I have put much study and research into learning about chronic health issues and addiction. My own six year struggle with chronic autoimmune disease led me to the neurological driver of most of those conditions. Research into chronic pain has led me to the strong tie between chronic pain and stored up emotions. My most recent work is with cancer and emotional ties.
Bottom line, our emotions are often an important factor, if not the primary driver of most chronic health and addiction issues. A significant part of our experience here in Earth realm is learning the power of our minds and allowing our emotional energy to freely flow. Stagnant emotional energy and stress will lead to blockages, disease, anxiety, pain generation, cancer and anything else you might imagine.
Our work with the divine plant medicines will allow us to a place of creation where we can discharge emotional and energetic ties that bind us. Whilst under plant medicine, our limbic brain is at rest and our prefrontal cortex is active. Locked on stress responses and emotional traumas can be reprogrammed. Purging of stored up emotional stress is probably the fastest gateway to healing our body and spirit.
After ceremony, we always return to the physical world and must continue to release stored up emotional energy. If we make a practice of allowing ourselves to feel our emotions we can keep our emotional reservoir from overflowing and pushing symptom generation and addictive behaviors to the body for physical manifestation.
As part of our plant medicine experience, we will all do work to dig into our emotional issues. This is simply a matter of journaling about some key areas where we store strong emotions (This work originated with Dr. John Sarno and Nicole Sachs). Everyday, we will spend twenty minutes simply writing. If anyone is unable to write, the other option is to find a private place and talk to yourself.
I would encourage everyone to start a journal practice immediately and continue until you feel that you have purged a lot of emotional energy that does not serve you.
The Process: Free flow writing or talking under 3 different categories: Daily Life, Personality, and Childhood. What you write is for your eyes only and is to be destroyed and released after your journal session. This is where you let go of anything that you need to get out. You deepest darkest thoughts, worries, frustrations, and fears. This is not a surface level exercise. Your healing will come from purging deep things within that you don't want to look at.
Example, I will pick a topic, say something from childhood and write CH in the margin. In this case, I remember I was 12 and walking home from 6th grade with my report card which was straight As. I lost the card on the way home. My dad screamed and yelled at me and didn't believe me. I'll dig in a little and add the emotions I felt at the time and underline them: Anger, unsafe, emotional invalidation. I'll then pause and allow myself to FEEL the emotion. Here, you are bringing a stored emotion to the surface and allowing it to flow out of you. Give it to god. Give it to the universe. Give it to the river. Whatever resonates with you.
This little memory from childhood may bring up another for you to dig into. Reminder, this is not about rights and wrongs, and not about blaming our parents or siblings or bosses. Everyone is always doing their best from their consciousness level at the time. This is about your release and healing, and also about empathy and compassion. If you are up for it in the moment, you may attempt to look at the situation with empathy. My dad was horribly abused as a child, so when I dig into my stored up emotions regarding my relationship with him, I now know to look from the perspective that he was carrying the weight of years of abuse and unable to process his own anger, which eventually led to his death. Was it ok? No, but this process stops the family lineage of trauma that I experienced and I can look at it with compassion while dissolving my anger.
The objective is to dig as deep as possible and try to bring to the surface that which we have been hiding from. Our stored issues with guilt, shame, anger, sadness, fear, invalidation, unworthiness, & not belonging clog us up and hold us back. They sever our connection with the grand tapestry of life. By releasing this energy, our energy systems can repair and flow. Our health conditions, chronic anxieties, and addictions can become looser and more malleable in our bodies. We can heal.
Remember, we are not trying to find faults with our parents, children, & partners. We are trying to release what does not serve us so that we can have deep healing within our souls and open our relationships to new levels of connection. Your emotional journal work is for you only. Keep it as your private activity and also send blessing to your family members when they appear in your journal. We are all healing each other after all.