crystal bowls set up and on a break I sat down and played. I was immediately entranced and transfixed by the sounds and tones coming out of them. I felt that the sound was not only playing around me and singing sweetly to my ears, but I physically was feeling the sound waves traveling and dancing through my body. I felt like I was on an inner journey throughout the time that I played, time seemed to dissolve and I felt, as the shaman’s say, outside of time. The picture below is actually the exact moment I fell in love with them. Thank you to Amelia for capturing.

At the time I was studying under Eileen Day McKusick and loving my deep dive into the science of sound and all the magic the world of vibration had to offer. It made so much sense to me as I was already an energy healer, so I understood intention and non-localized healing. I had a scientific background and understood the body and it’s different systems, it’s structure and it’s function. I had studied subtle energy in a clinical setting through the thermosphere - specializing in the infrared heat the body emits. I was currently studying subtle energy in a laboratory setting - in a Faraday cage or copper shielded room that blocked out all electromagnetic waves. The Master’s Program that I had started specialized in Human Consciousness. All the roads were leading me to “Rome” whereas “Rome” was this understanding of this foundational origin place of sound waves / wave forms and vibration.

We all remember in science class ~ 3rd grade where we’re taught everything in this whole universe is vibration, including us, our parents, space, even the chair we’re sitting on, and then we glossed over that and starting learning about something else.

But what if waveforms and vibration is actually everything? and in the study of vibration we can come to understand (perhaps not everything) but a lot more things than we do now with our rigid cosmology or view of the world and how it works?

In Traditional Chinese Medicine they believe that illness occurs when there is a blockage or stagnation of a meridian (or channel of energy). Using Acupuncture and herbs they can help loosen this blockage to create flow, and thus health.

If you think about it - a truth we can all agree on it: MOVEMENT IS MEDICINE. If you are sluggish vs active = you might be feeling sickish vs healthy. If your body is stagnant vs in flow = you may feel sickish vs healthy. Mixing East & West theories: if your veins, meridians, arteries, or nadi’s are slow or lagging - this can cause physical, emotional or mental health issues. Another example is - when you are in flow state, how easy everything comes to you - it’s almost like you are aligned with the universe and the universe sees that and conspires on your behalf.

Following this rabbit hole even deeper, there’s an underlying idea of movement, waveforms, or vibration and it’s relationship to harmony. If you are vibrating lower than your equilibrium you may feel low, sad, depressed, sick, unable to get out of bed etc; if you are vibrating higher than your equilibrium you may feel anxious, overwhelmed, hypervigilant, easily irritated, angered, etc. When you are operating at your equilibrium or homeostasis - defined by google as ‘a self-regulating process by which a living organism can maintain internal stability while adjusting to changing external conditions’ you feel calm, steady, secure, adaptable, flexible. This relationship between waveform / vibration - which is everything - and the balance or harmony of that waveform / vibration - which influences how we respond to everything, is paramount.

Using Crystal Bowls, Tuning Forks, Drums, Koshi Chimes, Tibetan Bowls, etc we are activating vibration with vibration. We are following the Universal Instruction. The Playing Book, if you will. Something that always troubled the back of my brain was what if “…in the beginning was the word,” is a mistranslation from “…in the beginning there was sound.”

All of our ancient cultures did sound healing with the different instruments they made based on their geography. What if they were on to something? If you’ve ever participated in a Crystal Singing Bowl or Sound Healing event in general you know what I’m talking about. The energy, tones, frequencies and harmonies that come out of these are ingrained with healing energy, inspirited with power and deeply-rooted in ancestral wisdom.

If you haven’t attended some sort of Sound Healing event - whether it’s with bowls, voice, gongs etc I highly recommend it. If you have - with me or anyone else - I’d love to hear about your experience!

~

Personal Note: My intention with sharing my life through social media has always been complete transparency and authenticity. I have always wanted to share exactly who I am, but in doing so I have found my social medias are primarily travel & fun and don’t really focus on what I do at all. My healing work is my life’s mission and it is wholly sacred to me, and perhaps I have felt that promoting it on social media’s feels boastful or prideful; and therefore against what I stand for as healing is generally private. I have decided to share this truth / vulnerability here, with you now, to help myself overcome this obstacle.

