Moving Forward Does Mean Looking Backwards- Finding the right healing modality

All healing modalities have their place but you need to be aware of where you are on your journey and what specifically you want to achieve.

I have done a few different healing modalities on my journey, which have both helped immensely and have also provided me knowledge to take into my own practise. One very clear thing I have learnt is whilst the modality of coaching is an incredible tool, it can be rendered almost useless if one doesn’t do their inner work first.

What do I mean by that? Simply put to move forward, you do actually need to look backwards. It’s not about sitting in the pain of your past, but it is about recognising that pain. Why is it there? Where did it come from? Where does it sit in your body? How does it feel? What does it look like?

The great coaches I know, understand that when a client comes because they are stuck in life, they need tools and perhaps some changes in beliefs- they also need to heal their past, and if they are not prepared to do the hard inner work (because yes it is hard, confronting and uncomfortable), they will never achieve the growth they desire. So many people are just looking for the “quick fix”. What they can do to quickly move forward. How they can reach their goals the fastest. Don’t get me wrong there are some incredible coaches out there, but if you are only willing to go forward and unwilling to deal with the past, your growth will be short term and limited at best.

Through my training, there are two types of coaches. The coach who has the education and training to tackle both ie: the past and the present/future or the coach who has a particular skill set to support growth, mindset and changes in the present and the future but has the experience to recommend their client see a trained therapist to support healing their past, and the two will work in conjunction to support their client.

The absolute biggest learning I have had is to do this work you need to have experienced things in your life. You need to have done your own healing and the training I have done has certainly triggered many unaddressed emotions and feelings, that I have had to deal with and heal from as they have arisen.

I would never ask of my client to do something I either hadn’t done myself or was not willing to do.

It really has been an incredible journey and I write about it because it’s important to acknowledge and speak about. We all have emotions, feelings and varying degrees of trauma and the biggest mistake we make is to silence it. To bury it deep inside, hoping we never have to face it. To distract ourselves from it. We are taught to silence it and moreso in this toxic positive environment where one should apparently only speak of their happiness, because anything else is deemed negative. Unfortunately that’s bullshit, real life is not all roses and if we can’t be honest about how we feel, then we just live one big fake life of lies. Social media is proof of that.

So many of us bury our pain and hide how we truly feel, which really is sad. There is no real permanent change or growth if we don’t deal with past issues. The catch is many do not even know what they are. Why we believe what we do. Why we are triggered in certain situations. Why we behave or react in particular ways. That’s what a good therapist is for, whatever form of healing resonates with you is the first step. Because you absolutely have to identify it, feel it, sit with it, to start dealing with it.

Heal the past, so you can enjoy the present and grow into the future. Imagine watering a plant everyday, feeding it the right fertiliser and sending it love, so it will grow. But under the soil its roots are sick and need treatment to heal so the plant can thrive. What makes us humans any different? We need to dig deep, through the dirt and the mess to heal what is often hidden.

I’m so self aware now and recently I was feeling I had a block, a resistance of sorts. I could feel it but could not really identify it. I knew I needed some help to find it and start shifting it. I worked with an incredible woman whose main modality is Theta healing and in just one session, there was a release. There’s more work to do but awareness is the key and honesty with oneself is crucial.

What I’m trying to say is, our healing journey is ongoing. Once you start your journey of healing and growth, you quickly understand there is so much to discover and learn about yourself. You become intricately aware of your emotions, feelings, spirituality and your energy. You start to feel where they sit in your body because our body ALWAYS keeps the score. And importantly therapists, healers, coaches always need support, if we stop and think we’ve learnt and grown enough, we are not the right people to be doing this job!

Unprocessed emotional energy is stored in our organs, muscles, tissues and cells. Leading to inflammation, chronic health problems, both physical and mental and it undermines our overall wellbeing. we always need to do the work.

As someone who has been on my own journey of healing and have been unafraid to speak of it, I highly recommend it. There’s no shame in talking about pain because through pain we learn and hopefully we seek the appropriate support to start healing. Pain is real and it’s raw and there’s nothing more beautifully authentic than someone who can speak their truth and ask for help.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”.