In The Goo
The Process of Healing
My absolute best clients are the ones who dig in and do the work. It is an absolute privilege meeting someone where they are, providing guidance, support, and presence as they trudge through new challenges and old traumas, to get to through to the other side.
My favorite client has been with me for a few years now. She came to me in a really really dark place, post significant traumas. She was hesitant for the first year. Not only did she not trust the process, but she was also resistant to treatment. We would later discover she believed she didn’t deserve to feel better.
Somewhere in year two she decided to quit our work together.
That’s ok. Sometimes that’s part of the process too. I didn’t take it personally. I respected her decision…but I never let go.
See, I know that progress isn’t linear. It’s an illusion ad companies love to portray. “Buy this product and you have the life you want.” Actual healing doesn’t work that way.
Healing is a journey, it is not a destination.
If you graphed it, it might resemble a property’s value graph on Zillow. But I see it more like this-
With multiple swirls of progression outwards in all directions that intersect horizontal and vertical strands of pain (growth) points. As the expansion occurs, the same growth points (as well as new ones) will be revisited.
This is why one often feels “I dealt with this already!”
Progress is not linear. There is no floor and no ceiling. Healing is not undoing the damage done to us, so much as it is the growing stronger from it. As children we experience life, events happen and we create a belief or narrative about it, based on our limited understanding of life on Earth. As young adults, we have experiences that confirm this narrative. As we age, we gain the mental capacity to continue those narratives, or redefine them.
It is, quite literally, turning pain into power.
Childhood is the foundation of our adulthood. Therefore, anything built upon that foundation may be unreliable and need to be rebuilt. This is why as we expand we will hit different levels of the same issue. Because the foundation is deep.
Back to my client’s journey.
I checked in with her a couple of times, but got no response. One day her friend reached out to say she wasn’t doing well.
I reached out again, offering to pivot from the more traditional talking, to more energy healing and Shamanic sessions, to see where leads us. She agreed.
The first Shamanic session was very powerful. Even after all this time, I am still amazed at what happens in these sessions. Without sharing her personal details, I can say we did a soul retrieval that was very impactful. We reintegrated that piece over the course of a few months.
She nurtured it. She attended to it. She mothered it. She healed it.
That was our turning point. 2 years and a sabbatical away from our starting point. After that, things worked smoother. She was no longer resistant and we made great headway.
Over the course of the next two years, we continued to do the hard work together. Periodically, I would have to remind her that progress is not linear. It’s tempting to think of healing as a destination, but healing isn’t about landing at the ‘feel all better’ place. It’s is about managing life as a human. Despite the sales pitches of society, there is no landing place of healing. It is ongoing, because life is ongoing.
Honestly, healing is what being human is all about. In my heart, healing is the foundation of human development.
She was facing challenges and addressing issues like a champ. She was using the tools we had shared and applying them in between our sessions on her own. I pointed this out to here and we took some time to acknowledge how far she had come. How the version of her that I met would’ve handled these things very differently and felt very differently about them.
Two weeks later she was experiencing a real low and I could feel her ready to quit once again.
We were in the goo.
The Process Of Goo.
Here’s what happens when trauma is not processed at the time. Emotions are energy in motion. This is why we feel them in our bodies. It is why we cry, laugh, yell or talk to someone. Energy moves and it looks like that. When emotions are not allowed expression, they are buried. Each time we choose to bury rather than express, a new layer of emotion is laid upon the previous. We end up having an emotional landscape looking something like the sides of the Grand Canyon.
Think back to grade school science class, and remember how buried things become fossils. The longer emotions remained buried and unexpressed, the harder they become. In Shamanic work we see this show up as crystallized pieces we have to remove, like removing shards of glass. When we begin to expose those buried emotions, and reveal their origin, they begin to soften and become goo that we scoop out.
That’s what it means when I say we were in the goo. We hit a new layer that we had softened. The cycle doesn’t end. There is no landing place that looks like nothing ever traumatized you. Trauma changes you. That change can’t be undone, but it can be redone. Meaning, we can find a place to live a life that includes the experience, without still living the pain of it.
Progress isn’t linear. It is an outward expanding, simultaneously ascending spiral sphere that is hard to track.
This process is lengthy. The more trauma, the more unexpressed emotions, the longer the process. Society loves a quick fix. Healing isn’t a quick fix. It’s a way of life.
My client could’ve quit, but she stayed in the room, and I:
reminded her of the goo process
gave her a homework assignment
set our next appointment for a Shamanic journey
gave her a new tool to use
checked in on her through text the next day or so
and offered another phone appointment if needed
PSA
Critics of such processes love to state this model is a dependent one, I’d like to nip that in the bud.
This work doesn’t require someone’s dependence any differently than a hairstylist’s work. Once you get your first cut and style, you go back every 6-10 weeks to maintain that style.
No one ever criticizes that! This Healing work is similar. Once through the initial crisis that brought you in, we can begin work on things buried beneath. Following, there is maintenance to deal with life events as they arise.
Because this isn’t covered by insurance, there are no goals and no limitations to how long the relationship can last. You are free to stay as long as you find value in it. You are also free to stop for awhile and come back. No fear of a healer not being in network, or having moved on from an office that is.
Humans are built for connection…for relationships. Having a relationship with your healer is essential to healing success. The Traditional Western Medical model isn’t set up like that - working with an energy healer is. You can stop seeing them for years and pick up right where you left off. The relationship is the container for the Medicine. You dictate the schedule of how often you want to see them. You can see them only when you are in crisis, stopping when you are through it - or they can become your navigational partner going forward.
It’s not dependence. It’s the dynamic of being part of a village.
Every Shaman, every energy worker, is different. All are equipped to handle some things. Some are equipped to handle all things. When picking your person, make sure your needs match up to their experience, but also verify their walk matches their talk.
Behind the scenes, I can tell you many people enter this field after just taking a class or two. Having certifications doesn’t mean they have an active practice of doing their own work. Nor does it mean they have the life experience to meet your particular needs. Do your due diligence. Don’t fall for social marketing trends and marketing tricks, period. In general, a good rule of thumb to use is if someone seems to lead with their ego, move on.
When you are in the goo, you call someone who can get down in it with you, and guide you out…you don’t call a tow truck.
The Village Healer Path is a method to finding balance as a Spiritual Being having the experience of being human.
How can we be of service to you?
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