I am (apprehensively) happy to announce I have finally made a new life’s-work-related, sound healing-devoted instagram that focuses less on my travels and fun and more on my life’s work and sacred mission. I’ll be posting my blogs / events / excursions and availability here <3

Please give me a follow on ig: @wellnesswanderer_jess

<3

vulnerability: a superpower

Vulnerability is an essential part of the human experience. It is the state of being exposed to the possibility of harm or damage, either physically or emotionally. Vulnerability is often viewed negatively, associated with weakness or frailty. However, it is important to recognize that vulnerability can also be a source of strength and growth; a superpower.

Like most of us ‘black sheep,’ Highly Sensitive People (HSP’s), empaths and/or lightworkers, I used to think feeling my feelings so deeply and expressing my vulnerability was a curse. But it also felt inauthentic to feel things so deeply without sharing them because I longed for connection despite feeling isolated in my depression. I read somewhere (later in life) that when you’re depressed you’re actually more connected to the collective than when you’re happy. Depression will lie to you and tell you you’re alone, but in that moment of your darkest hour you’re more connected to everyone else than ever before. I think this is because we all experience pain, but not all of us are able or privileged enough to experience the highest of highs. What I have come to realize through my experiences of long term anxiety and depression throughout my teens and early 20’s is that sometimes the lowest of lows allow me to know what the highest of highs feel like. It’s like without the lows as a baseline - how would I know how high the highs get?

People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses. ~ Brene Brown

Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness or a flaw. It's something we can try to hide from others and even from ourselves. However, vulnerability can be a strength that can help us bond more deeply with others and become more resilient in the face of life's challenges. Have you ever shared something with someone who accepted and loved you despite what you shared? Remember the amount of love and gratitude and appreciation you felt for that relationship?

…the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day. ~ Dr. Suess

strength in vulnerability

I started to realize feeling everything so deeply wasn’t a bad thing, it connected me to more people, it made me more compassionate, patient and more understanding of what my fellow human was growing through.

This is the lesson of the Throat Chakra teaches us power through vulnerability - sharing our truth brings the people together and completes the circle. Storytelling connects us through weaving threads of dialogue and finding resonant nodes and related topics. When we share our wounds and truth, others feel more comfortable sharing, which opens hearts, expands minds, and deepens relationships.

Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage. ~ Brene Brown

The planetary alignments and retrogrades we experienced at the end of 2022 really put me into an introverted, reflective state where I was reeling from such intense unworthiness and feelings undeserving of the life I live. These emotions and feelings were so intense I was beginning to implode into myself so I decided instead of letting these emotions direct my downward spiral, I would shine a light into this darkness and share them with my friends and boyfriend instead.

As SOON as I shared my emotions they sighed, releasing their breath and the heaviness that came with it, “me too,” they said. Through sharing our vulnerability and being so honest with ourselves and each other - and supporting each other through working with our own brand of feelings, we were able to relax fully into ourselves, our truth, and each other.

Vulnerability can also be a source of strength in difficult times. When we are vulnerable, we allow ourselves to feel and process our emotions, even if they are painful. This can be difficult, but it can also help us to move through difficult experiences and come out stronger on the other side.

In order to embrace vulnerability as a superpower, we must learn to be kind to ourselves. We must recognize that vulnerability is a sign of courage and strength. We must also be willing to be patient with ourselves and with others, as this can be a slow and sometimes challenging process.

When we are vulnerable, we create deeper ties with the people around us. It requires trust, and when we are willing to share our true selves with others, we create an environment of trust and understanding.

Vulnerability; a superpower

Vulnerability can be scary. It requires us to let go of control and trust that others will not use our vulnerabilities against us. It can be difficult to be honest and open about our struggles and weaknesses, especially in a world that often values strength and independence above all else. This can be terrifying because it makes us feel exposed and open to judgment, but it can also be incredibly empowering.

Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. ~ Brene Brown

By being vulnerable, we are being authentic and honest and therefore we can create deeper connections with others. We acknowledge our emotions and our limitations, we become more resilient in the face of challenges, and learn to be more compassionate to ourselves.

So, the next time you feel afraid to be vulnerable, remember that it can actually be a source of strength and power. By embracing vulnerability, we give ourselves permission to be imperfect, and we show others that it's okay to be imperfect too.

