By Brian Luke Seaward
Several years ago, while attending a conference on mind-body-spirit healing, I slipped into a breakout session on trauma and cellular memory. The speaker shared a story of one of his patients that had everyone on the edge of their seats, including me. He described a woman who, as a child, had been traumatized when her alcoholic parents beat her. In the first few therapy sessions when she recounted her horrific experiences, black and blue bruises would appear on her arms and legs in the same way they had when she was a child. Her body was reliving that trauma and revealing the cellular memory of her experiences as she worked to resolve and release them. I have learned that it is not just terrible trauma that can be held in the body. We are living in difficult times and the daily stress we are experiencing is affecting both our bodies and our minds.
Celia asked me to write this post after publishing one about the first necessary step we can take in refusing to absorb toxic emotions and finding instead a clear perspective that empowers us. We can learn from the deep wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi how to not get trapped by the hate and fear we feel.
https:winnpost.org/hating-the-sinner/2025/01/01/
One of the most important concepts that I teach in stress management workshops is that we must recognize and resolve our stress-based emotions. Although there are many such emotions, for simplicity’s sake I group them into two categories: anger (the fight response) and fear (the flight response). Many people think of anger and fear as negative emotions, but truth be told, they are first and foremost, survival emotions. If, for example, you smell smoke and see flames in the kitchen, fear kicks in and you go into action to deal with the fire. Likewise, if someone shoves you hard, you are likely to feel anger and react in some way to defend yourself. Both fear and anger are triggered when there is a threat to our safety. These emotions are designed to last long enough to get us out of harm’s way and then we are meant to let go and move on. But we can get stuck and replay the threat and our reactions over and over again, becoming caught in a storm of fight/flight responses. Today, the rapid social and political changes can seem extremely threatening and feelings of both anger and fear may surface repeatedly, becoming persistent emotions that are toxic for the mind, body, and spirit.
Bioenergy healers Mietek and Margaret Wirkus taught the Esoteric wisdom that the body is surrounded with several layers of energy: energies that range from the least dense, the spiritual level, to the most dense layer, the physical body, with the energetic layers of consciousness in between that are associated with aspects of the mind. This ancient approach teaches that illness begins in the outer field and cascades down the levels in the energy field until it lands in our physical form. As it was explained to me, a stressful thought coupled with a fear-based emotion, will become a distortion or congestion in the auric field, and if left unresolved, it will remain in the body. Toxic thoughts become toxic tissues.
For over a decade I taught a nutrition course at the University of Colorado. In addition to the primary textbook, I assigned Dr. Andrew Weil’s book, SPONTANEOUS HEALING. One of his ideas is that we take in toxins not only through our mouths (such as with junk food) but we also take in emotional toxins through our eyes and ears, through what we see and hear. For this reason, Dr. Weil suggested that we not eat dinner while watching the evening news.
Many of us have now unplugged from watching headline commentaries and given up doom scrolling on social media so we can avoid becoming overwhelmed by the constant flow of bad news. It is easy to fear and hate the corrupt bullies around us but it is a waste of our time and energy. To return to the wisdom of Gandhi, if you focus on the person who is lawless and committing many injustices, you become helpless. If you shift your attention to their destructive actions – hate the sin not the sinner – you have a way to become effective. And, importantly, when we are filled with fear and hate there is little room for love and kindness. Feeling isolated and helpless keeps us from reaching out to others and forming active communities. We can choose to live above the fray of the current emotional tumult and not fill ourselves with toxic emotions.
In his book POWER vs FORCE, psychiatrist David Hawkins outlined a scale of human attributes and their corresponding emotions in what he called a “map of human consciousness.” With the understanding that each thought/emotion holds a specific energetic vibration ranging from fear-based emotions with a low frequency to uplifting emotions with higher values, his teaching of emotional resiliency was simple – learn to raise your vibration by tuning in to and maintaining conscious emotions of joy, happiness, optimism, and curiosity.
We can raise our vibrations, clear our energy fields, and find emotional balance and physical well-being. Here is what I suggest we do:
- Learn to pay attention to what you are feeling, take a step back and don’t let your feelings hijack your ability to see what is going on. You can learn to observe and not absorb toxic emotions. Release the thoughts and feelings that don’t serve you.
- Minimize your involvement with attention-getting news headlines and learn to inoculate yourself against these fear-based energies.
- Get outside in nature. Mother Earth offers healing vibrations that are essential for good health. Feel the sun on your face, listen to the sounds around you, notice the changing seasons. Allow your senses to become alive and be aware of this moment.
- Practice daily meditation and find the stillness within yourself. Focus on your breath and make it a daily habit to calm your mind.
- Find gratitude for what – and who – you appreciate in your life.
- Follow healthy behaviors: how are you sleeping, eating, exercising?
- Engage with the people (and animals) around you: emphasize love in your life.
- Make a concerted effort to strengthen your connection to community ties whether that involves people in your own neighborhood or working with people in need in other places.
RESOURCES:
Hawkins, D., POWER versus FORCE, Hay House, 2012
Weil, A., SPONTANEOUS HEALING, Ballentine Books, 2000
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Brian Luke Seaward, PhD.is a teacher and expert in the fields of mind-body-spirit healing, stress management, and resiliency. He is the author of STAND LIKE MOUNTAIN, FLOW LIKE WATER and MANAGING STRESS (11 edition).
He can be reached at http://www.brianlukeseaward.com[1] [1]
The image that accompanies this post is from Pixabay by Gerd Altman.