Yoga is more than asanas. This is often what people say but what do they mean? Yoga is a way to see clearly, be absolutely present and do in the world what has to be done. Everything that blocks this clear perception is called an illusion in yoga and must be removed by inner transformation. What will then happen is that we are triggered less in daily life and can act in an adult way instead of acting out emotionally and from our (often subconscious) wounds.
Yoga refers to the connection between body, mind and emotions. If you become aware of one of these layers, you usually get also become aware of the others. They are all interconnected and bringing light and understanding to any of them will help you to transform the others as well. For many people practicing yoga is a starting point to doing inner transformation work. Practicing asanas and becoming really present with your body sensations is often a gateway to connecting on a deeper level with your thoughts and emotions. They are all interlinked and becoming more flexible in the body might open up the awareness for thinking in new ways and vice versa. For instance, when I remembered and healed a core wound of mine in my childhood my whole body opened up. Parts that were chronically tight just relaxed and one of my yoga teachers noticed even though I didn’t tell him that I had done emotional healing work.
So how is the healing work done and why? Yoga also describes just as other concepts that we have a subconscious mind, a conscious mind and a super consciousness.
- Subconscious mind: We are not aware of it, and mostly it performs automatic tasks such as performing all the body functions without us having to think about them consciously all the time. It also provides safety mechanisms to protect us from harm. Unfortunately not all of those mechanisms serve us in the present time anymore.
- Conscious mind: Everything that we are aware of and with which we govern our daily life.
- Super Consciousness: this super consciousness beyond our daily awareness is called by many names such as the High(er) Self, Atma, Buddha Consciousness, the Christ Self, High Consciousness, or the High C.
Phyllis Krystal describes the healing work and it’s purpose in her book like this: “We realised that everything that ever happened to us is still just as clear and active at this subconscious level, as when it happened. So, not only do we need to get in touch with the High C (High Consciousness), but we also have to find out what is still contained in the subconscious that blocks us from receiving guidance from our High C. Actually, in this work we are taking into consideration all three parts of our mind: the conscious part with which we think and with which we run our daily life, the subconscious part, which contains everything which ever happened, and the High C, which is the High Self, which knows exactly why we are here and what we have to learn.”
The best inner transformation books and methods that I know (and there are many) are those of Malcolm Southwood, Phyllis Krystal and Teal Swan. In 2009 I did my healing therapy education with Malcolm Southwood and most of the educational time we spent doing trauma healing work for ourselves and others (making the subconscious conscious and healing old wounds). The work of Phyllis Krystal also uses methods to remove obstacles from the past to live more consciously in the present. Her newest book is “The Flight of the Phoenix to Liberation”, which builds upon her book and method “Cutting the Ties that Bind”. Teal Swan describes in her book “The Completion Process” also how split fragments from past traumas can be found and re-integrated. My personal experience is mostly with the methods of Malcolm Southwood (both for myself and as a therapist for others) and the Figure 8 from Phyllis Krystal. My teacher Natalia Rose proposes to do recapitulation work, which is another method, coming more from the shamanic healing field.
All those processes and methods have in common that we all bring wounds from the past, mostly from conception to the age of 8, heal them and receive the energy back that was stuck in the past. Until the age of 8 everything is directly written into our subconsciousness, without filter. A trauma is something, according to Malcolm Southwood, which occured when we were young and were under shock or hurt and we thought it was our own fault. For example, we fell from the tree and hurt ourselves. The mother is in shock and shames us instead of soothing us and telling us that she still loves us. Later in life we might be faced with a very stressful situation (the trigger) and the subconscious mind remembers that it had a similar stress when falling down the tree, thus it develops an allergy against this specific tree to keep us away from it. Before we do the healing work we didn’t remember the tree accident as we are feeling guilty about it. Most people only remember the stressful situation later in life (the trigger but not what caused the trigger, the original trauma).
The various methods take you back to the incident that happened when you were young and help you to solve the problem differently, in a healthy way, so that your subconscious doesn’t have to protect you anymore later as a adult with the inappropriate measure (such as keeping you away from a certain tree type with an allergy). It also helps the inner child that is frozen in the past moment to relax and to grow up, thus to move forward in life.
We all want to be in control of our lives and be neither controlled by outer forces nor by patterns that we feel helpless against. Doing inner transformation work brings you gradually back in touch with all aspects of yourself and heals those wounded parts in yourself that were most probably rejected and shamed before. It is an ongoing process, it takes willingness and courage. Healing traumas from early childhood is not about blaming others but rather about taking back responsibility and love for ourselves. It fosters compassion for others as we become aware of our unconscious wounds and their healing and with it a deeper understanding of what others might go through.
With less emotional triggers in your life you might feel and hear the voice of your High C so much better and do in life more what you feel is right for you.