Through Vulnerability, we Alchemize our pain into a Superpower.

how to hack forgiveness

For over 10 years I have worked with a lot of people sharing their life stories with me. A lot of times people say what they are sharing is things they’ve never shared before, to anyone, ever. A couple patterns I notice about forgiveness is people wanting to forgive and being unable to, or jumping to forgiveness without being ready, or punishing themselves for not being able to forgive. This is common, but it’s something we need to unpack.

As humans we feel a full spectrum of emotions from sadness and anger, and jealousy to joy, happiness and ecstasy. For our time here and now as humans, all of these emotions are valid, as I’ve written about before in Emotions are like Puppies. You are allowed to feel anyway you want. If someone did something to you that is beyond forgiveness (which I have heard many stories where this could be the case) - it is okay to be unable to forgive them.

I know that might sound weird at first - but hear me out for a second. Forgiveness is amazing, it’s releasing, it burns the ties that bind, it’s incredible!

But!

Sometimes it takes time to fully achieve forgiveness and sometimes it is impossible to get there. If you punish yourself your whole life for being unable to forgive, you are suffering twice - once with the trauma and again torturing yourself for not being able to forgive; this is, of course, even worse for your mental and emotional well-being.

To get to true forgiveness, you have to feel ALL THE THINGS: the hatred, resentment, disgust, shame etc. because! jumping too quickly to forgiveness could be spiritually bypassing (i.e. ‘I need to forgive because I’m spiritual, woke, etc…’) or gaslighting yourself (i.e. ‘It wasn’t that bad, other people have it worse, I’m overreacting, etc.’)

Your feelings are valid. You don’t need to do anything. You are the main character in your own life.

It’s also possible if you jump too quickly to false forgiveness, later in life these unprocessed emotions like the unfelt anger, hatred and/or resentment could bubble up again when their effects are more intense. In my opinion, the reasons these emotions can be more intense than the initial ones is because they’ve become infected and irritated from being shut down and compartmentalized. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘what we resist, persists!’ In this case, falsely-forgiving emotions that have not properly gone through their entire life cycle (from birth to resolution) can become exaggerated and more aggressive from not being witnessed. We see the ill effects of this process when we witness projection - when we ‘project’ or overlay past hurts from past events on to current people in our current life.

So!

Here’s my secret hack to forgiveness*:

Instead of trying to forgive the other person for what they did to you - what if you forgave yourself for not being able to forgive the other person?

Interesting right?

In my mind, forgiveness works both ways. You can try and forgive the other person, but if that doesn’t work, why not switch the direction of the forgiveness. Maybe try this on and practice some self compassion and self mercy?

What does it feel like to forgive yourself for not being able to forgive?

What if you chose yourself first?

*Disclaimer: you do not have to agree :) this blog is written with the same philosophy of trying on a T-shirt - if it fits, great; if it doesn’t, take it off and try a new one ;)

emotions are like puppies

Emotions are like puppies. They all want to be loved and held and cuddled. They are also all worthy of love and cuddles.

In my perspective there is NO SUCH THING as a bad emotion. Anger and sadness deserve as much love and affection as joy and ecstasy. Joy and ecstasy are easy to love because they feel good! Anger and sadness may be harder to love, but they have more to teach us.

Anger Protects

I believe that Anger is a Protector Emotion. Have you ever felt sad or powerless for so long that finally Anger came to protect you? To light a fire under your ass, to initiate and instigate you? To pick you up and out of sadness and depression and throw you into action?

In some schools of thought Anger can live in and around the Solar Plexus Chakra which has to do with our drive, determination, will and ego. It makes sense that Anger can be instigating! It’s literally pushing us forward into our destiny. Ego is not necessarily a bad thing as it’s purpose is to protect the Inner Child. It can be seen as negative if it runs our life without us knowing.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. ~ Dr. Carl Jung

There is no such thing as a bad emotion

Sometimes as children we are taught there are ‘bad’ emotions but this is a lie. When a child is angry or reactive this can mean a boundary is crossed. Sometimes children do not feel comfortable hugging family friends because they can feel like strangers (if there is a lot of time between visits). Parents, sometimes embarrassed by this, will override the child’s boundaries. This can teach a child at young age that their bodies are not their own and they have no bodily autonomy. Obviously this is problematic at the time and later in life when children grow to pre-teens and young adults. If their voices and boundaries didn’t matter then, why would they matter now?

Sometimes parents do not like when children say “no,” as it’s seen as an act of defiance; but it can also be a child setting a boundary. When parents deny a child setting healthy boundaries it strips them of many things. Let’s dive deeper down this rabbit hole: a classmate wants something they have, do they say no? An older person wants to touch them inappropriately, can they say no? Someone hurts them, do they tell? How can they with no voice, no boundaries and no bodily autonomy?

all emotions are valid

Sometimes in childhood when we’re joyful the volume of our voice increases and a parent or peer shushes us and tells us we are “too loud.” This is around the time we learn that our joy isn’t welcome which can cause us to emotionally shut down and physically tighten around the diaphragm. This tightening can cause shallow breathing and a low vagal tone. ‘Vagal tone is a measure of cardiovascular function that facilitates adaptive responses to environmental challenge. Low vagal tone is associated with poor emotional and attentional regulation in children and has been conceptualized as a marker of sensitivity to stress.’

All emotions are valid and the whole point of an emotion is expression. Dr. Candace Pert writes in Molecules of Emotion that an emotion’s full lifespan is a matter of seconds. It begins, climaxes (if allowed) and then resolves itself. By fully experiencing our joy / sadness / anger / ecstasy we are allowing the full expression and complete lifecycle of that emotion.

the only bad emotion is a stuck one

There are many schools of thought on this: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believes that certain emotions will cause certain meridians and chakras to become discoherent and/or stagnant; by using herbs and acupuncture you can clear congestion and bring about wellness or ‘balance.’ Grief can sit in the lungs, frustration in the gallbladder, anger in the liver, overthinking in the stomach / spleen, emotional and mental digestion in the stomach / intestines and so on. In my experience, the only ‘bad’ emotion is a stuck one, as stuck emotions can cause physical ailments.

When I went through my healing crisis around 20 years old I was only able to fully heal my physical body by also balancing my mind and emotions. I talk about this often as this is when I came to realize that ‘healing’ comes from integrating the mind, body and soul as they are all interrelated; this is also when I dove much deeper into holistic healing, TCM and Ayurvedic medicine.

Later in life during my Saturn Return (Dark Night of the Soul) I was able to use and benefit from what I had already learned to help heal my 27 year old body from shingles. Shingles generally lasts for 3 months and is super painful as it affects the nerves, mine manifested in my face and neck. Luckily, I only suffered with shingles for a week because I came at it from an emotional and mental perspective, as well as treating it physically.

If you ever need another guide on relating emotions to physical illnesses, Dr. Louise Hay has compiled a list you can find here.

emotions are like puppies

And finally, emotions are like puppies. YOUR puppies. Joy and ecstasy are your adorable clean fluffy puppies and anger and sadness are your adorable fluffy puppies that accidentally got covered in mud. The important truth is that they are the same and they are yours. Your fluffy clean puppies come to you for love and you pick them up and hug them easily without hesitation because they’re clean.

Your silly adorable puppies that fell in mud cannot get the mud off themselves, so they are coming to you for help. They need your love, acceptance, and require more time and patience then your other puppies to remove the mud. Once you remove the mud you see the truth - that they are just as deserving and worthy of your love.

This is the same for your emotions, they are all valid and they deserve acceptance. In accepting your emotions and loving them for who they are and what they’re teaching you reduce resistance, you quicken the healing process, and integrate the lesson quicker.

Healing is not fixing the parts of you that are ‘broken’ - healing is loving all parts of yourself anyways <3

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I dedicate this blog to my adorable fluffy Toby (pictured) when he got sprayed by a skunk twice - in the same week - during the winter - at night - after I had showered and was cozy in bed about to fall asleep :p

Furever Toby <3

Alternative Health Tools Podcast Interviews Jess

John Biethan is the host of Alternative Health Tools, a Southern California based podcast that shares alternative health tools, tips and resources from complementary, alternative and holistic healthcare practitioners. 

John & Jess met at INNER TEMPLE one fateful Tuesday in 2016, bonding over Tuning Forks and the magical healing properties of sound.

The rest is history...